Part 24

I have signed the joint resolution “instructing the Interstate Commerce Commission to make examinations into the subject of railroad discriminations and monopolies in coal and oil, and report on the same from time to time.” I have signed it with hesitation because in the form in which it was passed it achieves very little and may achieve nothing; and it is highly undesirable that a resolution of this kind shall become law in such form as to give the impression of insincerity; that is, of pretending to do something which really is not done. But after much hesitation I concluded to sign the resolution because its defects can be remedied by legislation which I hereby ask for; and it must be understood that unless this subsequent legislation is granted the present resolution must be mainly, and may be entirely, inoperative.

Before specifying what this legislation is, I wish to call attention to one or two preliminary facts. In the first place, a part of the investigation requested by the House of Representatives in the resolution adopted February 15, 1905, relating to the oil industry, and a further part having to do with the anthracite coal industry, has been for some time under investigation by the Department of Commerce and Labor. These investigations, I am informed, are approaching completion, and before Congress adjourns I shall submit to you the preliminary reports of these investigations. Until these reports are completed the Interstate Commerce Commission could not endeavor to carry out so much of the resolution of Congress as refers to the ground thus already covered without running the risk of seeing the two investigations conflict, and therefore render each other more or less nugatory. In the second place, I call your attention to the fact that if an investigation of the nature proposed in this joint resolution is thoroughly and effectively conducted, it will result in giving immunity from criminal prosecution to all persons who are called, sworn and constrained by compulsory process of law to testify as witnesses; though of course such immunity from prosecution is not given to those from whom statements or information, merely, in contradistinction to sworn testimony, is obtained. This is not at all to say that such investigations should not be undertaken. Publicity can by itself often accomplish extraordinary results for good; and the court of public judgment may secure such results where the courts of law are powerless. There are many cases where an investigation securing complete publicity about abuses and giving Congress the material on which to proceed in the enactment of laws, is more useful than a criminal prosecution can possibly be. But it should not be provided for by law without a clear understanding that it may be an alternative instead of an additional remedy; that is, that to carry on the investigation may serve as a bar to the successful prosecution of the offences disclosed. The official body directed by Congress to make the investigation must, of course, carry out its direction, and therefore the direction should not be given without full appreciation of what it means.

But the direction contained in the joint resolution which I have signed will remain almost inoperative unless money is provided to carry out the investigations in question, and unless the Commission in carrying them out is authorized to administer oaths and compel the attendance of witnesses. As the resolution now is, the Commission, which is very busy with its legitimate work and which has no extra money at its disposal, would be able to make the investigation only in the most partial and unsatisfactory manner; and moreover it is questionable whether it could, under this resolution, administer oaths at all or compel the attendance of witnesses. If this power were disputed by the parties investigated, the investigation would be held up for a year or two until the courts passed upon it, in which case, during the period of waiting, the Commission could only investigate to the extent and in the manner already provided under its organic law; so that the passage of the resolution would have achieved no good result whatever.

I accordingly recommend to Congress the serious consideration of just what they wish the Commission to do, and how far they wish it to go, having in view the possible incompatibility of conducting an investigation like this and of also proceeding criminally in a court of law; and furthermore, that a sufficient sum, say fifty thousand dollars, be at once added to the current appropriation for the Commission so as to enable them to do the work indicated in a thorough and complete manner; while at the same time the power is explicitly conferred upon them to administer oaths and compel the attendance of witnesses in making the investigation in question, which covers work quite apart from their usual duties. It seems unwise to require an investigation by a commission and then not to furnish either the full legal power or the money, both of which are necessary to render the investigation effective.

TO THE CONSULAR REFORM ASSOCIATION, AT THE WHITE HOUSE, MARCH 14, 1906

_Gentlemen_:

I need hardly say that our one chance for getting the consular service put upon a really effective basis lies with just such organizations as this.

We in Washington must rely upon you to make our people, who are pre-eminently a business people—I do not think that is by any means all they either are or ought to be, but I think they must have and ought to have a very strong business side to them—appreciate that the consular service should be in its essence a part of the general scheme of business development of the country. Of course my own view is that that applies to all the affairs of the State Department, and under both Mr. Hay and Mr. Root that Department has been managed and is being managed with an eye single to the good of the country as a whole. I have not, I am sorry to say, been able to persuade people thus to look upon even such a question as the Santo Domingo Treaty, which is a purely non-partisan measure; for if it was treated as it should be, purely on its merits, there would not be one shadow of opposition to or criticism of it. But while we have not yet been successful in getting the work of the Department looked upon quite in the non-partisan spirit that should be our national attitude in foreign affairs, and have not been successful in getting the consular service made by law what we strive to have it made—an absolutely non-partisan service—still we have made a certain amount of progress, and with the help of you and those like you, we shall be able to make a great deal more progress. One point let me dwell upon. You can not expect to get permanently good service when that service is unattractive and ill-paid. We have had a great deal of difficulty with our consular service in China. It came partly because men were appointed for political reasons, with scant regard to their qualifications, partly because men found themselves in remote Eastern ports where there was not much that made life attractive, where there was very little supervision over them, and yet great temptation. Gentlemen, we all know that under such conditions it is necessarily difficult to secure honest and efficient service. We made a pretty thorough clean-up there. But we can not keep the service as high as it should be kept unless we have adequate salaries. There must be a better monetary provision for our consuls. I think that some such scheme as that so admirably advocated by Mr. Loomis, whose experience peculiarly fits him to speak on the subject, of charging a graded fee for invoices would furnish a solution. But in any event, in some way or other, we should provide for better salaries for the consuls, for better facilities for doing their work. Remember that the dearest kind of public servant is a servant who is paid so cheaply that he must render cheap service. Also, I feel most strongly that in the consular service, which stands entirely apart from the diplomatic service proper, entrance should be made by law into the lower grades and that the higher grades should be filled by a gradual process of weeding out and promotion; remembering, gentlemen, that the weeding-out process must not be interfered with. It is not any too easy, at best, to get rid of a kindly-natured elderly incompetent, and if you add to the difficulty by law, he then stays permanently. Make the entrance to the service as far as possible non-partisan and make it at the lower grades, so that desirable positions shall come to those who have rendered good and faithful service in the lower grades, so that those entering the lower grades shall feel that if they do well they have a long and worthy career ahead of them.

TO THE COMMITTEE AND ASSISTANT COMMITTEES ON DEPARTMENT METHODS, AT THE RESIDENCE OF MR. PINCHOT, WASHINGTON, MARCH 20, 1906

_Gentlemen_:

I wish to express my very great appreciation of the work that you are doing. It would be a good thing for certain critics of our Government to realize the amount of hard, disinterested work for the Government represented by this gathering to which I am now speaking—a work which must in the immense majority of cases be its own reward, and therefore an ample reward; for there is nothing pleasanter than the consciousness of having done well a bit of work well worth doing.

A year ago I appointed the Keep Commission, because I had become convinced that the business methods of our Government were by no means abreast of the times. While I think there is comparatively little corruption in the National Governmental service, and while that little I intend to cut out or have cut out through other agencies than yours, it yet remains true that there is a good deal of duplication of work, a good deal of clumsiness of work, and above all, the inevitable tendency toward mere bureaucratic methods against which every Government official should be perpetually on his guard—the tendency to regard not the case, but the papers in the case, as the all-important matter with which to deal, and to feel a proud sense of duty performed if all those papers are appropriately docketed and referred and minutes made about them, and then referred back, without regard to what has become of the real fact at issue.

As you are aware, the Keep Commission sent out questions to those responsible for the actual work in all branches of the Government service. Answers were received, or are now being received, to those questions, and they furnish a useful aid to the study by the commission of Governmental conditions. But inevitably in the great majority of cases these answers are inadequate to form a basis for definite recommendations, and of course that is what I want from this commission. I do not want a diagnosis of the case; I want a recommendation how to reach the case. I do not want merely to know that things are bad; I want to know what is bad and what is to be done to make it better, so that if legislation is necessary I can recommend it, or if, as I hope will be true in the enormous majority of cases, the matter can be reached by executive regulation, I can see that that regulation is issued. I want to say right here, gentlemen, that I shall value the reports that I receive largely in proportion as they do not call for legislation. There is nothing easier, as all of you know, than to draw up an elaborate minute to show how well things would go on if some one else did something different. I want you, so far as is possible, to recommend something that I can do, something that the heads of the departments can do, so that we can ourselves put a stop to much at least of the evil that exists, remedy much at least of the shortcomings that exist.

With this in view, a number of assistant committees were appointed, consisting of you gentlemen here, carefully chosen men from the Government service, who are already largely responsible for the efficiency of the work done in your several departments and bureaus. It was a compliment to choose you, gentlemen; though it is one of those compliments that take the form of imposition of additional labor. If you were not of the type that I know you to be it would not be a compliment that would be appreciated. These committees, you gentlemen, have been at work for about a month, and you are taking up your work within your specific fields through study of the data already collected by the Committee on Department Methods, through bringing before you men whose knowledge is of expert value, and above all by a thorough study on the ground by experts (for that is what you are) of the conditions and needs within the departments themselves. I shall not enumerate the different committees. They are now at work. You compose them, gentlemen, and all told they have a membership of about seventy individuals.

As I have said, your particular effectiveness lies in the fact that you are dealing at first hand with work with which you are thoroughly familiar. You are not outsiders. You are not engaged in constructing a parlor theory of how the work should be done; you are engaged in recommendations to better the business which you are yourselves to carry through and see made better when those recommendations have been adopted. You have literally an unparalleled opportunity for useful work. As far as I am aware, there has never before been made in this country, or indeed, in any country, such a comprehensive systematic effort to put the country’s housekeeping in order. I need not say to you that it is urgent. A great deal of our Government work has become proverbial for the red tape involved. Of course much of the outside criticism upon red tape is due to forgetfulness of the fact that you and I are responsible to Congress for every dollar we spend, and for every dollar’s worth of work that we do, while the outsider is responsible only to himself or those interested with him, so that we not only have to do what is right and efficient, but have to be able to show that what we have done is right and efficient; and this inevitably means that there must be certain forms observed which the unthinking outsider is apt to stigmatize as red tape. Nevertheless it is true that there is always a tendency in Government work to run to needless red tape. I asked the Keep Commission, for instance, to take up with particular care, through the Assistant Secretaries of War and the Navy, the burden of paper work resting on the officers of the Army and Navy. I remember very well the pride with which a certain high officer in one of the bureaus in the Navy Department, a good many years ago, told me, pointing to a big case of papers, that in that he could find out through the reports of the officers of each battleship how many bottles of violet ink each captain of a battleship was responsible for. I remarked that I did not care a snap of my finger about the number of bottles of violet ink on the ship, that what I wanted to know was whether the men at the guns could shoot; I did not accept the knowledge of the whereabouts of the violet ink as a substitute for shooting. The paper work must be subordinated in the departments and bureaus to the efficiency of the work itself, keeping only enough of it to make a record of what is done.

Of course it is impossible to set any actual time limit to the work you are doing, but it would be a mighty good thing to inaugurate the next fiscal year by adopting the new policies and methods in the departmental business. I want to assure you of one thing, and that is that your mere appointment has already produced a very marked moral effect. The good results of seventy men studying local methods and local needs on the ground, in the departments, does not lie only in the knowledge gained; you render a great service by making the men with whom you come in contact feel that they actually share in this movement.

The most magnificent architecture that our race has ever been able to produce—the great Gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages—were made, not by any known architect, not even by any number of architects whose names have ever been recorded. We do not know the name of an architect or builder connected with those great masterpieces. Each was made by a number of men, architects and builders, each of whom felt amply rewarded by the mere fact that he was able to put all the best that there was in him into his work. He did not care to have his name known, he did not desire to be immortalized in connection with the work; he cared only to make the work itself the best that it could possibly be made. There never was an army that amounted to anything in campaign or in battle unless the average soldier had in him the spirit which made him regard the winning of the campaign, the winning of the battle, as in itself the end, and his service, if good enough, as in itself the reward. He might wish other rewards if they happened to come; but if they did not, well and good. The doing the duty is of itself a sufficient reward for any man.

So it has to be if the work of the Government is to be really well done. As Ruskin has said, there are two ways of doing work; to work for the fee, for the payment, and to work for the work’s own sake. The work done simply to get money for having done it will never, under any circumstances, rank with the work done by the man whose sense of self-respect, whose capacity for loyalty to an ideal, makes him discontented unless the work that is at his hand is done with all the skill that heart and hand and brain can bring to it.

Of course, gentlemen, when you come to make your recommendations, you will have to deal with broad principles for the conduct of the Government business; but those broad principles must be supported by definite plans ready to be given immediate effect. I believe in broad principles, but I do not want them so broad that they will not apply to any given case. I want a general scheme, but also a way to make that general scheme effective in each department, each bureau, each section and subdivision touched by your committee. I do not want you in any case to recommend a change simply for the sake of making a change; nothing could be more foolish. But never hesitate for a moment in basing your recommendations upon the conditions actually found and the best way to meet them, no matter how radical may be the departure from established methods required. As I have said before, remember that in the vastly larger number of cases the essential need will not be for new legislation, but for better organization and improved methods under existing law. Now and then you will find where there must be a change in law, but the essential thing will be to change methods so that we can better administer the existing law.

There is, however, one fundamental weakness in the Government service which can not be remedied without additional legislation. That weakness lies in the faulty distribution of work among the different departments. It is one of the most serious of all the obstacles to good executive work, to effective work, and to economy in the public service. No matter how well a bureau or division may be organized and directed, you can not get the best work out of it unless it is associated with, and co-operating with, the other bureaus and divisions which are engaged in cognate lines of work and with which it naturally belongs. Good teamwork is as much needed in the executive civil service as it can possibly be anywhere else. And it is the only way to prevent duplication of work. Your own work is most important, but it covers only half of the field. To put the departments on the best and most economical working basis the President, as I have already recommended, should be given power to transfer any part of the work of a department to another department, as was done in the case of the Department of Commerce and Labor.

In closing I wish to say a word of acknowledgment of the public-spirited and most valuable co-operation of the American Association of Public Accountants, which has been promised to the Committee on Department Methods. I wish to thank them, and I wish to thank you, gentlemen, for the invaluable work that you are doing.

TO THE EXECUTIVE COUNCIL OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR AND THE REPRESENTATIVES OF LABOR ASSOCIATED WITH THEM, AT THE EXECUTIVE OFFICE, MARCH 21, 1906

_Gentlemen_:

If your body objects to the passage of the proposed anti-injunction bill, I have no question that you can stop it, for there is not a capitalist concerned who simply as capitalist is not against it; though I believe that a goodly number both of capitalists and wage-workers who are concerned primarily as citizens favor it. The law was worked over and substantially whipped into its present shape at a number of conferences between representatives of the railroad organizations, of the Department of Justice, and of the Bureau of Corporations with me. It goes as far as I personally think it should go in limiting the right of injunction; at any rate, no arguments have hitherto been advanced which make me think it should go farther. I do not believe it has any chance of passing, because there has been great criticism in both Houses of Congress against the attitude of the Administration in going so far as we have gone; and if you think it is not far enough, why, you will have no earthly difficulty in killing the bill. Personally, I think the proposed law a most admirable one, and I very sincerely wish it would be put through. As for the right of injunction, it is absolutely necessary to have this power lodged in the courts; though of course any abuse of the power is strongly to be reprobated. During the four and a half years that I have been President I do not remember an instance where the Government has invoked the right of injunction against a combination of laborers. We have invoked it certainly a score of times against combinations of capital; I think possibly oftener. Thus, though we have secured the issuance of injunctions in a number of cases against capitalistic combinations, it has happened that we have never tried to secure an injunction against a combination of labor. But understand me, gentlemen; if I ever thought it necessary, if I thought a combination of laborers were doing wrong, I would apply for an injunction against them just as quick as against so many capitalists.