tion." On May 16, 1918, Congress authorized the President to expend not to exceed $60,000,000 in providing housing facilities for war workers. An act of June 4, 1918, appropriating this amount, empowered the President to create a corporation or corporations for carrying out the work. By Executive order issued on June 18, 1918, under authority of the Overman Act, the President vested the power and authority conferred upon him by these acts in the Secretary of Labor. A Bureau of Industrial Housing and Transportation, in charge of a Director, was created by the Secretary of Labor to formulate a housing and transportation program for war workers. A United States Housing Corporation was incorporated under the laws of the State of New York on July 9, 1918, to which was assigned the work of constructing and operating housing facilities."1

Department Cabinet; Division of Negro Economics; Commission on Living Conditions. Announcement was made by the Secretary of Labor on July 16, 1918, that because of the increased number of subdivisions in the Department of Labor, and the interlacing of their functions, he had found it desirable to create a department cabinet composed of the heads of the several divisions, bureaus, and services in the department." In addition to the special war services created upon the recommendation of the Advisory Council and under authority of the act of July 1, 1918, a Division of Negro Economics was established in the Secretary's Office for investigating and advising the Secretary with reference to labor problems involving Negro citizens." A Commission on Living Conditions was also appointed by the Secretary of Labor in October, 1918, for the purpose of investigating bad living conditions as a factor in impeding the production of war materials and to devise methods of improving such conditions."

Special War Services Discontinued; Bureau of Industrial Housing and Employment Service Retained; Women's Bureau. With the exception of the Bureau of Industrial Housing and Transporta

50

51

Department of Labor, Annual reports, 1918, 198-99.

40 Stat. L., 550; 594, 595; Official Bulletin No. 340 (June 20, 1918), 1; Ibid., No. 358 (July 12, 1918), 1; Willoughby, op. cit., 254-57.

Department of Labor, Annual reports, 1918, 140-41; Willoughby, op.

cit., 242-43.

53

Department of Labor, Annual reports, 1918, 111-15.

54 Ibid., 1919, 196-98.

tion, the Woman in Industry Service, the Employment Service, and the Division of Negro Economics, all of the special war boards and services in the Department of Labor were discontinued on or before June 30, 1919, either through lack of appropriations or by order of the Secretary of Labor. The sundry civil appropriation act of July 19, 1919, made provision for the continuance of the Woman in Industry Service, the Bureau of Industrial Housing and Transportation, and the Employment Service, but not for the Division of Negro Economics. The importance of the latter division as a temporary post-war service, however, led the Secretary to continue it until March 4, 1921, when it ceased to exist." The small appropriation made for the Employment Service in the act of 1919 necessitated a serious curtailment of the field work of that service. Several bills were introduced in Congress looking toward its permanent establishment, but no action was taken upon them." The need and demand for a permanent bureau in the Department of Labor to deal with questions relating to the employment of women led Congress to establish a Women's Bureau in that department by act of June 5, 1920. This bureau absorbed the Woman in Industry Service established in 1918."

Centralization of Labor Administration as a Permanent Policy. The Department of Labor, like its immediate predecessors, the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Commerce and Labor, was established to promote the interests of a particular social group. Its creation as an executive department, with its head a member of the President's Cabinet, was the result of almost a half century of persistent agitation upon the part of organized labor. Prior to 1918, the administrative organization of the department, comprising, as it did, four bureaus and one division, in addition to the purely clerical divisions in the Secretary's Office, was devoid of any characteristic features. It was only after the first year of American participation in the World War that the urgent need for a unified labor administration was clearly appreciated. Once that need was recognized, however, immediate steps were

55 Ibid., 1920, 41; 41 Stat. L., 163, 222, 225.

Department of Labor, Annual reports, 1919, 305-06; 1920, 142-43, 913-14, 948-51.

41 Stat. L., 987; Department of Labor, Annual reports, 1920, 883; Institute for Government Research, The Women's Bureau (1923).

taken which resulted in the creation of a considerable number of new subdivisions in the department, and the organization of several boards, which, while not integral parts of the Department of Labor, were subject to the general direction of the Secretary of Labor in his capacity as Labor Administrator. The principal function of this unified and centralized labor administration was the formulation of broad governmental policies in relation to labor, and the supervision of the several industrial service sections or branches of the production departments, charged with the immediate application of those policies.

Within less than a year after the close of the war, almost the entire war-labor organization had been abandoned. Only three of the services established in the Department of Labor in 1918 were retained, and of these, only one, the Women's Bureau, has been permanently organized by congressional enactment. Some question may be raised as to the wisdom of the entire abandonment of the unified system of labor administration inaugurated during the period of emergency. That system permitted a maximum of centralized control in conjunction with decentralization of administration by agencies in close touch with particular problems in each department or establishment. While it may be desirable to maintain a larger degree of control within each department over its own individual policy of labor administration, as a permanent peace-time system or organization, than was advisable during the war period, the admitted success of centralized control in 1918 suggests at least a partial retention of that system as a permanent feature of administrative organization in the Department of Labor.

CHAPTER XX

PERMANENT DETACHED AGENCIES

In noting the development of permanent administrative bureaus, boards, and commissions, independent of the ten executive departments, since 1860, no attempt will be made to enter fully into the causes leading up to the organization of those detached agencies or to trace their subsequent development and expansion. Furthermore, it will be impossible, within the limits of this chapter, to give a detailed account of the establishment of all of the detached services created since 1860, many of which were of comparatively minor importance. An effort will be made, however, to examine briefly the influences which led to the creation of the more important of these independent administrative establishments, and to point out the significance of what seems to be an increasing tendency toward the creation of such services, with respect to the general system of national administration.

As has been observed in a preceding chapter dealing with the establishment and organization of permanent detached administrative agencies prior to 1860, only four of the services thus created, namely, the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution, the Botanic Garden, and the Government Printing Office, continued as such until that date, although the Mint was not definitely organized as a bureau in the Treasury Department until 1873. The general aversion of the early statesmen to the creation of administrative services outside of the executive departments no doubt was responsible to a large extent for the small number of detached agencies prior to the Civil War period.1

James Monroe, as Secretary of State, expressed what seems to have been the general opinion as to the creation of such services as follows: "I have always thought that every institution, of whatever nature soever it might be, ought to be comprised within some one of the Departments of Government, the chief of which only should be responsible to the Chief Executive Magistrate of the nation. The establishment of inferior independent departments, the heads of which are not, and ought not to be, members of the administration, appears to me to be liable to many serious

Establishment of Independent "Departments "; Office of Commissioner of Fish and Fisheries. Beginning with the establishment of the Department of Agriculture in 1862, several administrative agencies were organized which, although designated as “departments," were distinctly inferior to the several executive departments, and were in charge of commissioners instead of secretaries, without representation in the President's Cabinet. As all of these so-called "departments" were later raised to the status of an executive department or lowered to the rank of a bureau within one of the existing departments, their establishment has already been noted in preceding chapters. They possessed one common characteristic, namely, that their establishment was the result, in large measure, of pressure brought to bear upon Congress by particular groups or interests. Thus the United States Agricultural Society, representing the interests of the farmers, influenced Congress to create a Department of Agriculture in 1862. The establishment of a Department of Education in 1867 was the direct result of a convincing memorial presented to Congress by the National Associaation of School Superintendents.' The creation of the Department of Labor in 1888 was recommended to Congress by President Cleveland at the instance of the Knights of Labor. In this connection

objections . . . . I will mention the following only, first, that the concerns of such inferior departments cannot be investigated and discussed with the same advantage in the meetings and deliberations of the administration, as they might if the person charged with them was present. The second is that, to remedy this inconvenience, the President would, necessarily, become the head of that department himself, and thus be drawn into much investigation, in detail, that would take his attention from more general and important concerns, to the prejudice of the public interest."-American State Papers, Misc., II, 192. This contention was reiterated by the heads of all four of the executive departments in a joint report submitted to Congress on December 31, 1816, concerning the creation of an additional executive department. "The various branches of executive authority are now under the direction of the Secretaries of the Departments, except the General Post Office and the Mint. They form exceptions to the general principle upon which the Executive Department has been organized. The best examination which the Secretaries have been able to give the subject has led to the belief that the anomalous organization of these Departments has not been productive of any beneficial consequences.”—Ibid., 418. * Supra, 377-78.

2

'Supra, 359. Cf. Commissioner of Education, Annual reports, 1868, 49. *Supra, 397-98. Cf. Wright, The working of the department of labor, Monographs on Social Economics, I, 1-2 (1901).