would have had to be established in these cities of

10,000 inhabitants. In 1911 the Commissioner of Labor declared in a circular that in 132 of these cities, or 51 per cent., there was no municipal bureau in operation. For the whole of France, Paris included, the total number of positions filled annually by public employment bureaus averages 85,000. According to the minister of the Interior "the municipal employment bureaus have not accomplished that which the government expected of them." Yet he had counted upon them in the first instance to compete with private busi

ness.

Nevertheless this same minister, with superb optimism, declared that, although the law had failed, it was not the fault of the law. It was not sufficiently complete, that was all. It would be necessary to put in force the German system which associates with the employment bureaus the so-called Conseils de Prud'hommes.1 This committee collects all indispensable information. It deals with the workers and the domestics for whom it has found positions if they have given occasion for complaints. In France, an order of October 25, 1911, attempted to establish employment bureaus on the model of the German bureaus. Subsidies were granted from that date to bureaus which should have fulfilled the three following conditions:

1. They must be under the control of a nonsectarian committee with a neutral presiding officer having no vote;

2. They must continue their functions in case of

1

1 Arbitration committees, composed partly of employers and partly of workingmen.

strike or lockout, meanwhile advising the applicants that such a conflict exists;

3. They must have placed an average of 25 applicants a month.1

Presiding officers may be found perhaps for these bureaus, but will they come to the meetings? What will they do there if they do come? They cannot even settle the question between the two parties by a casting vote, since they have no vote. Such bureaus will perhaps find members, but members will be unable to do anything even if they should have any inspiration in any direction, because they will have neither sufficient appropriations nor police power (fortunately) in order to obtain information indispensable to their work as spies. Finally they would perhaps receive offers of employment, but would they continue to receive demands for work?

When the employees of the Postal, Telegraph and Railway departments organize strikes, they resolutely sacrifice to their own interests those of their fellow citizens. They are speculating on the weariness, the privations, the disasters that inevitably follow as well as upon the weakness of the government in its attitude toward them.

I have not spoken in this chapter of the patrons of state railways. I have already demonstrated sufficiently the fate of both passengers and merchandise when confided to their tender mercies.

'Bulletin de l'Office du Travail, February, 1912.

CHAPTER VII

PROGRAMS OF ORGANIZATION AND REGULATION The American Investigation.-Economy and Efficiency in Government Service.-Labor.-Three Methods of Recruiting and Promoting.-Regulation of Government Railways. "Industrial Efficiency."-Giolitti and the Hopes of Italy.-Elimination of the Politician.—Modesty of the Partisans of Public Operation.-The Department Substituted for the Minister.-The English Admiralty and Winston Churchill.-M. Chardon and the Fourth Power.-Impossible to Give Government Service Industrial Efficiency.-Either Stagnation or Disorder.

Plans to make the wheels of government run smoothly are numberless. Parliaments have been discussing such plans for years, and publications suggesting all sorts of methods to that end form an enormous library in themselves.

Under the acts of June 23, 1910, and March 3, 1911, the President of the United States, Mr. Taft, appointed a commission charged with the duty of investigating the manner in which various Federal departments and public enterprises were being managed. Among other things the Commission was to make a report indicating methods by which greater efficiency and economy might be brought into the public service.

Four volumes of this report, entitled Efficiency and Economy in Government Service, have already appeared. Two contain the report to the President on the organization of the government of the United States. on July 1, 1911, and his message of January 17, 1912. A third contains another presidential message, dated April 4, 1912, together with the reports of suggested modifications to be introduced into the various departments and the remarks of the heads of the departments thereon. A fourth small volume contains a third message of the President, transmitting the conclusions of the commission regarding the centralization and the distribution of government publications.

The fact that such an investigating committee was appointed at all is, of course, a sufficient proof that Congress and the President had found that all was not going well in the Federal administration of the United States. But where is the country whose administration is perfect? Do we Frenchmen not hear every year, apropos of the budget, and especially this year in regard to the organization of the budget of 1907, the most violent attacks against the French administrative system and its methods? To increase the activities. of the government is not the way to improve its habits or to bring about economy. Such is, nevertheless, the homeopathic remedy which a number of those who are indulging in the most violent criticisms are now proposing.

The authority of the Federal government of the United States extends over a territory equal to that of eight-tenths of Europe and over a population of 92,000,000 people.

"The operations of the Government affect the interest of every person living within the jurisdiction of the United States. Its gross expenditures amount to nearly $1,000,000,000 annually. Including the personnel of the Military and Naval establishments, more than 400,000 persons are required to do the work imposed by law upon the executive branch of the Government.

"This vast organization has never been studied in detail as one piece of administrative mechanism. At no time has the attempt been made to study all these activities and agencies with a view to the assignment of each activity to the agency best fitted to its performance, to the avoidance of duplication of plant and work, to the integration of all administrative agencies of the Government, so far as may be practicable, into a unified organization for the most effective and economical dispatch of public business."

Mr. Taft makes the same complaint in regard to American official documents that has been made against similar French documents, and which can be brought against the official documents of every country:

"Notwithstanding voluminous reports, presented annually to the Congress, no satisfactory statement has ever been published of the financial transactions of the Government as a whole. Provision is made for due accountability for all moneys coming into the hands of officers. But no general system has ever been devised for reporting information as to the actual costs entailed in the operation of individual services nor to make possible the exercise of intelligent judgment concerning the value of the results obtained when contrasted with the sacrifices required. I am convinced that the time has come when