dent Taft's Commission on Economy and Efficiency, and in that capacity directed and made the first and only comprehensive catalogue and survey of the operations of the Federal Government. In connection with the Constitutional Convention of 1915 in New York State he directed and made a similar survey of the organization of the government of the Empire State.

President Taft was the first chief executive of the nation, or of any American state, who fully grasped and presented the issues of the budget principle in relation to legislation and public administration in any government.

Mr. Buck was not only trained under Dr. Cleveland as a member of the staff of the New York Bureau of Municipal Research, with which Dr. Cleveland had been connected from its organization and of which he was sometime Director, but had also had notable experience as adviser to Governor Harrington of Maryland, in the preparation of the first Maryland state budget, and in other states as well. Mr. Buck was therefore exceptionally qualified to deal with the subject matter of Parts II and III of this volume, for which he is chiefly responsible.

This volume is dedicated to the proposition that the foundations of all democratic institutions must rest on an effective means of making government responsive to public opinion. The method of exposition is historical and descriptive of the devices developed in response to the popular demand that public business shall be "visible" and that leadership shall be "responsible." After laying down the commonly accepted proposition of popular control (right of election, acquiescence in the decision of a majority, and the need for a forum before which the responsible heads of the public service may be arraigned), Dr. Cleveland, as author of Parts I, IV, and V of the text, maintains this thesis:

(1) That the outstanding need, which our federal con

stitution was designed to meet, was a need for executive leadership, which vested in the President "the executive power" and gave to him the means for making his leadership effective;

(2) That the "visibility visibility" of leadership is provided for by requiring "a regular statement and account of receipts and expenditures of all public monies," and making it the duty of the President " from time to time to give to Congress information of the State of the Union and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall deem necessary and expedient ";

(3) That means of enforcing "responsibility were put in the hands of Congress, and the electorate, by giving to Congress the control over the purse, and making both the President and the controlling representative and appropriating body answerable to the people for the manner in which their powers are exercised;

(4) That immediately after this new federal government had been set up, these underlying principles of popular control were violated, by Congress insisting on retaining to itself the leadership which during the revolutionary period had been exercised by committees and refusing to permit Hamilton, as President Washington's representative, to come before them to give an account of stewardship and to submit plans and proposals to be financed the result being the centralized government by standing committees administrated by a bureaucracy, with a board of strategy organized outside of the government by irresponsible political parties.

The constructive proposals in this part of the book are largely those which will be found in the report of President Taft's Commission on Economy and Efficiency. They may be summarized as follows:

I. "That the President shall each year get before the

country what it is that the administration desires to do: shall indicate in a budget message wherein action is necessary to enable the administration adequately to meet public needs. . . . That the President, under the powers given to him by the constitution is in a better position than any one else to dramatize the work of the Government, to so impress this upon the attention of the people through the public press. . . as to arouse discussion and elicit comment such as will keep the Congress, as well as the administration in touch with public opinion when deciding whether or not the proposals are such as will best meet welfare demands."

2. That" as an incident to such procedure it is thought that there must necessarily develop a system of representation which will consistently support the administration program which is submitted,' The same idea being elaborated and the report continuing to show that “a budget system necessarily carries with it means for developing an administrative program and means for presenting it and defending it before the legislative branch of the government and the country."

3. Having provided adequately for executive leadership the exercise of effective control over this leadership, both by the representative branch and the electorate, depend on the development of a procedure of inquest, criticism, and discussion in Congress before the whole body as an open forum, in which each member shall be called upon to vote for or against the plan or program to be financed, section by section and as a whole. In this connection it is claimed that the recognized purpose of committees of Congress should be to find out what is being proposed and to bring every proposal into critical review before the members and the country. In other words, the committees should be of two kinds, those acting as attorneys for the administration, and those as its critics. Therefore, the committee assuming leadership for the

budget should be taken from the pro-administration party and the committee assuming critical leadership should be made up chiefly from the opposition.

In the ranks of the National Budget Committee there developed differences of opinion almost from the start concerning the relative merits of the proposals for a national budget system, especially with respect to the location of the budget bureau and the concentrating of responsibility for the initiation of the budget in the office of the President, as provided for in the Good bill which passed the House of Representatives almost unanimously Oct. 21, 1919, and the plan of the McCormick bill introduced in the Senate but not yet reported out by the Select Committee of which Senator McCormick is chairSenator McCormick's plan puts the budget bureau under the Secretary of the Treasury and divides responsibility for revision of the estimates and preparation of the budget between that officer and the President who, however, must transmit and assume financial responsibility for the initiation of the budget. The difference of opinion on this point is largely one of emphasis.

man.

Mr. Taft is primarily interested in seeing executive responsibility fixed and strengthened and therefore naturally prefers the Good plan, while Dr. Cleveland is so much attracted by other features of the McCormick plan which seems to him to spell executive representation before the legislature and the putting of the "opposition where it can make clear-cut issues and public debate of budget questions, that he seems to prefer it as a whole and to think that the Good bill, even with the revision of rules contemplated by separate resolutions not yet acted upon by the House, would mean the perpetuation of many evils of the present committee system.

The National Budget Committee's position is that a combination of the two plans in a McCormick-Good bill,

which may finally be enacted by Congress, will give us the advantages of a budget system in which the responsibility of the President for the initiation of the budget, and for the correction of the evils which any budget system is sure to reveal in the business organization of the Government, through some such powers as were conferred on the President as a war measure by the Overman Act, but practically unused by him hitherto, will be made unquestionably secure, and Congressional responsibility for criticism and decision of clear-cut issues of policy will be made equally clear and effective.

Columbia University,

SAMUEL MCCUNE LINDSAY.

March 17, 1920.