Organization is customarily considered a means to an end. The purposes to be realized are of first importance, while administrative structure is a lesser consideration. Thus organization is supposed to describe the division of work already decided upon and the assignment of authority in performing a given task. Only technicians and a few students who find some queer fascination in detail need give particular attention to organizational matters.

However widely held, any such attitude about organization ignores several fundamentals. For one thing, conception of purpose and organization are too closely interrelated to say that one precedes the other. Indeed, in any large enterprise the objectives to be accomplished usually represent the composite views of different component parts. Sometimes conflicting purposes have been fairly well resolved at the center of an agency, and oftentimes they are permitted to flourish without much check, let alone guidance. Frequently you must know the individual elements in order to understand the whole. Finally, organization vitally affects the ambitions, reputations, and fortunes of many individual persons. It is often the battleground which reflects much more far-reaching beliefs than strictly technical concerns about the most efficient method for performing a job.

In any appraisal of our national government and its ability to shoulder postwar domestic burdens, the rôle of the U. S. Civil Service Commission deserves scrutiny. “Good personnel administration is good public administration,” Herbert Emmerich argues conclusively, and the influence which the Civil Service Commission exerts throughout the entire field of federal personnel administration has reached a peak during the past few years never before approached. In what directions and with what success has this influence been wielded? To what extent have the wartime developments pointed the way to permanent gains? What is the probable rôle, what the desirable one, of the Commission in the next few years? These seem to me to be questions upon which we need all the informed points of view we can marshal.

If the past determines or in any way influences the present, the present invariably reverses the process. One of the more striking instances of this rule has been the recent apotheosis of Thomas Jefferson as a national hero equal in stature to Washington and Lincoln. In an atmosphere of industrialism, urban living, and strong, impersonal national government that tradition might lead us to suppose would kill it, the Jefferson legend has blossomed and put forth new shoots. As Mr. Douglass Adair has pointed out, the pioneer democrat and agrarian liberal “discovered” by Frederick Jackson Turner and Charles A. Beard and celebrated by Parrington, Nock, and Bowers, has lately found more complicated, more interesting, and incidentally more timely, portrayal at the hands of Carl Becker, Gilbert Chinard, and Adrienne Koch. These writers, whose company is now joined by Mr. Joseph Dorfman, have been at pains to show the range and diversity of Jefferson's thought, and above all how he moved with his times to espouse the cause of commerce, industry, and national power. Mr. Dorfman crowds all these qualities together under the label, “Thomas Jefferson: Commercial Agrarian Democrat” which, if the trend continues, may have to be stretched to “Commercial Industrial Agrarian Democratic Federalist.”

Does the label fit? The legendary Jefferson was an agrarian; and even as modern scholars were finding in his writings political precepts for an industrial age, the farmers of the United States were recognizing him as the founder of American agriculture and adopting him as their patron saint.

The Atomic Bomb. In 1869, Walter Bagehot wrote an interesting volume entitled Physics and Politics. Today we look again at this topic, but in a new and blinding light. The atomic bomb is an index of dynamic and revolutionary changes, the end of which is not in sight, and which I do not have the temerity to forecast. Even before the bomb was made, there were revolutionary changes on the way. We were on notice that physics, biochemistry, psychology, medicine, were bursting with possibilities which staggered the imagination of the most starry-eyed. This was before the bomb was dropped. Now we know that we were on the beam. We are now confronted by revolution, dimming in meaning all human revolutions rolled into one.

First of all, the meaning of controlled atomic energies is often wholly misunderstood. The real marvel is not that these vast forces exist, but that they are found and harnessed by the human mind. The real explosive force is that of the mind that unleashed these giants and made them available for the service of mankind. The mind is king, not the atom. We trapped the atom; we have mastered some secrets of its latent forces, not by accident, but by deliberate design, by organization and ingenuity. We may marvel at the display of physical force, but the deeper force of mind made this triumph possible, and will bring still greater triumphs as we move along through eras of discovery and invention.

Sentiment alone does not send my thoughts back to the first meeting of the Association which I attended—that held in Washington in December, 1920, a quarter of a century ago. You will have no time for that, although, perhaps, entry into a guild and fellowship has its appropriate niche for each of us, and so in some measure plays a collective rôle. The times and circumstances then and now, however, have useful common elements; both meetings followed and follow a world war; both reflect an atmosphere of exhaustion and of worry, of unsettlement, and also of new challenges to effort in the reshaping of things.

But lately I have been recalling particularly words spoken at that earlier meeting by the then Secretary of War, Newton Baker, when he addressed the assembled Associations. Some of you will remember how vividly he described an episode in an American offensive in France, when he stood beside the commanding officer in a small hut, the maps and charts before them, and messages poured in as the hour of assault arrived and the troops moved forward. After a time came an appeal from an advanced unit requesting the barrage to be lifted, as their objective was won. The commander studied the maps and charts. “Continue the barrage,” he ordered; “we cannot yet have reached that point.” Later, after the battle was over and prisoners were being questioned, the message was traced to an enemy officer who had thus tried to trick the Americans and had faked the appeal. Secretary Baker drove home his point.

The Army's experience in controlling the utilization of manpower during the war is unique in American annals of management and administration. Although there previously was something of a program of manpower control on a nation-wide level, its administration was beset by the lack of enforcement authority, by division of responsibility as among the executive branches, and by the lack of a clear mandate from the Congress. The Army, on the other hand, suffered no such limitations with respect to the body of manpower allocated to it from the nation's resources. Its authority was unquestioned, its responsibility undivided, its mission clear.

Notwithstanding these things, the Army's task in controlling the use of its manpower was exceedingly complex. It involved the training and retraining of millions of individuals for a great variety of unfamiliar jobs, the needs for specific numbers of which could be foreseen with only very rough accuracy. It called for the dispersion and deployment of these individuals to the four corners of the earth, requiring at the same time the maintenance of central control over their use after they had been deployed. It required the shifting of individuals and groups of individuals as among different jobs and types of jobs, and as among various broad tasks or missions. Finally, it called for the orderly withdrawal of these individuals from the military establishment and their return to the civil economy.

The movement for labor participation in governmental agencies began long before America's entry into World War II, but no significant progress was made until the beginning of the national defense program. Recent economic pressures and the enlarged wartime influence of federal administrative agencies have intensified labor's demand for a more direct voice in the affairs of these agencies.

As early as 1939, when the National Resources Planning Board was created by President Roosevelt, labor manifested its concern over the failure to provide for its representation on the Board. At its 1939 convention, the AFL adopted a resolution providing that “on all War Boards, Labor shall be adequately represented by men appointed from the trade unions themselves.” A similar demand for appropriate representation on all important federal and state administrative agencies was made by the 1939 convention of the CIO.

When the third edition of Otto Mayer's famous treatise on German administrative law appeared in 1924, this dean of the science of German administration remarked, ironically and almost contemptuously, in his preface: “No important additions have been necessary since the editions of 1914 and 1917…. While constitutions wane, administrative structures remain.” This statement being made at a time when the structure of German government seemed to have been changed fundamentally by a world war and a revolution, many considered it a somewhat sour reaction of a conservative and a “specialist,” who closed his eyes to the great changes which had taken place in Germany and sought solace in the apparent stability of the more technical administrative machine.

Today we see that the remark almost perfectly fitted a situation where, under what proved to be a rather fragile constitutional roof, essential bureaucratic forces and governmental structures remained the same as before and were able eventually to thwart the implementation of the new political tendencies. Upon further reflection, Mayer's somewhat casual statement seems to fit the more general relation between the constitutional-political form and the underlying administrative structure which has prevailed in. Continental countries since the French Revolution.

The membership of the Supreme Court did not change during the 1944 term, but Mr. Justice Roberts resigned in July after the term had ended. Divisions in the Court were as numerous and as difficult to classify as before. Four justices dissented in twenty-seven cases, while three justices dissented in sixteen cases. The Court seems to be moving toward the old practice of the pre-Marshall period by which the justices wrote seriatim opinions. There is a depressing increase in the number of cases in which three, four, and even five justices feel impelled to write separate opinions.

The political scientist found various aspects of World War II of professional interest. Perhaps there were no fields as intimately related to political science as radar and atomic energy in the case of the physical sciences, though such agencies as the War Production Board, the Office of Price Administration, and the Office of Civilian Defense presented many problems of vital concern. Of the strictly military programs, it is probable that none involved so many aspects of political science as military government. Military government programs of some elaborateness were drafted for North Africa, Sicily and Italy, the Pacific Islands, Japan, Korea, and Germany and the countries which had been occupied by Germany. The military government activities in the European Theater of Operations surpassed all others in scope in that they involved both combat and post-hostility operations of great magnitude, necessitated dealings with both conquered and liberated peoples, required the establishment of a system of government from the bottom up through the state level in Germany, and were participated in by all four of the major Allied Powers. The European Theater of Operations also saw the widest use of officers who had been assigned on the basis of their specialist knowledge of various aspects of military-government activities. It may therefore be of some interest to the political science profession to comment on the general record of military government in the ETO.

In the simultaneous elections held on June 2, 1946, in France and Italy, it is not difficult to see a symbol of the community of destiny which, even now, seems to link the two countries. France and Italy are the two largest western European countries to emerge intact from the ordeal of fascism and war, and the political decisions they will make in the near future are bound to affect to a large extent the course of events in Europe. To find out what chances exist of a significant contribution by the continent of Europe to the solution of the political and economic problems of our time, it is legitimate to look to France and to Italy. To analyze in some detail the conditions under which the two countries voted, the issues presented to them, and the consequences likely to flow from the results of the elections—all this appears to represent an inquiry into developments vitally affecting one of the great areas which, if much impoverished and weakened at present, may still come back to influence the political structure of the world.

As an expression of the popular mind, the vote on June 2 was unprecedented for both countries. Never before had so many men and women taken part in elections: forty-five millions exercised their right to vote (in Italy their duty as well), while the greatest number (with men only voting) in pre-war France was less than ten millions and in pre-fascist Italy less than seven millions.

Senator George W. Norris was a doggedly righteous man who never stopped battling for the Lord and the common people in a world of sinful men. His long political life, which included seven years as a district judge in Nebraska, ten years in the national House of Representatives, and thirty in the Senate, was a grim and sustained bout with what he regarded as the forces of evil. He tilted his lance against dishonest and corrupt men, political schemers, monopolies and “special interests,” religious and racial bigots, lobbyists and other special pleaders, the “power trust,” and the superheated zealots of partisanship. His autobiography, so long awaited, bears ample witness to the fact that for him life was real and earnest, and usually somewhat sad and despairing as well. But it had its rewards, for Senator Norris was a reflective man, and out of the bitter juices of human experience he always managed to distil a residue of homely moralistic wisdom. He learned that democratic government is pretty largely a process of compromise, and that in that process one must give as well as take. He also learned that, with enough courage and persistence, virtue is often rewarded, and that in the long run the masses of ordinary people can be trusted to reach tolerably reasonable conclusions. There were many disappointments in his life, and a great deal of heartache, but there were also many triumphs, and the net impression of his book seems to be that he felt his life had not been spent in vain. He was richly entitled to this feeling, for it will be conceded generally that he had been a very useful public servant indeed.

“There are at the present time two great nations in the world, which started from different points, but seem to tend towards the same end. I allude to the Russians and the Americans. Both of them have grown up unnoticed; and while the attention of mankind was directed elsewhere, they have suddenly placed themselves in the front rank among the nations, and the world learned their existence and their greatness at almost the same time.

All other nations seem to have nearly reached their natural limits, and they have only to maintain their power; but these are still in the act of growth.”

So concludes the first volume of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America. Such a statement appearing in 1945 would, except perhaps for the view that the two countries “tend towards the same end,” be truistic. Even the journalists would understand and accept it. It appeared in 1835. To most Europeans of that day, the United States was a crude and bumptious little nation on the western fringes of the world, just as Russia was the half-Oriental, half-feudal state which was not so much a power as a vast expanse of inhospitable steppes. At a time when English travelers were frequently aware only of the vulgarity of American manners, and when some European visitors to this country were most impressed with its picturesque qualities, Tocqueville was much more concerned with the basic nature and with the future of the complex combination of laws, customs, and mores which were embraced within his inclusive conception of democracy. He came here, not to give slightly condescending lectures and to bolster his own feeling of superiority, but rather to observe and report on the operation of a principle of political and social organization. Partly because he had an inquiring mind and was willing to work hard at his self-imposed task, but largely because he was gifted with rare insight and was not prevented from seeing the trend of events by the surface happenings of his own time, his book on the nature of American institutions remains, after more than a century, one of the few invaluable books on that subject.

It has been said that political thought of the sixteenth century can be classified into two types—an attempt to find a juristic basis for the raison d'état exemplified in the work of Bodin, and the antithetic point of view found in the Vindiciae and concerned with the establishment of abstract right.

There is, however, yet another trend of political thought observable at the time—a political theory which combines the two trends of political thought mentioned above, but which goes beyond the “long research into the terms of political obedience,” in its attempt at a synthetic view of the state and society. And one of the best expressions of this way of thinking is found in the writings of Andreas Fricius Modrevius (Andrzej Frycz Modrzewski), the most notable political author of sixteenth-century Poland.

The great significance of Fricius' writings to a modern student lies largely in the way in which they mirror the thought of the Renaissance and the Reformation, and in the successful combination that Fricius achieves of a predominantly Aristotelian analysis of the state with a Christian idealism which he imparts to his discussion of a “good state” and its ends. His ability to combine the best features of the ancient political thought and to adapt them to the realities of sixteenth-century Europe brought Fricius to the attention of such writers as Bodin, Althusius, and Grotius.

The westward movement of settlement—into the semi-arid, treeless Great Plains beyond the 100th meridian—carried along with it traditions of local government familiar further east. Settlers organized their newfound lands into the counties, townships, and small school districts to which they were accustomed in the states of their origin. Local-government customs evolved in humid, populous areas were thus transposed to a region destined by weather and other physical conditions to remain a place of sparse population.

Predilections in government organization were fortified by a mistaken supposition that agricultural enterprise could be successfully organized and conducted according to the fashion of the East. The homesteading law generally in effect until 1909 (allowing but 160 acres to a settler) reflected this supposition. Moreover, the rectangular survey, with its gridiron of 36-square-mile sections, constituted a ready-made invitation to organize the congressional township as a governmental unit and to make much the same area the basis for school districts.

Over the years subsequent to the original peopling of this region, circumstance and harsh experience have forced a revision in predominant beliefs concerning its nature and capabilities. Adjustments in agronomic enterprise and population have perforce occurred, often painfully and distressfully. It remains to be seen what adjustments must correspondingly occur in the organization and functioning of local government, for the basic facts of a region must find reflection in the trials, tribulations, and performance of its overlying governmental institutions.

The end of the momentous year symbolized by the physical scientists' entrance into national politics and political scientists' introduction to nuclear physics finds state appellate courts focusing on problems of business and reconversion; professionally critical, if not apprehensive, of the course taken by their superior in Washington; dubious of the behavior of organized labor, yet divided upon both the desirability of judicial discipline and the proper means of administering it; maintaining their separate, often irreconcilable, views on regulation of business and agriculture; above all, enjoying, like their superiors and predecessors, the historic, self-imposed duty of fitting constitutional garments to institutional girth.

How to constrict the swollen national waistline without risking grave internal pressures taxes ingenuity to the utmost. On the whole, a prudent realism still is evident in dealing with problems of price control. The restlessness and doubts noted last year, however, have persisted and find freer expression. Paradoxically, state enforcement of federal penalties is generally sustained, despite ancient but dissolving dogmas to the contrary; whereas coöperative state or municipal action designed to reinforce and supplement the Emergency Price Control Act has suffered serious reverses.

The rôle played by public opinion in a democracy, particularly as it affects the legislative process, has long been a subject for speculation by political scientists. The advent of controlled quota sampling permits of the study of this important relationship in measurable terms. The object of the present discussion is to trace the interaction of public opinion and the executive and legislative branches of government as they have dealt with a single public question—reorganization of the Supreme Court, as presented to Congress for consideration by President Roosevelt on February 5, 1937. Enlargement of the Supreme Court from nine to fifteen members was the most controversial feature of the general reorganization of the federal judiciary proposed by the President, aimed at speeding up the process of clearing cases through the federal court system, and making the system more “representative” of the wishes of the people.

The debate on enlargement of the Supreme Court provides a useful and interesting case study for several reasons. The case as a public issue has a definite beginning and end, ranging from the proposal of the judiciary reform bill by the President on February 5 to the death of Senator Joseph T. Robinson on July 14, 1937. As it was debated by public and legislators, the issue was a relatively clear-cut one, uncomplicated by side issues or utterly foreign events that might have influenced the course of either legislators or the public. Finally, and of decided importance, the American Institute of Public Opinion made weekly measurements of opinion toward the proposal during the entire period that reorganization of the Court was a public question. This permits the correlation of reliable opinion samplings with events in the debate and the observation of their relationship.

The death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, followed by the termination of World War II, were the two events of the year having the most direct influence on Congressional activity.

The strained relation between Mr. Roosevelt and Congress had been growing increasingly tense during the last several years; it is probable that only the defense program eliminated the possibility of a complete break between the two arms of the government. Congress had been rejecting more and more items of the President's domestic program.

Better relations between the President and Congress, however, were attained overnight with the arrival of Harry S. Truman at the White House. Even sentiment for Congressional reform appeared to diminish simultaneously; at least, conversations on Capitol Hill pointed to this conclusion. The new happy status seemed like a rebirth, but only for a short period; by autumn, Congress began to disagree openly with President Truman and his attempt to direct the legislative program.

Though declining to run for a fourth term in 1945, Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia boasted: “Listen, I could run on a laundry ticket and be elected!” At one time or another during his political career, the Mayor had run under nine different party labels—under as many as four in a single election. To the outsider and the New Yorker alike, this multiplicity of candidacies and parties in New York City is highly confusing. The multi-party system is due to many factors, especially the election laws, the size and complexion of the population, the existence of an active independent movement, and the recent political activity of and schisms within organized labor.

Ten bills proposing the establishment of “valley authorities” comparable in some degree to the Tennessee Valley Authority are now before the Seventy-ninth Congress, and it is likely that others of the sort will be introduced in this Congress or later ones. Whether any will be adopted during the present session is problematical, but it seems almost a certainty that within a few years the regional authority idea which has received so much publicity as a result of the success of the TVA will be given further impetus by the enactment of additional valley authority laws. The end of the war and the consequent search for opportunities to cushion the shock of reconversion lend weight to this view.

Since the debate over valley authorities seems in no danger of ending immediately, it should be fruitful to analyze the contents of the pending bills, to compare them with the act establishing the TVA, and to point out some of the issues involved. No attempt will be made to appraise the bills or to indicate conclusions as to their worth or lack of worth.

The chief issues are, of course, whether any more valley authorities shall be established, and, if so, where. The range of thought on these issues is underlined by the diversity of the proposals. Two of the bills which are identical—S. 555 and H. R. 2203—provide for the establishment of a Missouri Valley Authority. Four more—S. 460, H. R. 2923, and two more identical bills, S. 1716 and H. R. 5083—would set up a Columbia River Authority. H. R. 2540 would establish an Ohio Valley Authority, and S. 737 would provide a Savannah Valley Authority. H. R. 1824, titled “The Conservation Authorities Act,” would apportion the entire country among nine “conservation authorities” by enlarging the area over which the TVA has jurisdiction and by setting up eight new authorities—an Atlantic Seaboard Authority, a Great Lakes-Ohio Valley Authority, and Missouri Valley, Arkansas Valley, Southwestern, Columbia, California, and Colorado Authorities. A tenth bill, formulated by the Department of the Interior, and presented to the Congress at hearings before the Senate Commerce Committee, would establish a Missouri Valley Authority and would facilitate the establishment of other regional authorities.