The third official in rank is the Secretary of War, while the Secretary of the Navy holds only the sixth place, with the Attorney-General and the Postmaster-General in between. The General Staff of the Secretary of War, which was organized in 1903, is composed of officers of high rank, although the Secretary himself is a civilian. In the case of the army, as well as of the navy, the functions of the secretary are decidedly more important than those, say, of a Prussian Minister. They concern not only administration, but also, in case of war, are of decisive weight on the movements of all the forces, since the President as commander-in-chief has to act through these ministers. Elihu Root was for almost five years Secretary of War; and on his retirement in January, 1904, Roosevelt declared: “Root is the greatest man who has appeared in our times in the public life of any country, either in the New World or the Old.”
The position of Attorney-General is less comparable with a corresponding office in the German state. This minister of the President has no influence on the appointment of judges or the administration of the courts. The official representative of justice in the Cabinet is really an exalted lawyer, who is at the same time the President’s legal adviser. So far as appointments to office go, the Secretary of the Post Office Department has practically no influence regarding those who are under him, since the tremendous number of postal officials of any considerable importance have to be confirmed in their appointments by the Senate, so that the appointing power has virtually gone over to that body. On the other hand, the whole postal service is under his direction; but it is here not to be forgotten that the American railroads and, what the German may think more extraordinary, the telegraph lines, are not government property.
The Secretary of the Interior is merely a name for a great many unrelated administrative functions. In the long list of duties which fall to this office comes education, although this seemingly most important responsibility is really rather slight, since all educational matters fall to the separate states and the Federal Government has nothing to do but to give out statistics and information, to collect material, and to offer advice. The national Bureau of Education is not empowered to institute any practical changes. A much more important function, practically, of the Secretary of the Interior is the Pension Bureau, since the United States pay yearly about $138,000,000 in pensions. Other divisions are the Patent Office, which grants every year about 30,000 patents, the Railroad Bureau, the Indian Bureau, and the Geological Survey. The Secretary of Agriculture has not only certain duties connected with agriculture, but is also in charge of the Weather Bureau, and of zoölogical, botanical, and chemical institutes, and especially of the large number of scientific departments which indirectly serve the cause of agriculture. Last in rank comes the recently created Secretary of Commerce and Labour, who has charge of the Corporation Bureau, the Labour Bureau, the Census Bureau, and the Bureaus of Statistics, Immigration, and Fisheries.
There are some 240,000 positions under the direction of these ministers; and all of these, from ambassadors to letter-carriers, are in the national service and under the appointment of the President, and are entirely independent of the government of the separate states in which the offices are held.
CHAPTER FOUR
Congress
There is an avenue which leads from the White House in a direct line to the Capitol, the dominating architectural feature of Washington. On walking up the broad terraces one comes first to the great central hall, over which rises the dome; to the right one passes through the Hall of Fame and comes finally to the uncomfortably large parliamentary chamber, in which 386 Representatives sit together as the direct delegates of the people. Going from the central hall to the left one passes by the apartments of the Supreme Court, and comes finally to the attractive room in which the ninety state delegates hold their sessions. The room on the right is called the “House,” on the left the Senate; both together make up Congress, the law-giving body of the nation. When the thirteen states which first formed the Union in the year 1778 adopted the Articles of Federation, it was intended that Congress should be a single body, in which each state, although it might be represented by a varying number of members, should nevertheless have the right to only one vote. Nine years later, however, the final Constitution of the United States replaced this one simple system by dividing Congress into Senate and House of Representatives, doing this simply by analogy with the traditions of the state governments. Pennsylvania was the only state which had but one legislative chamber, while the others had taken over from England the system of double representation and had carried out the English tradition, although probably nothing was further from their intention than to divide their legislators into lords and commoners.
For the United States the dual division inevitably seemed the shortest way to balance off conflicting requirements. On the one side every state, even the smallest, should have the same prerogatives and equal influence: on the other side, every citizen must count as much as every other, so that the number of inhabitants must be duly represented. It was necessary, therefore, to create one chamber in which all States should have the same number of Representatives, and another in which every delegate should represent an equal number of voters. Furthermore, on the one hand a firm and conservative tradition was to be built up, while on the other the changing voice of the people was to be reflected. It was, therefore, necessary to remove one chamber from popular election and leave it to the appointment of the separate state legislatures. It was also necessary to put the age for candidacy for this chamber high, and to make the term of office rather long, and finally to contrive that at any one time only a fraction of the numbers should be replaced, so that a majority of the members could carry on their work undisturbed. The other chamber, however, was to be completely replaced by frequent direct popular elections. Thus originated the two divisions of Congress which so contrast in every respect. A comparison with European double legislative systems is very natural, and yet the Senate is neither a Bundestag, nor a Herrenhaus, nor a House of Lords; and the House of Representatives is fundamentally different from the Reichstag. One who wishes to understand the American system must put aside his recollections of European institutions, since nothing except emphasis on the difference between the American and European legislatures will make clear the traditions of Washington.
As has been said, the Senators are representatives of the several states; every state sends two. The State of New York, with its seven million inhabitants, has no more representatives in the Senate than the State of Wyoming, which has less than one hundred thousand inhabitants. Every Senator is elected for six years by the law-giving body of the individual state. Every second year a third of the Senators retire, so that the Senate as a whole has existed uninterruptedly since the foundation of the Union. Curiously enough, however, the Senators vote independently, and thus it often happens that the two Senators from one State cast opposite votes. A candidate for the Senate has to be thirty years old.
The members of the House are elected every two years and by direct popular vote. The number of delegates is here not prescribed by the Constitution. It is constantly modified on the basis of the ten-year census, since every state is entitled to a number of delegates proportionate to its population. While there were slaves, who could not vote, the slave states nevertheless objected to the diminution in the number of their representatives, due to the fact that the negro was not considered an inhabitant, and it was constitutionally provided to compute the number of Representatives on the basis that every slave was equivalent to three-fifths of a man. To-day neither colour nor race constitutionally affects the right to vote. On the other hand, the nation as such does not concern itself to consider who is allowed to vote, but leaves this completely to the different states, and requires only that for the national elections in every state the same provisions are observed which are made for the elections to the state legislature. Moreover, it is left to every state in what wise it shall choose the allotted number of Representatives at Washington. Thus, for instance, in those four Western States in which women are allowed to vote for members of the legislature, women have also the right to vote for Congressmen.
The first House of Representatives had 65 members, while the House of 1902 had 357, and the political centre of gravity of the country has so shifted that the states which originally made up Congress send now only 137 of the members. The number of delegates has recently been increased to 386. The age of candidacy is 25, and while a Senator must have lived in the country for nine years, only seven years are required of a Representative.