Vanishing Landmarks: The Trend Toward Bolshevism

by Leslie M. Shaw

During the campaign of 1916, I sat on the platform and heard the then candidate for governor of a great middle-west state tell an audience that if he were elected governor, he would apply business principles to state affairs. I followed him and told his hearers that, if elected, he would do nothing of the kind. In the first place, it was impossible, and, secondly, they would not consent to it even if it were possible. I reminded them that I knew better than their candidate, for I had tried it. I did suggest, however, that simply because business principles cannot be applied to public affairs, is no excuse for conducting public affairs in a thoroughly unbusinesslike manner. It is not necessary to violate every business principle because some cannot be applied.

The candidate was elected, as he deserved to be, and has made one of the best, many say the best, governor his state ever had. But he will have to admit that he cannot remove officials simply for inefficiency, and he cannot make appointments in the face of public opposition, however fit and worthy the applicant. In a thousand ways he cannot exercise the independent discretion which he would if president of a bank or the head of some industrial corporation.

When I took charge of the Treasury Department I found an appraiser at one of the principal ports who had outlived his usefulness. He was not dishonest. Dishonesty is the least of all evils of government service. He was simply inefficient. He had a good army record, was a very reputable gentleman, highly esteemed, absolutely honest, and Mr. McKinley had made him appraiser. There were many evidences of inefficiency. Importers at far distant ports were entering their merchandise at this city and shipping them back home, manifestly for the purpose of evading the payment of appropriate duties. I have no doubt that the government was losing a million dollars or more a year through the inefficiency of this good man.

President Roosevelt authorized a change. I informed the two senators from that state what had to be done, and asked them to select the best man they could find and I would arrange a vacancy to meet their convenience. President Lincoln is credited with saying that when he had twenty applicants for a position and appointed one, he made nineteen enemies and one ingrate. I wanted to protect these senators from nineteen enemies.

They found an excellent man and I had the old appraiser come to Washington. He fully recognized his utter failure, and willingly resigned. We parted friends. The inexperienced will suppose that was the end of the incident. It was not. It was the beginning of it. The removal was declared to be purely a political deal. The President was criticized, I was abused and the two senators maligned. Every prominent Grand Army man in the country was asked to protest, and most of them did, until this dear old fellow was made to believe he had been imposed upon. He published his grievances in an extended interview and in about three months died of a broken heart.

The people will not consent that public affairs shall be conducted as business is conducted. Had this man been in the employ of a business enterprise in any large city, his removal would not have elicited so much as a notice that he had resigned for the purpose of giving attention to his “long-neglected private affairs.”

Public opposition to the application of business principles to government affairs is well illustrated in the location and erection of public buildings. Chicago has a federal building which was intended to accommodate, and does hold, not only the post office, but serves as court house, custom house and shelters all other federal offices. It cost nine million dollars and is ill-suited for anything. There are plenty of architects who can design a court house, or a post office, or an office building, but no one has yet appeared, and no one ever will be found, who can combine the three without ruining all.

During the period of construction, the Chicago post office occupied temporary quarters on the lake front in a wooden building, veneered with brick, built expressly for the purpose. Unquestionably it was the most convenient, and therefore the best post office in the United States. This of course is from the standpoint of a business man. Everyone connected with it regretted its abandonment for the huge, imposing but outrageous new building. The architect’s pride centered in its enormous dome. All the mail had to be taken from the basement up a steep incline and, until they began using heavy gasoline trucks, it required four horses to pull out from under the building what one horse could haul to the depot.

Pittsburgh wanted a building equally imposing, and Congress appropriated a million dollars to buy a site. That sum would pay for nothing suitable in the central part of the city. The newspapers had all purchased property at the top of the hill, in the newer part of the city, and the Secretary of the Treasury was expected to locate the Federal Building accordingly. He did not do so and for this reason: There were no street cars going near the proposed site. It was before the advent of gasoline trucks and the mail would have to be hauled up the long inclines by teams. In slippery weather a team of horses, unless freshly shod, cannot climb that hill with an empty wagon.

Inspired by the experience at Chicago, the Secretary decided to give Pittsburgh the best post-office service in the world. An entire block near the principal depot was purchased, at fifty percent or more above its market value. But that was relatively cheaper than anything else offered, and less proportionately than what the government is usually compelled to pay. A suitable site for a business enterprise employing a like number of people, and doing an equal volume of business, would be tendered on a silver platter. The people’s government never got “something for nothing” until we entered the war. What it then got and where it got it is quite generally surmised.