When you have to approach independent power, to induce voluntary surrender, I have found you might as well give it up in advance. There is nothing a man holds to like this right to exercise power, and the best illustration of that is shown by the fact that the greatest war of all ages was fought for four years without a central command. Napoleon’s 44th maxim in war was that nothing is more important in war than a unified command, under one chief. Everybody knew it, but it was not until the unnecessary loss of hundreds of thousands of lives and billions of dollars worth of material that Great Britain bent its pride and accepted that plain, common-sense provision of unified command of the allies under Foch. Not until the fourth year of the war when the allied cause faced annihilation was such a plain, common-sense provision as that for central command possible to be made for the allies, and the certainty of annihilation alone made it possible.
Now do you think it is any different in connection with the independent jurisdiction of these Government Departments, from the independent services of the Army?
They talked in the past about Interdepartmental Boards, to correct this old chaos, when they had no Executive leadership. An effort was made from time to time by Interdepartmental Boards, acting as a committee without relinquishment of the independent authority represented to undertake some of these reforms, the necessity of which everybody saw. Nothing was ever done to amount to anything. Why? They would meet together and talk and outline the situation and necessity for action until some question came up where somebody was going to lose control of something or a part of his jurisdiction by some coordinated action for the benefit of the whole Government. Then immediately the whole thing died out and nothing was accomplished practically by any Interdepartmental Board, where anything vital had to be given up by one of the independent members of it, whose jurisdiction and power would be cut down in the interest of the common plan of the Government.
When the President of the United States assumed this central control of routine business, he did what any man would do in connection with a private corporation; he called together in conference the business administration,—everybody connected with the business of the Government as head of department or independent establishment—Cabinet Officers correspond to Vice Presidents in a business corporation. Of necessity they had allowed this disgraceful system of chaos and extravagance to go on. It was not their fault any more than it is the fault of you gentlemen, who have been running along independent lines, because you were not joined together in a system operating under a central authority. We all were properly subject to the indictment of loose business methods because the President of the United States had not imposed a unified plan and system over us nor had he created the machinery by which this plan would be carried into effect, as he has since done.
In connection with surplus supplies, every department formerly was selling its supplies in the open-market, and other departments were buying the same kind of supplies in open market. In a number of cases speculators would come and buy our public sales material from one department to sell it to another department at two or three times the price. Real estate was being leased in cities right along from private owners, when the Government had vacant property to rent. This was the custom also in connection with motor transport. If any Department wanted something moved and did not have motor transport, it would go out and hire motor transportation. There was no machinery by which the empty motor trucks and idle men of the other departments could be used.
When goods were to be shipped, everybody would route them as they pleased. There was no unified central authority which could deal with the services as a whole as regards the classification of freight and the whole transportation question.
The same thing existed in the making of contracts.
The same thing existed in Government purchasing. There was competition between the Departments, the Departments themselves not being coordinated. In the Treasury Department alone we found 18 separate points of purchasing activity. Everything was run in Government business as if it was composed of 41 separate corporations. How were things changed for the better? It is all simple enough. It all depended on the President because he alone had the authority to impose the methods of coordinating and controlling this great general business, just as he is coordinating these great activities here today through this Board, presided over by his appointee, General Sawyer, a co-ordinator.
The plan which the President adopted was simple enough,—just what would be done in any business organization—without asking for any additional legislation for additional employees, but by simply taking from the body of the employees, officials of the United States, those men especially qualified by knowledge and experience to act as his agents, and then creating the machinery through which they could transmit his policy and plan of unified business to the general organization.
It is the simplest thing in the world, and the only possible objection I have ever heard was urged the other day where it was said that the detail of Army and Navy Officers for this central work by the President might not result in giving him the benefit of absolute impartiality of judgment because of their former connection with the War and Navy departments. That nonsense!