Iditarod pioneer., 1911-12-23

|REAUCkACY Secretary of the Interior, before the IT early in October, spoke at great ucratic Government in America " . of 2 800. The Rocky Mountain ed here with more than casual at it was directed principally against ut that appears to be short of the vas great as a prelude to the 1912 find it equally as difficult as will Mir. .ory allusions from it. The former ders himself absolved from all obli said, in part:
 officers is exercised in ruling rather than in serving the public. The advo- cates of this system say: The people do not know what is best for them; we will therefore have specialists to direct them or to do for them what the spe- cialists think is the right thing
 ''If this is a sound view of executive administration in departments, there is no reason why the chief of g bureau should be an American citizen. He might be an Austrian, or of any other nationality, so long as he possesses the special capacity.
 "The representative idea is wholly lost. The sympathetic relation of the official to the public, as it's agent and servant. is entirely obliterated and the very clements which encourage and promote arbitrary power and desEOtic tendencies are here given full sway.
 Congress gave the means whereby this idea could be carried into effect by investing certain bureaus with the power of making rules and regulations having the effect of law, which is tan tamount 10 the substitution of the bu- reau chief for the lawmaker, and is wholly unrepublican in principle. The tendency in all bureaucratic admins tration is paternal; that is, for the officer to decide what is best to be done rather than 10 inquire what an appli cant's rights are, and if he has placed himself within the law.
 ''It is strange that such practices or theories should have any popular sup port in this day when the cry of refer ring all things to the people is heard from the mouth of every denagogue. support for the system comes mainly from the facility with which the but reau can appeal to the people through organs of publicity, creating false public sentiment on an ex parte pre- sentation of facts and argument. The public is always ready to impute su- perior ability 10 executive officers. in whose selection they have no part, rather than to their own representa- tives. While this is paradoxical, the reason for it lies in the fact that they are better acquainted with their repre- sentativcS thah they are with the e. ecutive officer. Perhaps, on the theory that distance lends enchant- ment, etc, the bureau head, exploited at government expense, possesses mo- bier attributes and greater ability than our neighbor who represents us in con- gress, but of whom we get closer and more accurate view"
 The speaker said that another thing which has contributed to the growth of bureaucracy is the marvellous ex- pansion of governmental activities--in matters of finance, trade, commerce, of public properties, and of relations with other peoples. The complexity of the public demands is generally beyond the capacity of the ordinary represent word of one claiming to be specialist and give the specialist power to do those things which his own limitations forbid his undertaking. But how about the specialist? He has no direct obli- gation to the people; no party affilis- tions. He socks power through pub licity that will give extended authority to the bureau. His relation to the people is unsympathstic and unrespon- sive, especially where his duties call upon him to administer public func- tions which, by the very nature of things, he assumes to but cannot un- derHtand except from the theoretical or academic standpoint.
 The extent to which bureaucratic am- bition may be carried was illustrated by recounting the scheme at one time seriously considered to dismember the Interior Department by taking from it all those huresus that had anything to