Norwich bulletin., 1917-06-05
Views of the Vigilantcs
WHY ARE POLITICIANS
 BLOCKING HOOVER
By Charles Hanson Towne of the
 VigiIantes.

By Charles Hanson foWne Of the
 VisiIantes.
 The general public, which has ac- eepted the work of Herbert Hoover in cope with the less acute but no less important situation here, has not quite 2rasped the nature of the opposition to him, which in evident from the reports going out from, Washington. The crit icism that he is a man newly risen in to prominence has had no weight with the man in the street, who knows much less of many people who have been longer in the public eye. And in the absence of any person more con- spicuously qualified, criticism of MT. Hoover's experience falls flat Three years of feeding a nation during war time is al least three years more than anybody else in America has had. Reasoning thus the general public has been disposed to credit the opposssion which occasionally shows itself to political uneasiness. or to that kind of ineptitude which deliberate bodies can be counted on to provide in any crisis. Just about so much funlbNng is to be expected anyway, argues the man in the street, and goes accepting Hoover as the sole authority on food conditions.
 Opposition to a food controllership on dem ocratic grounds would be bet ter understood, but the truth is that MT. Hoover's opposers dare not make
 
 conception of Food Administration is a much more democratic thing that the regime which his detractorS advocate
 At first the idea Of new department of Food Administration found favor. It meant, among other things. the creation of some eight or ten thousand salaried departmental jobs. which meant handsome increase of political patronage. It meant also that people holding such positions would probably be unwilling to surrender them at the close of the war, and might involve the esta blishment Of a permanent de- pertinent with possibly a Cabinet port folio for it's head.
 Eut presently it developed that Her bert Clark Hoover was not at all the sort of man under whom such a bu reaucratic arrangement could prosper MT. HooVer's method is much simpler much more the method of every day affairs. His experience in Europe has made him distrustfui of departmental clerks in positions of great public re- sponsibiiity Therefore he cut the ground under all hopes of Bureau of Food Administration by stipuiating that neither he nor his associates should receive any salaries.
 It is not widely known, if known at all, that MT. Hoover has conducted the whole Belgian Relief on that basis Neither he nor his staff has received any remuneration. Mir. Hoover even paid the rent Of the house occupied by the c. F.. B. in Brussels out of his own pocket rather than divert any of the Relief funds to that use. This, of course applied only to administrative work Stenogra phers and clerks re- ceived their customary wages, but even these were often paid for out of the private means of the people who em- ployed then
 Naturally an administrative staff made up in this way would not have any room for politicians and their henchmen. And this. consciously or not, is the source of much of the criti- cisn1 Of Hoover's plan which is heard at Washington