The Waterbury Democrat., 1941-06-16

l r1.o,, Center of the
 ~ new idea will be 12 apostles to spread the word from
 Washington. They will be called
 Regional Business ConslltantS and
 there will be one for each of the 12 federal reserve districts. These
 12 men, hand picked not only from the bureau but also from bulineSy
 and research staffs of several urli- versailles, will gather in Washington
 soon to begin course of training.
 Then, early in the fall, they will
 take up their jobs in Boston, New
 York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Rich
 mond, Atlanta, Chicago, St. Louis,
 Minneapolis, Kansas City, Dallas
 and San Francisco. They will be
 backed up by 19 field officers al-
 ready at work in other key cities,
 and the entire 31 will be known as
 ''The United States Department of Commerce Field Service"
 BUSINESS DRUMMER UPPERS The idea is that this new agency 1 will work both ways. Field officers
 will report to Washington on busi-
 ness conditions in their districts and
 will be available as business con- sultants to trade associations, cham bers of commerce, and individual business executives. They will try to help work out readjustments in foreign trade, give advice on outlets in South and Central America, help the Rockefeller committee in trying to improve cultural relations below the Rio Grande, and on top of that try to help business men fit into the defenEe picture.
 While this new field service is the one that will have the most direct contact witt. business men in every community, 1t is only one phase of the broader plan of Department of Commerce reorganization. Pre- yiously, the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce was organized on what was called vertical basis. That is, there was separate divi- sion for every commodity or group of industries. There were bureau chiefs for chemicals, iron and steel, movies, machinery, tobacco, and so on. The tendency was for each divi- sion to consider that it's particular pet and baby was the center of the world and that all other business revolved around it.
 Under the reorganization, most of these division or commodity or in- dustry chiefs-o have Eeen given the status of consultarts, and their function hereafter will be to sit in with the new horizontal or garization of five principal divisions. The Field Service unit outlined pre- viously becomes the Division of Re- | gional Economy. There IS a Division of International Economy, which is l foreign trade. A Division of 1n- dustrial Economy, organized hori- zontally by units of merchandising, consumption, construction, durable goods, and 50 on. Divisions of Re- search and Information complete the picture.
 MOWERS FOLLY
 NOT so FOOLISH
 Now all this may seem like lot of governmental red tape organi- zation which 1t probably is and you shouldn't be bothered by it. It is however, of the way these big government bureaus op- crate. You could wander for days through this Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce without meet ing all the people or finding out what they do.
 When the Department of Con- merce Building was finished, 1t was dubbed Hoover's Folly and every body wondered what on earth they would use to fill all the offices on all sevRr floors covering the equal of two big city blocks. Today the place is filled to overhowing and they're trying to make the big, unwieldy thing function for the good of the citizenry.
 And the fact Is that 1t does a lot | of good. It is probably a toss-up as to whether you can get more information from the of Commerce or the of Agriculture. If you write in asking for information about your particular business, they have some. Or if you call in per- son, there is an information office which is trying desperately to steer business men coming to town on de- fense jobs. It may take two or three trys to get you what you want but they try.