_Gentlemen_:
I need hardly say that our one chance for getting the consular service
put upon a really effective basis lies with just such organizations as
this.
We in Washington must rely upon you to make our people, who are
pre-eminently a business people—I do not think that is by any means
all they either are or ought to be, but I think they must have and
ought to have a very strong business side to them—appreciate that the
consular service should be in its essence a part of the general scheme
of business development of the country. Of course my own view is that
that applies to all the affairs of the State Department, and under both
Mr. Hay and Mr. Root that Department has been managed and is being
managed with an eye single to the good of the country as a whole. I
have not, I am sorry to say, been able to persuade people thus to
look upon even such a question as the Santo Domingo Treaty, which is
a purely non-partisan measure; for if it was treated as it should be,
purely on its merits, there would not be one shadow of opposition to or
criticism of it. But while we have not yet been successful in getting
the work of the Department looked upon quite in the non-partisan spirit
that should be our national attitude in foreign affairs, and have not
been successful in getting the consular service made by law what we
strive to have it made—an absolutely non-partisan service—still we
have made a certain amount of progress, and with the help of you and
those like you, we shall be able to make a great deal more progress.
One point let me dwell upon. You can not expect to get permanently
good service when that service is unattractive and ill-paid. We have
had a great deal of difficulty with our consular service in China.
It came partly because men were appointed for political reasons,
with scant regard to their qualifications, partly because men found
themselves in remote Eastern ports where there was not much that made
life attractive, where there was very little supervision over them, and
yet great temptation. Gentlemen, we all know that under such conditions
it is necessarily difficult to secure honest and efficient service. We
made a pretty thorough clean-up there. But we can not keep the service
as high as it should be kept unless we have adequate salaries. There
must be a better monetary provision for our consuls. I think that
some such scheme as that so admirably advocated by Mr. Loomis, whose
experience peculiarly fits him to speak on the subject, of charging a
graded fee for invoices would furnish a solution. But in any event,
in some way or other, we should provide for better salaries for the
consuls, for better facilities for doing their work. Remember that the
dearest kind of public servant is a servant who is paid so cheaply
that he must render cheap service. Also, I feel most strongly that in
the consular service, which stands entirely apart from the diplomatic
service proper, entrance should be made by law into the lower grades
and that the higher grades should be filled by a gradual process of
weeding out and promotion; remembering, gentlemen, that the weeding-out
process must not be interfered with. It is not any too easy, at best,
to get rid of a kindly-natured elderly incompetent, and if you add to
the difficulty by law, he then stays permanently. Make the entrance
to the service as far as possible non-partisan and make it at the
lower grades, so that desirable positions shall come to those who have
rendered good and faithful service in the lower grades, so that those
entering the lower grades shall feel that if they do well they have a
long and worthy career ahead of them.
TO THE COMMITTEE AND ASSISTANT COMMITTEES ON DEPARTMENT METHODS, AT THE
RESIDENCE OF MR. PINCHOT, WASHINGTON, MARCH 20, 1906
_Gentlemen_:
I wish to express my very great appreciation of the work that you are
doing. It would be a good thing for certain critics of our Government
to realize the amount of hard, disinterested work for the Government
represented by this gathering to which I am now speaking—a work which
must in the immense majority of cases be its own reward, and therefore
an ample reward; for there is nothing pleasanter than the consciousness
of having done well a bit of work well worth doing.
A year ago I appointed the Keep Commission, because I had become
convinced that the business methods of our Government were by no means
abreast of the times. While I think there is comparatively little
corruption in the National Governmental service, and while that little
I intend to cut out or have cut out through other agencies than yours,
it yet remains true that there is a good deal of duplication of work,
a good deal of clumsiness of work, and above all, the inevitable
tendency toward mere bureaucratic methods against which every
Government official should be perpetually on his guard—the tendency to
regard not the case, but the papers in the case, as the all-important
matter with which to deal, and to feel a proud sense of duty performed
if all those papers are appropriately docketed and referred and minutes
made about them, and then referred back, without regard to what has
become of the real fact at issue.
As you are aware, the Keep Commission sent out questions to those
responsible for the actual work in all branches of the Government
service. Answers were received, or are now being received, to
those questions, and they furnish a useful aid to the study by the
commission of Governmental conditions. But inevitably in the great
majority of cases these answers are inadequate to form a basis for
definite recommendations, and of course that is what I want from
this commission. I do not want a diagnosis of the case; I want a
recommendation how to reach the case. I do not want merely to know that
things are bad; I want to know what is bad and what is to be done to
make it better, so that if legislation is necessary I can recommend
it, or if, as I hope will be true in the enormous majority of cases,
the matter can be reached by executive regulation, I can see that that
regulation is issued. I want to say right here, gentlemen, that I shall
value the reports that I receive largely in proportion as they do not
call for legislation. There is nothing easier, as all of you know,
than to draw up an elaborate minute to show how well things would go
on if some one else did something different. I want you, so far as is
possible, to recommend something that I can do, something that the
heads of the departments can do, so that we can ourselves put a stop
to much at least of the evil that exists, remedy much at least of the
shortcomings that exist.
With this in view, a number of assistant committees were appointed,
consisting of you gentlemen here, carefully chosen men from the
Government service, who are already largely responsible for the
efficiency of the work done in your several departments and bureaus. It
was a compliment to choose you, gentlemen; though it is one of those
compliments that take the form of imposition of additional labor.
If you were not of the type that I know you to be it would not be a
compliment that would be appreciated. These committees, you gentlemen,
have been at work for about a month, and you are taking up your work
within your specific fields through study of the data already collected
by the Committee on Department Methods, through bringing before you
men whose knowledge is of expert value, and above all by a thorough
study on the ground by experts (for that is what you are) of the
conditions and needs within the departments themselves. I shall not
enumerate the different committees. They are now at work. You compose
them, gentlemen, and all told they have a membership of about seventy
individuals.
As I have said, your particular effectiveness lies in the fact that
you are dealing at first hand with work with which you are thoroughly
familiar. You are not outsiders. You are not engaged in constructing
a parlor theory of how the work should be done; you are engaged in
recommendations to better the business which you are yourselves to
carry through and see made better when those recommendations have been
adopted. You have literally an unparalleled opportunity for useful
work. As far as I am aware, there has never before been made in this
country, or indeed, in any country, such a comprehensive systematic
effort to put the country’s housekeeping in order. I need not say to
you that it is urgent. A great deal of our Government work has become
proverbial for the red tape involved. Of course much of the outside
criticism upon red tape is due to forgetfulness of the fact that you
and I are responsible to Congress for every dollar we spend, and
for every dollar’s worth of work that we do, while the outsider is
responsible only to himself or those interested with him, so that we
not only have to do what is right and efficient, but have to be able to
show that what we have done is right and efficient; and this inevitably
means that there must be certain forms observed which the unthinking
outsider is apt to stigmatize as red tape. Nevertheless it is true
that there is always a tendency in Government work to run to needless
red tape. I asked the Keep Commission, for instance, to take up with
particular care, through the Assistant Secretaries of War and the
Navy, the burden of paper work resting on the officers of the Army and
Navy. I remember very well the pride with which a certain high officer
in one of the bureaus in the Navy Department, a good many years ago,
told me, pointing to a big case of papers, that in that he could find
out through the reports of the officers of each battleship how many
bottles of violet ink each captain of a battleship was responsible for.
I remarked that I did not care a snap of my finger about the number
of bottles of violet ink on the ship, that what I wanted to know was
whether the men at the guns could shoot; I did not accept the knowledge
of the whereabouts of the violet ink as a substitute for shooting. The
paper work must be subordinated in the departments and bureaus to the
efficiency of the work itself, keeping only enough of it to make a
record of what is done.
Of course it is impossible to set any actual time limit to the work
you are doing, but it would be a mighty good thing to inaugurate the
next fiscal year by adopting the new policies and methods in the
departmental business. I want to assure you of one thing, and that is
that your mere appointment has already produced a very marked moral
effect. The good results of seventy men studying local methods and
local needs on the ground, in the departments, does not lie only in
the knowledge gained; you render a great service by making the men
with whom you come in contact feel that they actually share in this
movement.
The most magnificent architecture that our race has ever been able to
produce—the great Gothic cathedrals of the Middle Ages—were made, not
by any known architect, not even by any number of architects whose
names have ever been recorded. We do not know the name of an architect
or builder connected with those great masterpieces. Each was made by
a number of men, architects and builders, each of whom felt amply
rewarded by the mere fact that he was able to put all the best that
there was in him into his work. He did not care to have his name known,
he did not desire to be immortalized in connection with the work; he
cared only to make the work itself the best that it could possibly be
made. There never was an army that amounted to anything in campaign or
in battle unless the average soldier had in him the spirit which made
him regard the winning of the campaign, the winning of the battle,
as in itself the end, and his service, if good enough, as in itself
the reward. He might wish other rewards if they happened to come; but
if they did not, well and good. The doing the duty is of itself a
sufficient reward for any man.
So it has to be if the work of the Government is to be really well
done. As Ruskin has said, there are two ways of doing work; to work
for the fee, for the payment, and to work for the work’s own sake. The
work done simply to get money for having done it will never, under
any circumstances, rank with the work done by the man whose sense
of self-respect, whose capacity for loyalty to an ideal, makes him
discontented unless the work that is at his hand is done with all the
skill that heart and hand and brain can bring to it.
Of course, gentlemen, when you come to make your recommendations,
you will have to deal with broad principles for the conduct of the
Government business; but those broad principles must be supported by
definite plans ready to be given immediate effect. I believe in broad
principles, but I do not want them so broad that they will not apply to
any given case. I want a general scheme, but also a way to make that
general scheme effective in each department, each bureau, each section
and subdivision touched by your committee. I do not want you in any
case to recommend a change simply for the sake of making a change;
nothing could be more foolish. But never hesitate for a moment in
basing your recommendations upon the conditions actually found and the
best way to meet them, no matter how radical may be the departure from
established methods required. As I have said before, remember that in
the vastly larger number of cases the essential need will not be for
new legislation, but for better organization and improved methods under
existing law. Now and then you will find where there must be a change
in law, but the essential thing will be to change methods so that we
can better administer the existing law.
There is, however, one fundamental weakness in the Government service
which can not be remedied without additional legislation. That
weakness lies in the faulty distribution of work among the different
departments. It is one of the most serious of all the obstacles to
good executive work, to effective work, and to economy in the public
service. No matter how well a bureau or division may be organized
and directed, you can not get the best work out of it unless it is
associated with, and co-operating with, the other bureaus and divisions
which are engaged in cognate lines of work and with which it naturally
belongs. Good teamwork is as much needed in the executive civil service
as it can possibly be anywhere else. And it is the only way to prevent
duplication of work. Your own work is most important, but it covers
only half of the field. To put the departments on the best and most
economical working basis the President, as I have already recommended,
should be given power to transfer any part of the work of a department
to another department, as was done in the case of the Department of
Commerce and Labor.
In closing I wish to say a word of acknowledgment of the
public-spirited and most valuable co-operation of the American
Association of Public Accountants, which has been promised to the
Committee on Department Methods. I wish to thank them, and I wish to
thank you, gentlemen, for the invaluable work that you are doing.
TO THE EXECUTIVE COUNCIL OF THE AMERICAN FEDERATION OF LABOR AND THE
REPRESENTATIVES OF LABOR ASSOCIATED WITH THEM, AT THE EXECUTIVE
OFFICE, MARCH 21, 1906
_Gentlemen_:
If your body objects to the passage of the proposed anti-injunction
bill, I have no question that you can stop it, for there is not a
capitalist concerned who simply as capitalist is not against it; though
I believe that a goodly number both of capitalists and wage-workers
who are concerned primarily as citizens favor it. The law was worked
over and substantially whipped into its present shape at a number of
conferences between representatives of the railroad organizations, of
the Department of Justice, and of the Bureau of Corporations with me.
It goes as far as I personally think it should go in limiting the right
of injunction; at any rate, no arguments have hitherto been advanced
which make me think it should go farther. I do not believe it has any
chance of passing, because there has been great criticism in both
Houses of Congress against the attitude of the Administration in going
so far as we have gone; and if you think it is not far enough, why,
you will have no earthly difficulty in killing the bill. Personally,
I think the proposed law a most admirable one, and I very sincerely
wish it would be put through. As for the right of injunction, it is
absolutely necessary to have this power lodged in the courts; though
of course any abuse of the power is strongly to be reprobated. During
the four and a half years that I have been President I do not remember
an instance where the Government has invoked the right of injunction
against a combination of laborers. We have invoked it certainly a score
of times against combinations of capital; I think possibly oftener.
Thus, though we have secured the issuance of injunctions in a number of
cases against capitalistic combinations, it has happened that we have
never tried to secure an injunction against a combination of labor.
But understand me, gentlemen; if I ever thought it necessary, if I
thought a combination of laborers were doing wrong, I would apply for
an injunction against them just as quick as against so many capitalists.
Now I come to the general subject of your petition. I wish in the
first place to state my regret that you did not divorce so much of
the petition as refers to the action of the Executive from so much
as refers to the action of the legislative branch, because I can not
consider any petition that you make that reflects upon the co-ordinate
branch of the Government, or that makes any charges whatever against
it. I would not even receive it save for the fact that in part it
affects the Executive. Therefore in what I have to say I shall limit
myself solely to what you assert in reference to the acts of the
Executive.
You speak of the eight-hour law. Your criticism, so far as it relates
to the Executive, bears upon the signature of the appropriation bill
containing the money for expenditure on the Panama Canal, with
the proviso that the eight-hour law shall not there apply. If your
statement is intended to mean that no opportunity was given for a
hearing before me, then the statement is not in accordance with the
facts. There was ample opportunity, but not a single request for such a
hearing came to me. I received, however, some hundreds of telegrams and
letters requesting the veto of the entire appropriation bill because
it contained that proviso. Frankly, I found it difficult to believe
that you were writing and telegraphing with any kind of knowledge of
the conditions in the case. I believe emphatically in the eight-hour
law for our own people in our own country. But the conditions of
labor, such as we have to work with in the tropics, are so absolutely
different that there is no possible analogy between them; and an
eight-hour law for the Panama Canal is an absurdity. Every one of you
knows that we can not get white labor, can not get labor of the United
States, to go down to Panama and work. We are driven to extremities
in the effort to get any kind of labor at all. Just at the moment we
are working chiefly with negro labor from the West Indies. The usual
result in the employment of those men is that Monday and Tuesday they
work fairly well, Wednesday and Thursday there is a marked falling
off, and by Friday and Saturday not more than a half, sometimes less
than a fourth, of the laborers will be at work. The conditions that
make the eight-hour law proper here have no possible reference to
the conditions that make the eight-hour law entirely improper there.
The conditions are so utterly different on the Isthmus, as compared
to here, that it is impossible to try to draw conclusions affecting
the one from what is true about the other. You hamper me in the effort
to get for you what I think you ought to have in connection with the
eight-hour law, when you make a request that is indefensible, and to
grant which would mean indefinite delay and injury to the work on the
Isthmus.
As to the violations of the eight-hour law, Mr. Morrison, you give me
no specifications. At your earliest convenience please lay before me
in detail any complaints you have of violations of the eight-hour law.
Where I have power I will see that the law is obeyed. All I ask is that
you give me the cases. I will take them up, and if they prove to be
sustained by the facts I shall see that the law is enforced.
Now, about the Chinese exclusion. The number of Chinese now in this
country is, if I remember aright, some sixty or seventy thousand. So
far from there being a great influx of the Chinese, the fact is that
the number has steadily decreased. There are fewer Chinese than there
were ten years ago, fewer than there were twenty years ago, fewer
than there were thirty years ago. Unquestionably some scores of cases
occur each year where Chinese laborers get in either by being smuggled
over the Mexican and Canadian borders, or by coming in under false
certificates; but the steps that we have taken, the changes in the
consuls that have been made within the last few years in the Orient,
and the effort to conduct examinations in China before the immigrants
are allowed to come here, are materially reducing even the small number
of cases that do occur. But even as it is the number of these cases
is insignificant. There is no appreciable influx of Chinese laborers,
and there is not the slightest or most remote danger of any; the whole
scare that has been worked up on the subject is a pure chimera. It is
my deep conviction that we must keep out of this country every Chinese
laborer, skilled or unskilled—every Chinaman of the coolie class. This
is what the proposed law will do; it will be done as effectively as
under the present law; and the present law is being handled with the
utmost efficiency. But I will do everything in my power to make it easy
and desirable for the Chinese of the business and professional classes,
the Chinese travelers and students, to come here, and I will do all
I can to secure their good treatment when they come; and no laboring
man has anything whatever to fear from that policy. I have a right to
challenge you as good American citizens to support that policy; and in
any event I shall stand unflinchingly for it; and no man can say with
sincerity that on this, or indeed on any other point, he has any excuse
for misunderstanding my policy.
You have spoken of the immigration laws. I believe not merely that all
possible steps should be taken to prevent the importation of laborers
under any form, but I believe further that this country ought to make
a resolute effort from now on to prevent the coming to the country of
men with a standard of living so low that they tend, by entering into
unfair competition with, to reduce the standard of living of our own
people. Not one of you can go farther than I will go in the effort
steadily to raise the status of the American wage-worker, so long as,
while doing it, I can retain a clear conscience and the certainty that
I am doing what is right. I will do all in my power for the laboring
man except to do what is wrong; and I will not do that for him or for
any one else.
We must not let our national sentiment for succoring the oppressed and
unfortunate of other lands lead us into that warped moral and mental
attitude of trying to succor them at the expense of pulling down our
own people. Laws should be enacted to keep out all immigrants who do
not show that they have the right stuff in them to enter into our life
on terms of decent equality with our own citizens. This is needed,
first, in the interest of the laboring man, but furthermore in the
interests of all of us as American citizens; for, gentlemen, the bonds
that unite all good American citizens are stronger by far than the
differences, which I think you accentuate altogether too much, between
the men who do one kind of labor and the men who do another. As for
immigrants, we can not have too many of the right kind; and we should
have none at all of the wrong kind; and they are of the right kind if
we can be fairly sure that their children and grandchildren can meet
on terms of equality our children and grandchildren, so as to try to be
decent citizens together and to work together for the uplifting of the
Republic.
Now a word as to the petitioning of employees to Congress. That stands
in no shape or way on a par with the petitioning of men not employed by
the Government. I can not have and will not have when I can prevent it
men who are concerned in the administration of Government affairs going
to Congress and asking for increased pay, without the permission of the
heads of the departments. Their business is to come through the heads
of departments. This applies to postmasters, to Army and Navy officers,
to clerks in the Government departments, to laborers; it applies to
each and all, and must apply, as a matter of simple discipline.
TO THE MEMBERS OF THE NATIONAL PLAYGROUNDS COUNCILS AT THE WHITE HOUSE,
APRIL 12, 1906
_Ladies and Gentlemen_:
I trust that it is not necessary for me to say what a pleasure it is
to meet you and how very earnest and hearty my sympathy is with your
purpose. I owed my first interest in the playground question, among
a great many other things, to Jacob Riis when he spoke of the poor
children who were not allowed to play in the streets, but had to play
in the streets as they had no other place to play. I have felt very
keenly the need of playgrounds, and of course as the children grow
older, the need of athletic grounds. In expressing my adherence to what
you have said, Dr. Gulick, as to the need of helping adapt the plays,
and of course the playgrounds and athletic grounds, to the needs of
the citizenship of city life, let me add just one thing, which, I am
sure, it is hardly necessary for me to say; and that is to remember
that in trying to shape the plays for the children you must previously
consult the children’s wishes. You must try to take advantage of their
initiative and simply help in shaping it in the proper direction. One
of the chief difficulties that all of us have encountered who have
tried to help, whether in establishing playgrounds for children, or
in establishing hotels for young women, or houses where working girls
could live, or clubs, which instead of being saloons should be coffee
clubs, for men, has arisen from the fact that philanthropists often
establish such excellent but minute and overprecautionary regulations
that nobody will inhabit them. As far as possible let the children
work out their own salvation in their own way; simply exercise such
supervision as to see that they do not do harm. Remember that in the
last analysis the play has to suit them and not us.