WHAT IS HAPPENING TO PUBLIC SERVICE
Glaeser, Martin
What Is Happening To Public Service By MARTIN GLAESER -(Professor of Economics, University of Wisconsin) ON APRIL 16 the papers of our capital city announced the loss to the state service of...
...Matzdorf has given us 32 years of faithful service under nine governors, during which his kindness and helpfulness to capitol visitors had become almost a tradition...
...Particularly should this be true when, as in the case of Mr...
...When we fail to attract people of this type into our industries and agriculture, and into our public service, then, in deed all will not be well with this state...
...There is something in public office, as in the ministry of healing faiths, which will again and again call people from service to self to service of the commonalty...
...This was a note new in the annals of '.hy commission, and we trust it will not be lost wilh Morehouse's going...
...MOST of all, it is to be hoped that the present tendency to regard all public employes as tax eaters and as ipso facto deficient in productiveness, will give way to a realization of what is the real truth—that much financial sacrifice lies concealed in the public pay envelope...
...It is mete that we, the beneficiaries of such service, do not malign them for it...
...Matzdorf's going was that unavoidable going when death shall come to us all, when there will be sadness among our friends and acquaintances, as there is now among those of Mr...
...I hear the cynic asking...
...Irs greatest asset has been a people able and willing to achieve things ''the hard way," as comports with the parsimonious nature which surrounds us...
...Wisconsin will be beginning to lose its soul...
...Although a native son of Massachusetts, he became, nevertheless, an adopted son of Wisconsin, attracted here by the personality of Prof...
...Towards the progressive attainment of this end, Mr...
...Since its inception in 1905, a permanent civi...
...Rightly understood, there Is nothing inherently inconsistent between a changing political emphasis and a continuing public administration...
...What Is Happening To Public Service By MARTIN GLAESER -(Professor of Economics, University of Wisconsin) - ON APRIL 16 the papers of our capital city announced the loss to the state service of Martin Matzdorf, one of the policemen In our capitol, and Edward M. Morehouse, director of the rates and research division of our public service commission...
...Morehouse's going after nine years of service is that avoidable and distressful going of a faithful servant who has reluctantly come to the conclusion that his services are no longer appreciated...
...Because they have not lost their soul...
...It is due in large part to his efforts that there has existed a co-ordination and co-operation between the economic, accounting, and engineering aspects of the work of regulation of which Morehouse, Colbert, and Stclnmotz, respective division heads, had become the living embodiment...
...Morehouse, they come to us from outside the state...
...John R. Commons, the reputation of the university, and the solid character of all the people of this state...
...service, in the best German tradition, is attempting, under varying redefinitions of policy, in the best British tradition, to develop that continuity of principles and practices under whose regime alone the benefits of civilized government can be achieved...
...This state is one poor in natural resources...
...It has been the proud boast of this state that, whatever may have been its difficulties elsewhere, the policy of public regulation of privately owned utilities could be depended upon to work its way through the difficulties that beset its path, so long as there remained as its tap root that conception of public service arid of public administration which was first injected into the political veins of this state when the Germ a n "48'ers," among them Carl Schurz, set foot upon the soil of this state...
...It is my own experience and belief that a continuing civil service provides the necessary connective tissue between changing political faiths, proving to the alternating interpreters ol political guidance that they are all votaries at the common altar of service to the people of Wisconsin...
...MaUdorf, when they no longer see us In our accustomed haunts...
...Why, then, do public employes stay on...
...The progressive difficulties in the recruitment of competent help which public administration is experiencing, together with the restiveness among its present employes, should begin to convince the people of this state and its leaders that they are following paths which lead astray...
...Morehouse has, since 1931, made a signal contribution, best known to those who in the diurnal monotony of hearing room, conference, and research have come upon his ever patient, courteous and scientific endeavors...
...AS a student of public utility regulation, It is my business to know, to observe, and to interpret what is going on in our state capital and in the capitals of other states and of our federal government, particularly with reference to the control and guidance of our public utilities...
...To put it mildly, he will missed by his associates...
Vol. 10 • May 1940 • No. 19
