BUNK ABOUT THE BUREAUCRATS
Kasper, Sydney H.
Bunk About The Bureaucrats THE BUREAUCRAT, by John H. Crider. Lippin-cott. $3. Reviewed by Sydney H. Kasper MR. CRIDER writes of "Washington, with all its paradoxes, contradictions, and...
...almost everyone of his indictments of bureaucracy is contradicted within a> few pages...
...It would confine itself to an examination of bureaucracy as it began, developed, and now is...
...Moreover, time flows on like a powerful river toward the sea of destiny, and there is no stopping it...
...This might conceivably include everyone—newspapermen, businessmen, housewives, and mechanics...
...It is incorrect to assume that man lives by bread alone...
...On the subject of the earning power of Government workers he performs the unusual feat of double-double-crossing himself: on one page he bemoans such persons as his friend "Mac" who "has devoted many years to the public service at a pittance," a few pages later he gripes about the bureaucrats "fattening themselves handsomely on the support provided by a national citizenry," and a little later on he states that a large majority of Federal workers make only between $1,200 and $1,999 per year...
...Crider's employer, the New York Times...
...It would not have to be written by someone of the stature of Leonard D. White, Comstock Glaser, or Luther Gulick...
...It would not befuddle itself, as The Bureaucrat unfortunately does, with ill-digested versions of the Hegelian "super-state," nor would it argue the value of democracy against collectivism...
...you'll find that Federal employment has increased only 10 per cent since 1940...
...Commenting about the Post Office Department he writes that it ". . . has been no gilded lily either by way of efficiency, economy, or absence of politics," only to state but two sentences later, "On the whole (it) seems to do a satisfactory job...
...Such a book would start with the basic and unarguable assumption that bureaucracy is inherent in any large organization — business or government—and would then proceed to analyze good and evil in various types of bureaucracy...
...For instance, he writes, "It only follows as a next step that the bureaucratic drive for extension of central Governmental powers should lead from regulation to government-in-business," and follows it five sentences later with, "The Aluminum Corporation of America should give thanks . . . that the Government adopted the wartime policy of putting competitors into its field, rather than taking the whole outfit over...
...It is impossible to look into the future without knowing where we are...
...The first law of bureaucracy is that if it has been done that way before it must be done again...
...all it needs is someone with a capacity for collecting and analyzing facts and writing about them in simple English...
...For instance, he limits bureaucracy to Washington, but his most damning examples of petty bureaucracy are those of municipal and state officials...
...The book is studded profusely with some choice cliches and platitudes: "No government on earth, however high-minded, can achieve what God in his wisdom did not do, and presumably did not deem should be done...
...He puts the blame for bureaucracy upon (1) the bureaucrats, (2) Congress, and (3) the people, thus leaving presumably only himself blameless...
...Towards the end of the book the contradictions are coming so fast and furious that they appear on the same page...
...THE author's confusion stems from his very apparent inability to separate facts from opinions, petty dictators (like his example of the woman bureaucrat who refused to open the door of a Maryland license bureau a few minutes before 9 a. m. to let five shivering1 citizens wait inside instead of standing out in the cold February wind) from true civil servants, and information from propaganda...
...He demands that our public school systems be separated from politics, not realizing that this might lead to an even greater bureaucracy and loss of control by the citizenry...
...What is needed, and needed badly, is a sound, definitive analysis of bureaucracy...
...He gives the oft-discredited figure of 3,000,000 Federal employes without stating that if you subtract the civilian workers in Government arsenals and the War and Navy Departments plus those in the purely war agencies (WPB, ODT, etc...
...Crider" for "Washington" and you have the key to the windiness and naivete of this book...
...CRIDER writes of "Washington, with all its paradoxes, contradictions, and confusion...
...It would deal with questions of personnel and administration, or centralization versus decentralization...
...Substitute "Mr...
...Crider that he is continually playing the game of petard-hoisting upon himself...
...required supervisory controls and the unnecessary, hampering variety...
...Crider might do well to drop a subject with which he is so ill-acquainted and devote himself to a study of what my newspaper friends tell me is a real bureaucracy—Mr...
...In the meantime, Mr...
...Changes are implicit in the nature of society and its institutions...
...the differences and similarities between governmental and business bureaucracies...
...Indeed so confused is Mr...
...THIS review is not meant as a defense of bureaucracy per se...
...Finally, he spends a full chapter attempting to define "bureaucrat" and winds up lamely with the bureaucrat being "the fellow who always knows what is best for you and me...
...Such a book would be of real value for all who are interested in the complex and significant problem of bureaucracy...
...We cannot stage a sit-down strike against time or change...
...the relationships between municipal, state, and Federal organizations and municipal, state, and Federal levels of the same organization...
...On page 27 he denounces bureaucrats for their energy and zealousness in "thinking up new services for the public," but on page 38 he denounces them equally for their unwillingness to stir out of old, well-worn ruts: "Bureaucracy is a maze of well-worn paths which those who enter must follow...
...He makes the naive assertion that, during the 1930'S "Under a variety of pressures, mainly Federal tax laws, business organization moved from proprietorship to the corporate form," forgetting all about the huge mergers of the 1870's and 1880's...
Vol. 8 • September 1944 • No. 38
