A WEEKLY COMMENTARY
Year Twenty-One ... Number Twenty-Nine ... July 19, 1974
THE CONTRIVED EVOLUTION
OF REGIONAL GOVERNMENT
PART TWELVE
THE FIRST BATTLES OF
THE SILENT REVOLUTION
"We stand in the presence of a revolution -- not a bloody revolution; America is not given to the spilling of blood -- but a silent revolution, whereby America will insist upon recovering in practice those ideals which she has always professed, upon securing a government devoted to the general interest and not to special interests."
So spoke the man who was about to become President of the United States. Warming up to his thesis concerning "the silent revolution," the speaker continued:
"We are on the eve of a great reconstruction. It calls for creative statesmanship as no age has done since that great age in which we set up the government under which we live, that government which was the admiration of the world until it suffered wrongs to grow up under it which have made many of our own compatriots question the freedom of our institutions and preach revolution against them. I do not fear revolution. I have unshaken faith in the power of America to keep its self-possession. Revolution will come in peaceful guise, as it came when we put aside the crude government of the Confederacy and created the great Federal Union which governs individuals, not States, and which has been for these hundred and thirty years our vehicle of progress. Some radical changes we must make in our law and practice. Some reconstructions we must push forward, which a new age and new circumstances impose upon us .... The whole stupendous program must be publicly planned and canvassed .... reason rather than passion ... will enable us to win through to still another great age without violence."
The speaker might have been Richard Nixon proclaiming his "silent revolution," or it could have been Franklin Delano Roosevelt in a fireside chat discussing his New Deal which some have called the revolution that was. But, actually, the speaker was Thomas Woodrow Wilson, the 28th President of the United States, telling his listeners how "The Old Order Changeth," and explaining "The New Freedom" that he hoped to bring to America, and later to the world through the League of Nations.
The record will show that there have been three great efforts to bring to a successful conclusion the "silent revolution" that so many of America's people in high places have talked about throughout this century. Woodrow Wilson launched the "silent revolution" in 1913, but the rest of the world was unprepared for that "new order" about which he spoke; and the man who was made President to bring revolution at home, was destined to declare war in Europe against the Central Powers. And, thus, the "silent revolution" was pigeon-holed, could not be spoken of openly or waged publicly during the years of the "return to normalcy" that endured from Harding through Coolidge to the latter part of the Hoover Administration.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt launched the second phase of the "silent revolution," with an all-out crusade lasting through the "first hundred days," which would have been totally victorious had it not been for a tradition-bound and Constitution-honoring Supreme Court that found most of FDR's pet projects unconstitutional. Even so, the nests of Fabian Planners, Brain Trusters, Frankfurter Hot Dogs, and Communist spy cells that polluted Washington were finding ways and means of circumventing courts and the Constitution. They would have been completely victorious had it not been for the economic problem which they could not solve short of imposing a wartime economy. Mills were closed or working at half capacity, industry was crippled, breadlines were getting longer and longer, government-made WPAs and CCCs couldn't take up all the slack. World War II was necessary to conquer a depression that had become worldwide. And the "silent revolution" again had to be put in government moth balls.
Then came Richard the Tricky, and the third and final phase of the "silent revolution" was announced, and is being waged behind a camouflage called Watergate, and the people are bemused by being told how people appointed to serve them are serving time instead; and the people are cajoled into worrying about impeachment rather than inflation, etc.
It is important to understand that this system of governance called Regionalism has been a basic element of the "silent revolution" from the very beginning.
Which leads us to a more specialized treatment of the subject in these letters:
Up to this point in our Series we have found it expedient to generalize, to lay a broad foundation and speak of many things, of Compact, Continental and International Theories of Government, of the various schools of socialism, of events in history that seemed important as background to a specific subject. From here on, however, we shall try to specialize, to concentrate upon the one theme which, we believe, has not been treated fully or adequately by others. From here on, we shall attempt to devote our study to the subject which gave title to this series: The Contrived Evolution of Regional Government.
To properly understand Regionalism, a grasp of the growth of power within the Executive Branch of the Federal Government is essential. And one of the first visible signs of this development occurred in the latter part of the 1890s when people in high places in government began to be made aware of the writings and activities of a group of men who had started a new school of political science that they called scientific management. One of the leaders of this new school was Frederick W. Taylor, who had been instrumental in establishing the civil service in the United States Government. Because of malpractices that had occurred in the Federal Government after the War Between the States, there had developed a demand that the entire system of Federal employment be overhauled. This led to the establishment of a Civil Service Commission in 1871. But little or nothing was done until 1883 when President Gerfield was killed, allegedly by a disappointed office seeker. The new rules were drawn up to award positions on merit in certain classifications of federal employment. On May 6, 1896, President Cleveland published a new set of civil service rules to improve the system. That set of rules remained more or less unchanged until 1940, when the Hatch Act was passed, forbidding office-holders from contributing to political campaigns.
This Civil Service Commission had nothing to do with elected officials or military officers. But Frederick Taylor and his scientific management school wanted to extend the reformation to include more and more people in government or political office. Briefly: elected officials are usually amateurs. They may be trained in law, or in husbandry, or they may be experts in business or professional circles. But the science of governmental management (now usually referred to as planning or administration) was a specialized field; and only trained specialists should be permitted to occupy positions as planners and administrators. (This same idea is expressed in Philip Dru-Administrator.)
One of the first manifestations of this new school of scientific management was seen, not at the federal but at the local level of government:-
In 1908, Staunton, Virginia, then a city of less than 10,000 population, "invented" a new system of scientific management by appointing a City Manager. One John Crosby of Staunton is recognized by all City Managers as the "father" of the city manager form of government. Taking his cue from Frederick Taylor's School of Scientific Management, City Commissioner Crosby developed the plan and then helped to popularize it throughout the Nation.
One of the men attracted by the new form of city government was a man named Louis Brownlow, who served as a city manager for a time, but was always looking for that greener pasture. For a time he edited the late David Lawrence's old newspaper, the United States Daily (which was said to be financed by Rockefeller money. During this time Lawrence became a member of the Rockefeller-financed Council on Foreign Relations). From this editorship, Brownlow went -- in 1927 -- to the City Housing Corporation of New York, a private real estate company. This corporation was interested in the business of building model cities -- now a regular thing with bigtime developers, but something novel in 1927. Fair Lawn, New Jersey was selected as a test site. A model city containing 1,500 acres, named Radburn, with all the legal powers of a full-fledged municipality, was to be developed. But the Great Depression ended that experiment.
But Brownlow was still on good terms with the Rockefellers, and the Rockefellets controlled the University of Chicago. And Louis Brownlow, with Rockefeller money (the Laura Spelman Fund) established the Public Administration Clearing House, on land owned by the University of Chicago, at 1313 East 60th Street. PACH was, of course, the nucleus of that organization which came to be known as 1313; about which we shall have much to say later.
Meanwhile, at the federal level, the urge for scientific management was growing apace. And one of the first important changes had to do with the establishment, in 1921, of the Federal Bureau of the Budget. In a paper entitled "Office of Management and Budget, Functions and Organization," dated January 1974, we are told -- and this is a direct quote -- about how important that act of 1921 really was :-
"The basic authority for the Office's (OMB) budget function is derived from the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, as amended. Reorganization Plan No. 2 of 1970 transferred that function to the President, who, in turn, delegated it to the Director of the Office of Management and Budget. This Act gave the Bureau the authority 'to assemble, correlate, revise, reduce, or increase the requests for appropriations of the several departments or establishments.' The Act also safeguarded the budget as transmitted by the President to Congress by denying Federal agencies the right to seek funds outside regular budget channels except at legislative request. The Bureau was further authorized to make detailed administrative studies for the President with a view to 'securing greater economy and efficiency in the conduct of the public service.' The Act required the Bureau 'at the request of any committee of either House of Congress having jurisdiction over revenue or appropriations to render 'the committee such aid and information as it may request.'
"In response to a request by the Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, the President, in 1921, instructed the Federal agencies to submit to him through the Director 'all requests or recommendations for legislation, the effect of which would be to create a charge upon the Public Treasury or commit the Government to obligations which would later require appropriations to meet them.' The scope of this clearance procedure was later extended to apply to all legislation." (End of quotation)
The foregoing provides us with an excellent example of how, in the name of scientific management, duties assigned specifically to the Congress by the Constitution, were transferred to the expanding Office of the Presidency. The Constitution most clearly specifies that it is the duty of the Congress -- not of an executive agency called the Internal Revenue Service -- to "lay and collect taxes;" and the Constitution also commands that,
" ... a regular Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all public Money shall be published from time to time."
For almost 150 years it was understood that it was the duty of Congress to prepare and keep the budget, and see to it that government expenditures were kept within that budget. That Congress did a commendable job can be seen by glancing at a record of the public debt before the budget-making task was handed over to a new Executive Bureau.
In a similar manner, in 1913, the power of the Congress to control the credit of the United States and to issue and regulate the value of its legal tender, was transferred to a newly created Federal Reserve Board, over which even the President of the United States has no direct administrative control.
As the growth of new bureaus and agencies expanded, the concept of Regional Government also grew. You'll recall that when the Nation's money was handed over to the control of a private corporation, the board of directors of that corporation determined that control over money could best be accomplished through dividing the Nation into twelve Regions, each Federal Reserve Region with its own Central Federal Reserve Bank.
When the New Deal came the Administration began to fashion innumerable new bureaus, agencies, commissions, councils, conferences, divisions, committees, units, boards, projects, corporations, combines, authorities, associations, trusts, co-operatives. centers, services, schools, companies, plants, factories, expositions, etc., etc. Known as the "alphabet agencies," one article dealing with the subject, published in 1937, commented:
"The following partial list will indicate the number of New Deal agencies and offices created or continued since March 4, 1933, which the average American may study in his fireside moments. Lack of space forbids a complete tabulation; only those bureaucratic growths falling alphabetically under A, B, and C are presented : ... "
And there follows a listing of 87 different varieties of bureaucratic growth under only the first three letters of the alphabet. The article then goes on to point out this most important fact:
"Washington is merely a clearing house. Virtually all New Deal organizations have set up regional agencies, which exist in each of the forty-eight States or in groupings of several States together. Each regional agency is a minor Washington in itself; it maintains a headquarters, a staff of executives, a bureaucracy, and a publicity division. In the manner of Washington, each regional bureau grows year by year, enlarging the scope of its activities until agency overlaps agency and field-unit overlaps field-unit .... the White House is the Mother Church; the employees of the regional parishes are hardworking missionaries for the salvation of humanity -- via the New Deal. For their creed, the missionaries utilize the words written by the Fuhrer himself:
'Only through a clear understanding by every citizen of the objectives, organization, and availability of the government agencies can they render truly effective service and assure progress toward economic security'."
The preceding is from an article entitled "Dr. Roosevelt's Propaganda Trust," by Gordon Carroll, which appeared in the Sept., 1937 issue of The American Mercury. The article shows that, although the Nation had not been divided legally and overtly into Regions, the idea of Regional Government was already being developed and utilized by the hundreds of bureaucratic growths that characterized the New Deal.
Next big step was the passage of the Executive Re-Organization Act of 1939. The story briefly:
At a meeting of 'the National Resources (Planning) Board in October, 1935, President Roosevelt brought up the idea of increasing the power of the Presidency by creating an "Executive Office of the President," and by reorganizing the Executive Branch in such a way that it would be less dependent upon the Congress. As a result of FDR's suggestion, the Brain Trusters created a Committee on Administrative Management (scientific management-Ed.), and Louis Brownlow, whom we have already introduced in connection with 1313, was named chairman of this new committee. The committee wrote a proposed Re-Organization Act of 1937, which came to be called "the Dictator Bill," and had to be watered down considerably before even the rubber-stamp Congress of 1937 would approve and pass it.
Consequently, Brownlow's committee went back to work and produced a similar but less power-packed Re-Organization Act of 1939, which was duly passed and signed into law.
A principal feature of this Act had to do with Executive Orders. Up to this time, Executive Orders could be issued by the President at any time; but they also could be revoked by Congress at any time. The new arrangement was more to a President's liking: He could promulgate an Executive Order and, if the Congress did not officially disapprove and reject within 60 days, then Congressional approval was taken for granted and the Executive Order had the full force of law.
There were other New Deal Acts which presaged the permanent establishment of the system known as Regional Governance. Power Districts, Conservation Districts, plans to abolish the States entirely; all of these were a part of the New Deal Program.
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