is well aware of the wastefulness and inefficiency resulting from this disintegrated and irresponsible system.

The situation is thus eloquently described in a plea, made by a committee of citizens in Oregon. "There are forty-seven boards and commissions created to enforce the laws and manage the business of the state of Oregon," says the committee. "In addition to these we have the governor, secretary of state, state treasurer, superintendent of instruction, state printer, attorneygeneral, commissioner of labor, thirty-four sheriffs, unknown numbers of deputies, police, and constables, eleven district attorneys, and thirty-seven deputies. Every one is in a great degree independent of all others and of everybody else. There is no one officer who is responsible to the people of the state for the enforcement of state laws and the efficient management of the state business. The constitution says 'the governor shall take care that the laws of the state be faithfully executed,' but gives him no power beyond that of making recommendations. No successful private business is conducted so carelessly as American public business, and it is generally admitted that the state and county governments are seldom successful either in enforcing the laws or giving the taxpayers good value for their money."

2

As a remedy for this disorder in the body politic, the committee proposes that the governor shall appoint the attorneygeneral, the secretary of state, state treasurer, state printer, superintendent of public instruction, secretary of labor, and the state business manager; and that these officers shall serve during the governor's pleasure under his immediate direction and act as his advisory cabinet. The committee furthermore proposes that the governor shall appoint the sheriff and district attorney in each county. The new state officer, the state business manager, is to organize, consolidate, and manage the business affairs of the state, subject to the governor's directions; and the governor is to take over the control of all state institutions and public functions in the hands of boards and commissions, retaining only such as he deems expedient and economical thus assuming before the people absolute responsibility for the 1 Suggested Amendments to the Constitution of Oregon, W. S. U'Ren, Oregon City, Oregon, August 14, 1909.

2 Governor Hughes in his message of 1910 recommended a similar reform.

efficient conduct of the entire business of the state. If this proposal is enacted into law, it will institute in the state of Oregon a political system founded in part upon the principles of the national administration. It could hardly be said, therefore, that it would constitute a new experiment in American politics, but it certainly would be watched with great interest by all other commonwealths.

A second method of centralizing state administration and responsibility is suggested by Mr. Herbert Croly, who urges that American citizens have no particular reason for being proud of their state governments because those governments have not, in actual practice, shown themselves capable of undertaking successfully, economically, and efficiently those large public enterprises required by the social and economic advance of our time.1

This critic, accordingly, suggests a reconstruction of our commonwealth governments somewhat along the following lines. The centre of the new system would be a governor, elected for a long term, but liable to recall by the voters under certain definite restrictions. The governor would be surrounded by a cabinet composed of the heads of departments appointed by himself; he would have the power of removing every important administrative officer in the state and would hold his departmental chiefs strictly responsible to him for the administration of their several departments. Departmental chiefs would be able to appoint their more important subordinates, but the technical work of the administration would be in the hands of experts chosen under a carefully planned civil service system. The legislature, under this scheme of government, would consist of a single chamber composed of delegates elected from districts by some system of cumulative voting which would give minority representation and at the same time provide for recall by the voters. Under this proposal, American traditions as to the separation of executive and legislative power would be entirely abandoned; and the governor would be given not only the veto, but also the right to propose legislation and dissolve the legis

1 The Promise of American Life, pp. 315 ff.

2

In some New England states the governor now has an advisory council, but it is of slight importance; and in North Carolina certain state officers aer constituted a "Council of State."

lature and appeal to the people in case his particular measures were rejected. or seriously amended. Critics of this scheme will probably regard it as un-American and fanciful; but in view of the recent tendencies in municipal government toward some such system, it may not be unreasonable to expect, in the distant future at all events, a modification of the entire structure of state government along lines of greater centralization of responsibility, greater simplicity of structure, and more constant control in the hands of the voters.

A third and more immediately practical method of meeting the problems arising from the disintegration and confusion existing in our state administration systems has been proposed by another writer. To concentrate responsibility, to prevent commissions and boards from competing with one another for legislative appropriations, to produce that economy which comes from large operations in the purchase and distribution of supplies, and to bring together those branches of administration which are technically related, the various state administrative offices may be grouped into the following executive departments, each under the head of a responsible officer appointed by the governor or elected by the legislature or chosen by popular vote - preferably appointed by the governor:

Department of state.

Department of finance, including the functions of treasurer and comptroller.

Department of justice.

Department of education, supervising public schools, colleges, libraries, and normal schools.

Department of commerce and labor, including factory inspection, collection of labor statistics, arbitration and conciliation, supervision of manufactures, etc.

Department of corporate control: over railway, gas, telephone, street car, banking, and insurance corporations.

Department of agriculture, having charge of the agricultural interests and fish and game supervision.

Department of public works, supervising highways, parks, sewerage, buildings, public lands, forests, etc.

Department of charities and corrections, with general super

1 Mr. White, in The Political Science Quarterly, Vol. XVIII, p. 655.

vision over all institutions and laws affecting defectives, delinquents, and dependents.

Department of public safety, with control over health and police authorities.

However desirable it might be to group the numerous branches of a state administration in this fashion under a few departmental heads appointed by the governor and responsible to him, as a matter of actual fact it can scarcely be said that we have begun the reform. A review of governors' messages for eight years, 1900-1907, reveals currents in the direction of centralization, but it also reveals many counter-currents. Governor Bates of Massachusetts, in his message of January 7, 1904, favored fixing responsibility in the governor by giving him the power of appointing the heads of the principal departments. Governor Garvin of Rhode Island, in the same year, recommended a similar policy. Governor Hughes of New York, in his inaugural of 1909, made a plea for an executive power commensurate with executive responsibility.1

In the South and West, however, we find governors demanding an extension of the limits of the elective principle. Governor Vardaman of Mississippi, in his message of 1904, and Governor Blanchard of Louisiana, in his messages of 1904 and 1906, strongly advised the transformation of many appointive offices into elective offices. Governor Toole of Montana, in his communication to the legislature of January 5, 1903, declared that "the people should elect all important officers of the state government. Under the law as it now stands, the governor of the state appoints the state examiner, state inspector, state coal mine inspector, steam boiler inspector, commissioner of agriculture and labor, state veterinarian, registrar of the state land office, and state land agent and game warden. . . . It is the system that is reprehensible a system which is inconsistent and inharmonious with the genius and spirit of our institutions in its attempt, without reason or necessity, to mingle or fuse together disagreeing elements of a democracy and a monarchy. In short, in my opinion, executive appointments or patronage, if you please, and popular sovereignty are antagonistic elements in our form of government and ought to be abandoned.” 2

1 Reprinted in part, Readings, p. 436.

2

Digest of Governors' Messages, 1903, New York State Library Bulletin, p. 29.

The same diverse tendencies that are shown by the governors' messages are revealed by a careful study of the laws creating the more important state offices during the same period, 1900-1907. They may be summarized as follows:

Appointive offices made elective. Virginia: treasurer, secretary of the commonwealth, superintendent of public instruction (1902). West Virginia: secretary of state (1903). Kansas: state printer (1906). Louisiana: supreme court justices, registrar of the land office, commissioner of agriculture and immigration (1906). Alabama: railroad commission (1907).

Elective offices made appointive. California: state printer (1907). Newly created elective offices.' Alabama: lieutenant-governor, commissioner of agriculture and industry (1901), state fish and game commissioner (1907). Vermont: attorney-general (1905). Mississippi: insurance commissioner (1902), commissioner of agriculture, statistics and immigration (1906). Texas: commissioner of agriculture (1907). Louisiana: state board of equalization (1906). Nebraska: railroad commission (1906). Colorado, Montana, and Oregon: railroad commissions (1907). Maine: state auditor (1907).

Newly created appointive offices. California, Nevada, South Dakota: state engineers (1907). Maryland: state auditor (1902). Nevada: state auditor (1907). Indiana, Washington, Wisconsin, and Ohio: state railroad and public service commissions (1905-1906). Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Vermont: state railroad and public service commissions (1907).

A survey of this table shows that the movement towards a transformation of appointive into elective offices is confined to the southern and western states, where the machine processes of modern life and their institutional results are not so fully developed as in the northern and eastern states. In the South or West are also to be found the greater number (all but two) of the newly created elective offices, while the most important new appointive offices, the public service commissions, have been established in the middle and eastern states.

The Removal Power in State Administration

The governor has no general power of removal like that enjoyed by the President of the United States. Not only do we discover a great variety of practices among the several common1In some cases, transformation of older offices.

1