political desires of governors or anybody else they must be ineffective, because governors are influenced by political motives. MR. CULLINAN-Where do you get those men?

MR. DELANEY-Humanity has a pretty high percentage of good. I did my best, and I am willing to concede that everybody else would. You can get five men. I have a lot of faith in human nature, and, in the main, my faith was strengthened by my experience. I found plenty of carelessness and waste, but few crooks in office.

THE CHAIRMAN-You have made certain recommendations as to these ten departments. Would it be possible for you some time to indicate in the charts of these 152 administrative departments which of these would naturally fall into the groups you have recommended? For instance, the Department of Banking and Insurance would be very simple. Take the Department of Public Institutions, for instance. That is a subject that is pretty technical, and a great deal of information is there. Would that be asking too much labor on your part to develop that idea, showing the particular lines, the particular institutions, boards of commissions, that would fall into those departments?

MR. DELANEY-I started to prepare just that sort of thing for the report which we published, and I decided it was better to present it to the Constitutional Convention, that perhaps it would be more useful. To do what you ask in detail is a pretty large statistical piece of work. I shall be glad to give you what I have. Constitutionally, however, we must deal with this generally. You would have to say that all activities relating to the inspection of human food and human activities, should fall within one division of state government. You would have to express it in that general way, and leave it to the legislature.

THE CHAIRMAN-But it is very much easier to draw a general provision when you have the specific facts before you. I think perhaps the request is a pretty large request, but I did not know how much study you had given to it, or whether you had it in some way before you. I should like to get that in my own brain. I don't know how the other members feel.

MR. DELANEY-All right, Mr. Tanner. I would be very glad to go over it with you and to prepare a sort of a generalized schedule. I won't attempt to take every position that I think ought to be transferred.

THE CHAIRMAN-Well, I don't think that is proper for a constitutional provision.

Mr. Delaney-I think we can deal with it by bureaus

The state government, not including the elective officers, the legislature or the judiciary, could be concentrated on functional lines into ten administrative divisions and a Board of Control, eleven in all. These departments, if given titles appropriate to the character of work they were to perform, might be 1. Department of Taxes and Revenues

2. Department of Education

3. Department of Public Institutions.

4. Department of Public Works

5. Department of Agriculture and Conservation

6. Department of Health and Industry.

7. Department of Public Utilities.

8. Department of Banks and Insurance

9. Department of State Militia

10. Department of Public Buildings and Grounds
II. Board of Control.

THE CHAIRMAN-If you would amplify the general idea you have, that is, what a certain department would be, that is broad enough to cover the various small boards and commission in your mind which should be covered.

MR. DELANEY-I have that in pretty fair shape. I can give it to you. You don't want me to do it now?

THE CHAIRMAN-No, no. I think some other time, unless you have it all ready in concrete shape.

MR. DELANEY-Gentlemen, I have talked twice as long as I expected to. Do you want to ask any questions?

MR. BOCKES-I didn't ask just what I had in mind. It was this, that with only ten departments you might be in danger of having those departments override, as the Education Department has done and as the Health Department is now doing. They have gradually reached out until they are not satisfied with administrative power, but they are doing legislative, judicial work in both of those departments.

MR. DELANEY-Yes, that is right. Well, the power of the department is made and fixed by statute. We must have it that way. I see no other remedy than an amendment of the law when the occasion requires.

MR. BOCKES-I was thinking, as you spoke, supposing you had had a constitution which fixed ten departments to control the administrative functions of government, say as early as 1846; would you, and could you, have had as natural and wholesome development of government as we have had under our method of simply walking up to the legislature as conditions confronted us and meeting them as best we can?

MR. DELANEY-I guess not, from the point of view of 1846. Still, in 1894 we had a pretty fair outlook for twenty years. I think there was only one really important state function created since that time. We are inspecting insurance companies, but I would not think that very important. The regulation of public utilities seem to me the one big, important, vital change within the last twenty years. The legislature generally has power to deal with emergencies as they arise.

MR. STIMSON You would not go so far, would you, Mr. Delaney, in the line of what Mr. Bockes has suggested-you would not go so far as to put everything of this classification that you suggested into the constitution?

MR. DELANEY-I surely would.

MR. STIMSON-Wouldn't you indicate the broad, general lines and leave it to the legislature to carry them out?

MR. DELANEY-That was the policy of the last constitution. MR. STIMSON-No; the last constitution does not even indicate the lines.

MR. DELANEY-It says there shall be a commission in lunacy, and there shall be a state board of charities, and the legislature went ahead and made the State Board of Charities a non-salaried, impotent body. Any time you have left it to the legislature to legislate along these lines, they have created some new agency or other. I advocate the differentiation, and the naming of certain definite divisions of government in the constitution and the inclusion of a mandate that none other shall be created by the legislature.

MR. BOCKES-But, Mr. Delaney, I agree with you that the greatest discovery in the government in the last twenty years was that sort of investigation and control of public utilities which began about 1907, was it?

MR. DELANEY-Something like that.

MR. BOCKES-Now, if you had this governmental functioning

already regulated by the constitution, would that improvement have had a chance to develop?

MR. DELANEY-That would have been submitted to the people as an amendment to the constitution. That is the only way to increase the number of divisions of government. If it developed that the state highway construction proposition, with a hundred and one million dollars to expend, was too huge a proposition to put under the then-existing state engineer, why, the people who passed that would easily have created an agency. That is my idea.

MR. FRANCHOT-I think that possibly it would be in order to express our appreciation of Mr. Delaney's coming here at our request to give us the advantage of his technical information. I move a vote of thanks be extended to him.

THE CHAIRMAN-It is moved and seconded that a vote of thanks be extended to Mr. Delaney for coming here and giving us this information. Those in favor, say Aye. Contrary, No. It seems to be carried, and is carried.

MR. DELANEY-I thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity. I hoped I might get it, and I enjoyed it very much. I would be glad at any other time or place that you desire-to furnish you with any information I have.

THE CHAIRMAN-I thank you very much, sir.

CHAPTER VI

THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AS AN EXAMPLE

BY HON. WILLIAM HOWARD TAFT

[During the same joint session of the Constitutional Convention Committees on Finances, Revenues and Expenditures and on the Governor and Other State Officers, on June 10, 1915, at which former President William Howard Taft discussed financial methods and the need for a budget,* he described the Federal system in operation, as compared with the existing state government. His remarks and the ensuing discussion, in so far as they relate to matters of administrative organization, follow.]

HON. FREDERICK C. TANNER and HON. HENRY L. STIMSON occupied the chairs of their respective committees. Mr. Stimson introduced Mr. Taft and referred to his experience as an executive, in organizing the government of the Philippines, in the Cabinet of President Roosevelt, and as President of the United States.

MR. TANNER-Mr. President, we have a joint committee meeting to consider the subjects pending before the Committee on Governor and Other State Officers and the Committee on State Finances. If it is agreeable to you, we would like to have you speak in the order named.

The Committee on Governor and Other State Officers has made a study of the departments, commissions and boards in the executive branch of the government in New York State to-day. We have found that there are 152 of those divisions, commissions and boards, in most cases totally uncorrelated, and it seems, at least to the majority of the committee, unscientific in arrangement.

The committee for which I speak desires to get as much light as possible from the Federal system, and after that I assume that

See MUNICIPAL RESEARCH, No. 62. June, 1915. on "Budget Systems." Chapt. V., "American Financial Methods from the Executive Point of View," pp. 347-364.