Public administration partnerships in public service fifth edition. edition johnson - The latest ebo
Visit to download the full and correct content document: https://textbookfull.com/product/public-administration-partnerships-in-public-service-fif th-edition-edition-johnson/
More products digital (pdf, epub, mobi) instant download maybe you interests ...
Public administration in Canada Second Edition Barker
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America
7 6 5 4 3 2 1
I am pleased to dedicate this edition to my seven grandchildren— Alicia, Alex, Andrew, Erika, Carter, Kalin, and Rowen— with the prayer that their generation will know more peace and justice than mine has, and that they will find fruitful paths of service to others.
Preface xiii
1PublicAdministration:ThePeople’sBusiness1
Theme: A City Prepared 2
The Language of Public Administration 3
What Government Is to Do: The Public Purposes 6
Growth and Complexity of Government 9
Public Policies and the Tools for Implementation 13
The Globalization of American Public Administration 15
The Challenges of Public Service 18
Overview of This Book 21
Summary 22
2TheMosaicofAmericanGovernments25
Theme: Organizing for Affordable Medical Care 26
The Structures of Administration 27
The Constitutional Bases of Government Organization 28
The Federal Executive Branch 29
State Government Organization 38
Local and Regional Government 40
The Judiciary as Administrator 45
The Politics of Government Reorganization 46
Summary 49
3AdministrationintheFederalNetwork51
Theme: No Child Left Behind 52
The Concept and Practice of Federalism 53
How the American Federal System Evolved 54
Fiscal Federalism 60
Federal Government Mandates 63
State and Local Intergovernmental Networks 65
The Politics of Federalism 70
Summary 74
4PrivatePartnersinPublicAdministration75
Theme: FEMA’s Whole Community Approach to Emergency Management 76
The Collaborative Heritage in Public Service 77
Rationales for Public-Private Collaboration 78
Forms of Public-Private Relationships 81
Citizen Engagement in Administration 91
Faith-Based Organizations in Public Collaboration 96
Evaluation of Public-Private Collaboration 98
Summary 103
5TheDynamicsofBureaucracy105
Theme: Antithesis of Bureaucracy:
The Nation’s Medical Care System 106
Fitting Structure to Purpose 107
American Concepts of Government Organization 112
Government Organizations in Their Environments 116
Internal Dynamics of Government Organizations 118
Organizational Communication 122
Toward Reinvention of Bureaucracy 125
Summary 132
6FromPublicPurposestoPublicPolicies135
Theme: Toward a National Immigration Policy 136
Formats of Public Policies 137
The Policy Cycle 138
Power Relationships in Policy Making 150
Summary 157
7PublicExecutives:LeadingandManaging159
Theme: Francis Collins and the Scientific Transformation of Medicine 160
Executives in Government: Who They Are 161
Concepts of Leading and Managing 163
Multiple Expectations of Public Executives 166
The President and Other Federal Executives 171
State and Local Executives 175
Politics of Public Leadership and Management 178
Summary 178
8AdministrativeDecisionMaking181
Theme: Natural Disasters and Calculated Risks 182
Administrative Decision Making 183
The Search for Intelligence 184
Anticipating and Planning the Future 191
Approaches to Decision Making 197
Analytical Methods of Decision Making 200
The Politics of Administrative Choices 204
Summary 207
9PublicMoney209
Theme: What Would It Cost to Rebuild the National Infrastructure? 210
Government Spending and Revenue 211
Public Money and the Public Purposes 214
Budgets as Policy and Administrative Documents 216
The Politics of Budget Making 219
Creating the Federal Budget 222
State and Local Budgeting 225
Government Revenue 227
Managing and Reviewing Government Spending 231
Government Debt 233
Fiscal Choices in Turbulent Times 235
Summary 237
10HumanResourcesinGovernment239
Theme: Exemplary Public Servants 240
Public Servants for the Public Purposes 241
A Census and Profile of Public Servants 243
Human Resources Management 249
The Employment Process 251
Public Employee Organizations and Bargaining 258
Public Employee Rights 261
The Public Service of the Future 262
Summary 265
11GovernmentandBusiness267
Theme: Whither the Internet Economy? 268
Public Purposes and the Economic System 269
Government Promotion of Business Enterprise 270
Regulation of Business Activity 271
Government Organization for Regulation 275
Rule Making, Enforcement, and Adjudication 278
The Politics of Business Promotion and Regulation 286
Summary 291
12GovernmentandItsPublics293
Theme: Immigrants in the Administrative Net 294
The Publics of Government 295
Government’s Roles toward Its Publics 296
Civil Rights and Liberties in Public Administration 302
Government Communication with Its Publics 309
Digital Government as a Public Service 311
American Governments and International Publics 314
Rationing and Bias in Government Services 315
Summary 316
13ImplementationandEvaluation317
Theme: Where Housing Reform Falls Short 318
Government’s Bottom Line 319
Requirements for Effective Implementation 321
Evaluating Policy Outcomes and Impacts 327
Criteria for Evaluation 333
Performance Measurement 335
Challenges to Implementation and Evaluation 340
Summary 341
14PublicAccountabilityandEthicalChoices343
Theme: Wrongdoing in Government: How to Define It? How to Respond? 344
The Accountability Dilemma 345
Formal Accountability within the Executive Branch 348
Formal Accountability to External Authorities 351
Informal Means of Maintaining External Accountability 357
Informal Accountability within the Executive Branch 360
Conflicts of Interest 362
Freedom of Information and Open Government 364
Ethical Choices in the Network of Accountability 365
Summary 369
Glossary 371 Works Cited 379 Index 393
PrefacetoStudents
To study public administration today, and contemplate practicing it, you must confront the widespread distrust and disdain that the American people appear to hold toward their government. The popular media and blogs abound with revelations of government misdeeds, from the stumbling that accompanied the rollout of healthcare.gov to the “survey” of George Washington Bridge traffic to the cozy relationship between the governor of Virginia and a wealthy supporter. The positive accomplishments of administrators draw much less attention even though their day-to-day efforts, in conjunction with their private-sector partners, enable the government to perform its essential duties for the nation.
How should I express that in a textbook that represents only a small part of this vast subject? I view a textbook as a window into a realm that is much larger than we can comprehend by simply looking through it. The purpose of this window is to provide a map of what is “there” and suggest ways to explore it. Thus, although this text does not go into great detail on any one topic, it provides a comprehensive overview of the many fields into which you can delve.
An essential understanding as you view this map is that the study of public administration is not simply a matter of how governments are organized and operate. Rather, what we call the “public sector” permeates much of society, including facets that are not directly controlled or dominated by government. A complete understanding of public administration means we recognize that it encompasses a complex network of public and private relationships; thus the subtitle Partnerships in Public Service. No significant government enterprise takes place solely within the boundaries of any one organization. Important segments of public service overlap into private institutions, collaborations for which public administrators must take responsibility even though they cannot fully control them.
Those who enter such service, whether in the public or private realm, must strive to grasp the responsibilities of each sector, and build and maintain the relationships that will facilitate success. Public service is not a haven for loners or those with a drive to be “the one in charge.” There is certainly a need for leadership, but its leaders must be collaborators rather than dominators.
I urge you to take three particular personal stances toward your ongoing study of public administration. First, take on an anticipatory mind-set. This is a readiness to envision present trends extending into the future, yet anticipating surprises along the way. This book presents examples of emerging developments in technology, demography, and global linkages, with implications for our way of life that we can only partially foresee.
Second, adopt an activist mind-set. Some of you have career experience in the public sector and anticipate returning to or continuing in the field. Others view it as a possible future. Along with career choices, volunteer opportunities are abundant—building homes for Habitat for Humanity, working in a homeless shelter, tutoring school children, or participating in an environmental cleanup. Through service you learn, and through learning you become better equipped to participate in public life more thoughtfully. Your activism could also take the form of elected office and research on public issues.
Finally, assume a social justice mind-set. While people bring many personal motives into public careers, at its core public administration imparts a moral obligation. Chapter 1 introduces the theme of stewardship, the willingness and ability to earn the public trust by being an effective and ethical agent. This is not simply acting in accordance with the law, although that is vital. It also encompasses concern for the rights and well-being of all citizens, particularly those who would otherwise be neglected or disadvantaged in modern society. The ancient admonitions to care for widows and orphans extend today to the very young and old, the disabled, the dependent, and other vulnerable persons whose needs must be met by public or voluntary action.
As a final note, I wish to express my thanks to Laurie Prossnitz and the other staff members at Waveland Press for their competent editing and assistance with this edition.
AbouttheAuthor
William C. Johnson is Professor Emeritus at Bethel University, St. Paul, Minnesota, where he taught Political Science. He also taught in the graduate program in Organizational Leadership. He has a BA in Political Science from Wheaton College in Illinois, an MA in Political Science from the University of California at Berkeley, and a PhD in Political Science from Claremont Graduate University. He is also the author of Urban Planning and Politics (1997).
1
PublicAdministration
ThePeople’sBusiness
ChapterHighlights
•Theme: A City Prepared
•The Language of Public Administration
•What Government Does: The Public Purposes
•Growth and Complexity of Government
•Public Policies and the Tools for Implementation
•The Globalization of American Public Administration
•The Challenges of Public Service
•Overview of This Book
LearningObjectives
1.Define public administration and management, government, governance, and politics.
2.Identify the seven essential public purposes and give examples of each.
3.Explain the growth in size and complexity of American government.
4.Identify and define public policy and the tools of policy implementation.
5.Explain the international dimensions of American public administration.
6.Describe the key ethical values and the meaning of stewardship for public service.
7.Describe the principal-agent model and its relevance to public administration.
Theme:ACityPrepared
“When you talk about disasters, it’s all about partnerships,” according to Ken Kondo of the Los Angeles County Office of Emergency Management (Grabar 2013). Across the continent, Boston certainly demonstrated the importance of those partnerships when two bombs killed three people and maimed many others at the finish line of its marathon on April 15, 2013. The news media chronicled the methodical action by local, state, and federal law enforcement officers, aided by sharp-eyed bystanders and their social media, to identify the two suspects, track them, and ultimately capture the surviving bomber, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. That in itself was a drama in intergovernmental and public-private partnerships, which Boston rightly celebrates.
But a more important story for students of public administration was framed in the several years leading up to that date. “Emergency management personnel in the Boston region had not only been imagining such a complex scenario, they had been rehearsing it. . . . Boston is one of four U.S. cities whose all-hazards plan has been accredited by EMAP, the national emergency planning evaluation program” (Grabar 2013). Working with the Urban Shield program of Cytel Group, a private security consulting firm, Boston conducted two 24-hour worst-case scenario drills in the previous two years involving over 600
The preparedness of Boston’s emergency personnel was evident in the prompt response to the bombings near the finish line of the Boston Marathon in April 2013.
participants. “Everything that you saw happen within seconds of the explosion was all because someone thought they should be prepared for that,” said James Baker of Cytel (Grabar 2013).
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has allocated billions of dollars to large metropolitan areas that are prime targets for terrorism. Boston’s share of this in 2012 was $11 million, following many previous grants for projects including a sophisticated communications system. Collaboration and communication between local, state, and federal agencies have been very high priorities for DHS since 9/11. This effort has been broadened to include private institutions such as hospitals and providers of technologies—like the thermal sensor used to find Tsarnaev hiding in a boat parked in a driveway. The city of Boston, the state of Massachusetts, and the federal government all run emergency operations centers in that city, and success depends on each member understanding and playing its proper role.
The study of public administration encompasses much more than disaster preparation, to be sure. Yet this issue presents a reality check about public policy and administration in general. The bottom line of public administration is the efficient and effective performance of the public business and close collaboration among layers of governmental authorities and their private partners. Americans hold high expectations for their health, safety, and security even while expressing low trust and confidence in government. In countless areas of public responsibility, both successes and failures stimulate efforts to learn and do better. That partnering and learning process is the central theme of this textbook.
TheLanguageofPublicAdministration
Administration is a set of activities common to all forms of human organization that seek to accomplish chosen goals. To study public administration is to focus on the central role of government, distinct in vital ways from the private sector. This study concerns not only how government operates but also what it does and the impact on the nation. Several concepts are essential.
DefiningPublicAdministration
We can begin with a traditional but incomplete definition: the activities of government that carry out public policies and deliver public goods and services. For example, we can view medical care as a public service with policies for prevention, treatment, and financial assistance. Presumably, this service benefits not only those who are directly affected but the entire community or nation.
That definition needs expansion, however. A theme of this book is that public administration occurs not only in the activity of governmental units, but also through the actions of the private sector, either as agents of government and with its funds or alongside it as independent providers. For example, much of the provision of medical care relies on hospitals, clinics, and suppliers that constitute the nation’s medical-industrial complex and which operate
within a complex pattern of public regulation. As later chapters explain, this collaboration follows a long-standing American tradition.
Thus a more realistic definition of public administration is the enterprise by which governments and their associated private partners serve the public purposes through the delivery of goods and services. The public purposes are those functions that are defined by constitutions, laws, and popular expectations as the fundamental objectives for the exercise of government’s authority. Exhibit 1.1 lists seven purposes as critical to the well-being of a civilized and progressive society. The “goods and services” are the benefits and regulations that these relationships provide, whether to small groups of individuals or the entire populace.
Public administration may also be seen as an enterprise through which human organizations undertake tasks that are costly, innovative, or difficult to perform. This is not a simple process, obviously. Programs usually fail to meet the public purposes fully. Human knowledge and shared action are always limited and flawed, and the challenge to public administration is to construct systems that minimize those errors.
Public management is commonly used as a synonym for public administration. The term “management,” however, has a narrower connotation, focused on the day-to-day operations of organizations and their programs by following standard methods and procedures. This task is normally assigned to the middle and lower ranks of a hierarchy, even though top executives must answer for it. To be sure, proper management is an essential tool in the fulfillment of policies, and thus an equally necessary object for study. The understanding of public administration in this book encompasses the roles of all levels and fulfillment of the wider goals of government as well as its specific program objectives.
GovernmentandGovernance
A government is understood as the legal entity that is charged by a constitution to make and enforce laws and exercise the highest authority among human institutions. This can refer to national, state, or local governments individually (and this text uses the plural to refer to actions that any of them takes separately), or to all of them collectively. International organizations function as governments to the extent that they exert partial authority over a population, as in regulating trade or setting standards for global aviation traffic.
Government (or governing) is also the activity by which the laws are decided and enforced and goods and services are provided. In that sense it encompasses administration. The word “govern” originated in the Greek term for the pilot of a ship, suggesting that to govern is to steer a society’s development and make choices that shape its future.
The term governance has come into use to underscore that governing is a cooperative process, with many partners within and outside formal governments who interact to determine policies and their administration. In one sense, it is the capacity of a political community to decide what policies it shall pursue, using the powers and resources of the state. It also encompasses the ability to achieve the results it seeks, by whatever means. Both perspectives envision
the sharing of governing duties beyond the legal boundaries of governments as such. In typical situations, governance then becomes the shared responses of all affected public and private organizations to meet whatever needs arise in a timely and efficient manner. The coordinated disaster response effort in Boston offers recent evidence that this is both necessary and challenging.
Politics:TheEngineofGovernment
Governance, as just defined, is an intensely political activity. Politics is concerned with “who gets what, when, how” in a society (Lasswell 1958), decisions that inherently spark conflict over how to allocate goods and services. We can define politics as conflict and cooperation over the distribution of benefits and costs in society, which entail the exercise of power by those with the ability to influence public choices. The term “power” portrays the ability that individuals or groups have to prevail in political conflicts and secure decisions that serve their own purposes. The resources for power, such as wealth and control of information, are unevenly distributed in society and thus bias the resulting policies in favor of those who hold and wield them. Some scholars (for example, Woodrow Wilson 1887) have sought to exclude competitive power-driven politics from public administration, claiming that it prevents what ought to be a professional activity from following the objectively best practices without favor or bias.
Experience has made clear, though, that politics appears wherever there is disagreement over goals and means, even in the finest administrative details. When President Obama requested Congress to pass his health-care reforms, a host of questions had to be resolved, such as the role of private insurance companies in providing universal coverage and whether the government should take a more active role in defining acceptable treatments for given maladies. The bill that finally passed was 1,990 pages long (in PDF format), embodying countless compromises on policy particulars. Perhaps the best we can hope for is that executives and administrators can gain enough political backing to pursue what are agreed to be the best practices in designing controversial programs.
TheConstitutionalFoundation
The purposes and standards of public administration are rooted in the founding principles of this nation. The Declaration of Independence sets forth the inalienable rights of all persons, including (and not limited to) life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Governments are established to preserve these rights, and should they fail to do so, citizens can rightly choose to replace them. A democratic government rests on the “consent of the governed,” a consent that is expressed in the form of elections and the less formal ways to participate in defining the public purposes.
The United States Constitution, supplemented by those of each state, lays out additional goals: a “more perfect union,” provision of a “common defense,” and enhancement of the “general welfare.” National and state bills of rights define what the authorities must and must not do toward individual
members of society, while other sections of the Constitution grant powers to legislators, executives, and judges to carry out their duties. All governments have police power to guard the health, welfare, and safety of their people within the limits defined by law. Disaster prevention and response clearly fall into this category, even while the specific approaches are open to debate.
Public administration as such draws scarce attention in the constitutional documents, but forms the essential link between the policy choices of the three branches and the intended outcomes. Administrators and their organizations are thus like bridges that link intentions with results. Because their efforts cannot consistently achieve the results that lawmakers envision, there remains an ongoing need to learn how to do it better.
WhatGovernmentIstoDo:ThePublicPurposes
The duties of national, state, and local governments in American society form a near-infinite list. However, they can be categorized into seven public purposes, fundamental objectives that expand on the “common defense” and “general welfare.” Exhibit 1.1 displays them, with familiar examples. These purposes challenge public administrators at all levels, since to fulfill them effectively, efficiently, and without hindering other worthy efforts is practically impossible given limitations in human knowledge and organizational ability.
First and foremost, since ancient times governments have been expected to protect the lives and property of their citizens. Threats to these basic rights may arise from a hostile nation or terrorist organization, other citizens with criminal intent, natural disasters such as hurricanes and forest fires, and disease. Since 9/11 this purpose has gained new prominence, creating what Carroll has labeled the “domestic security state” (2006, 72). Its central mission is to mobilize information and resources widely across both domestic and international fronts to reduce the public vulnerability to intentional, accidental, and natural threats. Though the risk of death or property loss cannot be reduced to zero, government uses its authority and resources to minimize some threats. For example, publicly financed medical research has extended lives, while good highway design and traffic controls make travel safer.
The U.S. Constitution adds the protection of civil rights and liberties to this first public purpose, as an essential duty in a democratic society. Loss of opportunity or personal dignity can be hard to prevent. While laws aim to prevent discrimination on the basis of race, gender, religion, age, and disability in education, employment, housing, and access to services, their enforcement in marginal situations is politically difficult. Too, the incursions on civil liberties authorized under the USA Patriot Act (full name: Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001) illustrate the reach of the domestic security state into this realm.
A second historic task of government has been to maintain or ensure the supply of essential resources—food, water, shelter, energy, and medicine.
Exhibit 1.1 The Essential Public Purposes
1.Protect the lives, property, and rights of citizens
2.Maintain or ensure the supply of essential resources
Examples
National defense
Public health and disease control
Police and fire protection
Workplace safety
Disaster response
Antidiscrimination regulations
Protection of oil imports
Emergency food supplies
Water, electricity, and gas provision
Protection of information systems
3.Support people who are unable to care for themselves
4.Promote steady and balanced economic growth
5.Promote quality of life and personal opportunity to succeed
6.Protect the natural environment
7.Promote scientific and technological advancement
Pensions for the retired and disabled
Foster homes for children
Unemployment compensation
Food and nutrition aid
Interest rate regulation
Financing for new businesses
Promotion of international trade
Employment-skills training
Transportation facilities
Education, early childhood to adult
Housing assistance
Cultural amenities
Recreational facilities
Conservation of water and soils
Wildlife protection
Pollution control
Waste management
Patents for inventions
Medical research
Space exploration
Agricultural improvements
Technical education
Today, public agencies and private enterprises share this responsibility. Water is usually supplied by urban governments, and while electricity and natural gas are most often provided by private utilities, they are subject to federal and state regulation. Food and shelter are ordinarily left to commercial producers and distributors, but when Hurricane Sandy devastated the New Jersey coast, public agencies had to be the providers of last resort. Through their regulatory roles, governments also oversee the quality of many foods and medications. The third public purpose is to support those who cannot care for themselves and lack others to help them: neglected children, people with severe
mental or physical disabilities, the elderly, and unemployed. Their needs are diverse and complex; an abused child may be given sanctuary in a countyapproved foster home while a mentally ill alcoholic living in a cardboard box requires a combination of services. Guardians must be empowered to meet the basic needs of such people while respecting their dignity and legal rights. In this realm, private organizations deliver most of the services that governments mandate and pay for.
Governments at all levels have long undertaken the fourth purpose—to promote steady and balanced economic growth. They build canals, railroads, harbors, highways, and airports to stimulate business opportunities. Public policies target employment, domestic and international trade, credit supply, and rapid transportation and communication. Stimulating private economic investment has emerged as a central goal of states and cities and a politically potent measure of their performance. This requires close relationships with corporations, in which political pressure flows in both directions.
Fifth, in the past century governments have acquired a broad mission to promote quality of life and personal opportunities to succeed. Central to this effort is the provision of educational opportunities throughout the life span. This purpose took on special urgency after the 1960s, when lawmakers targeted racial, gender, and cultural disadvantages as well as mental and physical disabilities, seeking to reduce the achievement gaps they caused. “Quality of life” takes many forms, from libraries and museums to sports stadiums and public parks. Promotion of the visual and performing arts has drawn federal and local funds that enable diverse cultural groups to express themselves and cultivate an audience.
As a sixth task, governments protect the natural environment from wasteful and hazardous exploitation. From Theodore Roosevelt’s forest conservation efforts to present concerns over global warming, we have recognized that wise management of natural resources guards the nation’s material means of meeting its other goals. These efforts range from protection of wilderness areas and endangered species to strict rules on what industries can emit into the air and waters. This has a global dimension as well: Amazon rain forests and the ozone layer over Antarctica are of concern to us, and although outside the direct authority of the U.S. government, they require its participation in international policy and enforcement.
Finally, governments promote scientific and technological advancement and regulate its applications. The framers of the U.S. Constitution recognized this by mandating protection and publication of patents. Today’s efforts extend to active involvement in nuclear physics, information technology, human and plant genetics, and space exploration. Much of this research and development takes place in private corporations, but national and state governments fund a vital share of it and publicly disseminate the knowledge gained. The search for alternative energy sources and higher efficiency in their use is a centerpiece in this purpose but also is vitally related to all others.
These purposes overlap and reinforce one another. A strong education system that serves the fifth purpose really enhances the nation’s ability to achieve
each one of the other goals, since all require competent and intelligent leadership. A school system prepares individuals not only for their own success but also, ideally, to benefit the nation with their skills and understandings. For this reason, most public policies serve multiple goals. However, they also compete for the limited resources that government can devote to them. Support for schools must be weighed against cancer research, military weaponry, and prescription drugs for the elderly. Moreover, actions to fulfill one purpose may contradict another. Steps to improve job opportunities for women and minorities may diminish openings for white males, and protection of a pristine wilderness in Alaska prevents the nation from gaining the oil that may lie underneath it.
GrowthandComplexityofGovernment
President Clinton once stated that the “age of big government” is over. Not so! All the evidence from the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama points to its continued growth. Yet, that growth is steadily taking on new directions, as the traditional boundaries between the public and private sectors are constantly being reconfigured.
WhyGovernmentHasGrown
As governments responded to the expansion of public purposes, they themselves grew in size and complexity. In the 1790s, the federal government had annual budgets of less than $10 million and employed fewer than 3,000 people, most of them as clerks, customs collectors, and mail carriers. State and local governments were even less imposing.
The size of today’s public sector can be measured in several ways. The federal government now spends more than $3.5 trillion a year and directly employed nearly 2.8 million civilians in 2012. The more than 87,000 state and local governments spend another $3.1 trillion and have more than 19 million employees. Some in the latter group work on such federal grant programs as Medicaid and so are federal employees by proxy. On top of those are the uncounted numbers in the private sector who carry out many service functions and are paid with public funds as contractors or grantees.
We cannot so easily measure the reach of public authority into society, which ranges from the smoking bans that many cities have imposed on bars and restaurants to the methods by which the National Security Agency (NSA) gains information on personal activities and communications. The public purposes are so all-encompassing that it is reasonable to question whether any realm remains solely in “private” life. This makes it all the more essential that citizens keep the public sector within bounds and hold its officers accountable for what they do and fail to do.
We can attribute this growth in government to several factors. First, this nation has urbanized and industrialized with transportation and information technologies that closely link widely dispersed areas. Cities need tighter control of land uses and more police and fire protection than rural communities,
and industries require regulation to protect the public from harmful market practices. The invention of the steam engine, followed by the automobile and the airplane, has given birth to innumerable services and regulations. Government expansion was unavoidable for a society that chose to live in cities and sought orderly application of its technological potentials.
Another perspective places the United States in a global context, competing with other nations for security and prosperity. In the twentieth century, we faced the demands of preparing for and fighting worldwide wars, and the twenty-first century poses threats of terrorism and cybercrime from nongovernmental sources. Such intense effort requires central mobilization and management of our resources to match that of our partners and adversaries. The size of the military establishment and its budget greatly affects the civilian economy as well.
Popular demands to make life more secure and convenient have spawned many programs. The biggest single spender in the federal budget is the Social Security Administration, whose programs date back to 1935. Retirement benefits for the elderly and support for the disabled fill a gap that became painfully obvious during the Great Depression of that decade. Basic benefits for the unemployed were also added to the federal budget. Guarantees of medical care for the elderly and the poor also consume a large share of federal and state funds. Essentially, these programs have transferred part of the normal risks of living from individual and family responsibility to the public sphere.
Government programs also grow from a moral obligation to help those who cannot make politically potent demands—the poor, victims of discrimination, and the mentally and physically disabled. As the nation entered the 1960s, it was confronted by portrayals of those whom prosperity had bypassed. Coupled with the growing militancy of the civil rights movement and the urban riots of that decade, these messages spurred the nation to expand economic opportunities and legal equality. Although these movements later diminished, the underlying problems linger, and governments still fund a host of such programs.
Citizens often view government as the problem solver of last resort, ready to step in when private institutions cannot cope with a problem to their satisfaction. Public authority may not be able to remedy the problem either, but people want at least a degree of progress. Once such a program is established, its beneficiaries mount a strong political defense on its behalf and so make it difficult to reduce spending on it. Although opinion polls show that many believe that government in general is too big and expensive, they also indicate that most respondents want to maintain or even increase domestic benefit programs. The fear of disease, from cancer to AIDS, along with the threat of not being able to afford adequate care, have led to the expansion of Medicare, Medicaid, and medical research. These programs are expected to fuel continued growth in federal and state budgets.
Another perspective lays the cause of government growth at the feet of ambitious bureaucrats and legislators. In this view, the very existence of a program spurs its preservation and expansion, and those who oversee a department instinctively seek a larger budget and greater powers. Even a program’s
failure can support an argument for growth if its partisans can convince lawmakers that it was not big enough to do the job. Legislators, wishing to serve their constituents (and thus to retain their votes), are happy to oblige. This benefit may then appear in the form of a highway, health program, business subsidy, or neighborhood park. Members of Congress, both liberals and conservatives, have long channeled such funds to their states and districts.
All of these explanations for growth have some validity, though varying with the time and situation. These influences are interdependent, shaping one another as they enlarge government as a whole. The growth trend has been strongest in state and local governments, where the increase in educational employment has exceeded the rate of growth in enrollments, and law enforcement and corrections have mushroomed to counter the dysfunctions of society. Despite efforts of conservatives to cut government’s size and the many efficiency-seeking reform efforts that this text describes, these forces have fueled inexorable growth.
WhyGovernmentIsSoComplex
This growth of government has multiplied the enterprises that governments at all levels undertake to meet public needs and demands. Light (2008, 24–27) catalogued 553 laws, grouped into fifty program categories, enacted in the period 1943–2000. Each of them required some expansion of the administrative structure. Of this listing, Light concluded:
Congress has never stopped asking the federal service to do more, even when it refuses to provide the resources to fulfill each promise. The result is a mission that is simultaneously expanding and starving. Insulated from any public pressure to do more with enough, the expanding federal mission can only reinforce views that government is failing to perform. (2008, 29–30)
In doing this, Congress has paid little attention to the overall structure or to how each mission relates to the others. Indeed, that institution is so preoccupied with demands for new laws and programs that any concern for current functioning can be only sporadic.
An attempt in 2013 by the Office of Management and Budget to count all the current federal programs yielded the sum of 1,600. The Government Accountability Office had previously defined a “program” as “an organized set of activities directed toward a common purpose or goal that an agency undertakes or proposes to carry out its responsibilities.” In OMB’s count, the Department of the Interior led the list with about 200 programs, the Department of Commerce had 70, and the Department of Agriculture with 59 (Kamensky 2013). Add to these the comparable programs of even one state, like California, some of which interact with the federal efforts, and their complexity is further multiplied. That they pose serious questions about the efficiency and rationality of their financing and management is obvious. The sidebar on page 12 offers an example of this kind of complexity by looking at the question of what is “rural” when it comes to determining which communities are eligible for federal grants.
Public Administration in Practice
What Is “Rural” and Who Gets the Money?
Congress has established more than a dozen programs providing some $37 billion a year to aid communities and areas labeled “rural,” and several agencies, especially within the Department of Agriculture, are delegated to administer them. The complexity here arises in the fifteen distinct definitions of “rural” that Congress has specified; a community that is eligible for one program may be too large for another. These programs benefit housing, community centers, sewer plants, broadband connections, and a host of other improvements. But one program may limit benefits to communities with fewer than 2,500 people, while another sets the upper limit at 50,000.
An example is the need for a refrigerated truck to deliver food to low-income families in outlying areas of Yolo County, California. That county meets the definition of rural for this particular program. However, the director of the county’s food bank planned to park the truck in a safe location at the food bank’s office in the county seat in Woodland—and that city’s population is 56,000, not “rural” under the definition. If the truck were parked outside the city’s limits, it would qualify, but the director was concerned about theft. The director did not apply for the grant, knowing it would be denied.
The blame for this complexity rests with Congress. Over the years, it established new rural development programs—each with its own definition of rural. No attention was given to standardizing the definitions even within agencies. This is especially frustrating to local officials who must sift through programs to determine which grants they can receive and which they cannot.
Rural programs are not the only source of definitional confusion. Acts of Congress always specify who is eligible for what benefits, and administrators have the demanding task of applying these limits to individuals, businesses, and communities, opening the door to some and closing it to others. Too, they must explain the distinction to those left outside, not a pleasant duty. This small example of policy complexity is far from the only one.
Source: Fahrenthold 2013.
The complexity of government has three major dimensions, according to Kettl (2009, 136). The first is the cumulating trend toward privatization, the intricate and uncounted connections between public institutions and the business and nonprofit sectors. Public functions are entrusted to many players, resulting in loss of control and accountability by the elected national, state, and local officials. Second is the role of federalism; that is, the distribution of national functions to the many state and local units of government, each with its own political and financial environment. The third dimension is globalization: the relations of the United States with its many global partners, rivals, and possibly enemies and the economic, political, social, and technological forces that constantly reshape the world scene. Salamon describes it as “third-party government in which crucial elements of public authority are shared with a host of nongovernmental or other-governmental actors, frequently in complex collaborative systems that sometimes defy comprehension, let alone effective management and control” (2002, 2). Truly, no one is “in charge” sufficiently to grasp, let alone command, global relationships. Each of these points is discussed and illustrated in subsequent chapters.
PublicPoliciesandtheToolsforImplementation
Public purposes must be framed in specific policies to have any effect on the nation’s people. Such policies are the chosen actions intended to serve these purposes. They therefore target a desired outcome and the means for its achievement. Governments use many different instruments to implement policies, and the choice of one or another can be vital to a program’s success. These instruments can be thought of as tools, each with its unique political and administrative features and uses. Salamon defines a tool of public policy as “an identifiable method through which collective action is structured to address a public problem” (2002, 19). Each of these tools consists of (1) a tangible good or activity that government provides, (2) a means by which it is delivered to those who benefit from it, (3) one or more organizations that provide it, and (4) a body of rules and policies that control its delivery and use (Salamon 2002, 20). Exhibit 1.2 summarizes seven tools that governments commonly use.
The first tool, most familiar to citizens, is direct service by government employees. We see this in public school teaching, mail delivery by the U.S. Postal Service, inspection of meat-packing facilities, and extinguishing of forest fires. Private businesses and nonprofit organizations also could supply many of these services, but lawmakers have seen in them a unique public interest that justifies such direct provision. Congress chose in 2001 to have the security work at airports performed by federal civil servants rather than by employees of private firms, largely because of the immediate control that a government agency could exercise.
A second tool consists of monetary payments to individuals. State departments of public assistance write checks to low-income households. The U.S. Department of Agriculture subsidizes growers of many kinds of crops. Such direct redistribution of income provides a basic standard of living to “deserving” people or promotes the health of a vital sector of the economy. In determining how much to pay, laws set eligibility and general formulas, while administrators select recipients and determine payment amounts. A local Social Secu-
Exhibit 1.2 Tools of Public Policy
1.Direct government: goods and services provided by government organizations and employees.
2.Monetary payments to individuals defined as worthy, to serve a social purpose.
3.Construction and maintenance of infrastructures that serve the public.
4.Regulation of individual and corporate behavior: requirements and restrictions on private choices and actions.
5.Financial incentives and other means to induce citizens to act in publicly desirable ways.
6.Messages that exhort citizens to act for personally or publicly beneficial ends.
7.Enlistment of private organizations in partnerships that provide desired services.
rity employee must decide whether an applicant is sufficiently disabled to draw payments. Thus, although dispatching checks to recipients’ bank accounts is routine, the decision making that precedes it may call for sensitive judgments.
Third, governments implement policies through the construction and maintenance of infrastructures for public use. Included in this process are decisions to build and maintain a given facility; where to locate it; how to finance, design, and manage it; and how much to charge users. When the facilities need repair or replacement, additional decisions compare options to determine which is most urgent or feasible. A new infrastructure can generate many other policy demands as well. When the nation chose in the 1950s to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in the interstate and urban freeway network, it committed itself to uncounted choices on location of routes and interchanges, standards of construction, and means of financing. After the roads were in place, governments faced many further decisions on land-use control, vehicle safety, and pollution abatement, not to mention the explosive development of metropolitan suburbs. These issues remain on public agendas today. Large commercial airports pose similar demands on state and local as well as national policy.
Regulation of individual and corporate behavior is a fourth tool for accomplishing public purposes, saying “you must” or “you must not.” Criminal laws ban actions that threaten life, property, and social order. Many more civil laws specify how homes are built, people marry and divorce, doctors practice medicine, and corporations relate to their employees, customers, and stockholders. This process is more uniquely governmental than the previous ones, since only public authority can impose such regulations and penalize noncompliance. Only government, acting by due process of law, can execute a person for murder, and only government can prevent occupation of a building that lacks proper fire safety features. Chapter 11 examines this tool more fully for the realm of business regulation.
A fifth set of tools provides incentives to citizens to act in certain desired ways. These tools often seek to expand the capacity and willingness of individuals and groups to make decisions or carry out publicly beneficial activities which they could not do otherwise (Schneider and Ingram 1990, 517). The enablement provided may be the deduction of mortgage interest from taxes to encourage home ownership, training in skills to enter the workforce, or a loan to make one’s home or business more energy efficient. No compulsion is involved; these tools assume that people are motivated to act in these ways and need only the public incentive to take the final step.
In the sixth category are so-called hortatory tools, or messages that exhort people to act in certain ways. These may be public relations campaigns to stop smoking, prepare to survive natural disasters, exercise and eat wisely, immunize children, and recycle paper, glass, and electronics. Use of these tools assumes that people will benefit from practicing these admonitions and will respond to specific appeals. Thaler and Sunstein (2008, 6) call them “nudges,” efforts that alter people’s behavior in somewhat predictable ways without either requiring or forbidding the action by law or other compulsion. They are imbedded in “choice architecture,” the policy environment that influences
Another random document with no related content on Scribd:
The Project Gutenberg eBook of Fifty years hence: or, What may be in 1943
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
Title: Fifty years hence: or, What may be in 1943
Author: Robert Grimshaw
Release date: May 15, 2022 [eBook #68096]
Language: English
Original publication: United States: Practical Publishing Company, 1892
Credits: Charlene Taylor, David E. Brown, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.) *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FIFTY YEARS HENCE: OR, WHAT MAY BE IN 1943 ***
BY ROBERT GRIMSHAW.
PRACTICAL PUBLISHING CO.
21 P R 1892
C , 1892,
BY ROBERT GRIMSHAW
To MY CHILDREN,
Who may perchance, fifty years hence, compare these prophecies with what has then come about.
FIFTY YEARS HENCE.
FIFTY YEARS HENCE.
“Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.”
—Locksley Hall.
That portion of the public which honors me by perusing what I have been fortunate enough to learn concerning the future of the inhabitants of this planet, half a century from this Christmas of 1892, will naturally, as my name is unknown to either fame or science, wonder on what grounds I presume on so bold an undertaking; perhaps what manner of man I might be.
But when I positively disclaim any merit or virtue as a prophet, and state that I am merely by chance the medium by which a portion of the veil is torn from the future, it is enough that I describe myself, as referred to in sundry recitals, as Francis Ainsworth, of the City and County of New York. Perhaps I might add that I am by choice an electrician, by birth a Pennsylvanian, in age twenty-one, and by no fault of my own still unmarried. For some years I have been endeavoring to save enough to enable me to marry my lifelong friend Estelle Morton, of Philadelphia; but as I have a family of small sisters to support out of my salary and what I can earn by extra work, the period of our engagement has been prolonged beyond the time of even our least sanguine calculations. Nearly all my evenings are spent at home, within the sound of the Jefferson Market clock; for I have chosen the Ninth Ward because it is even yet an American stronghold, because it is convenient to my place of business, and because it is better than it looks, which is preferable to looking better than facts warrant.
Once a month, however, I am sure to be at the meeting of my Masonic lodge in the Temple, at Twenty-third Street; for I feel that
there I am in contact with both the living present and the dead past; and the Mystic Tie seems well worth critical study.
One evening as I was about to enter the side portal on the Avenue, a ragged newsboy offered, at more than the regular price, some “extras” containing an account of some great financial upheaval in Europe. The man by my side objected to paying an exorbitant price for the hastily-issued and noisily-cried sheet, saying to his companion: “Now, if he would bring me to-morrow’s news, Trask, I wouldn’t mind paying a good round sum for it.” The auburn-haired Past Master, who is seamed with the scars of battle in “The Street,” replied, more in earnest than in jest: “I would readily pay a thousand dollars for a knowledge for what will happen to-morrow, and a million if it were exclusive.” “On that basis,” said a man ahead, who was just stepping into the elevator, “what would it be worth to know what is to happen fifty years hence?” “Oh,” said Trask, “I suppose it would be reasonably safe to offer any price at all for the performance of an impossibility; and for that matter, any one impossibility is just as unreasonable to ask as any other. It’s hard enough to be sure of what happened fifty years ago, let alone diving into the news of fifty years hence.”
“It is not so impossible as you think,” quietly remarked a gentleman at my side, who seemed a stranger to all of the rest. “It can be done, if one has patience, judgment, time and means.”
As we meet all sorts of people in the world at large, it is not unreasonable to expect a fair variety among Free Masons, who, while held to a uniform belief in certain things, and to unvarying actions in others, have the freest living, compatible with a charitable and upright walk, in all others; consequently, even so radical a remark as that, and even one so gravely uttered, exacted no comment, and scarcely a glance from any, other than one of courteous recognition that the speaker had addressed his companions.
He was a distinguished looking man, even in a Masonic temple, where men of commanding presence, men of dignified bearing, men of venerable appearance and men of philosophical habit, are by no
means uncommon. Although but of medium height, his carriage was such as to give him the appearance of a tall man. His eyes were dark, full, luminous, and wide apart; the nose strong, straight and with large nostrils; the mouth small, firm and flexible. A still luxuriant head of wavy white hair, long white mustaches, and beard falling full and untrimmed upon his breast, imparted a distinguished and venerable appearance. His erect form was slender although evidently well-muscled, even at his age, which seemed seventy or thereabouts. His dress was neat and inconspicuous; the materials evidently of excellent quality, although of a fashion long gone out of date.
We entered the lodge-room almost together, and like myself, he took a seat near the door.
To the work for this evening there was lent unusual interest by the presence of a Masonic celebrity, revered in two hemispheres, who had been invited to give us the benefit of the stores of learning for the possession of which he was noted, and of the wise counsel which he ever gave to those younger and less well-informed in Masonic matters.
The eloquent speaker having held us spell-bound by his masterful presentation of the teachings of symbolic Masonry, in a flight of oratory carried us back to the days and works of Solomon the King, of Hiram Abiff, and of that other Hiram, King of Tyre; and in the first great Temple which those early Master Masons builded twenty-nine centuries previously, traced for us, in form, size and position of timber and metal—in tool, and time, and work, noble lessons of manhood and virtue; of brotherhood and helpfulness; of contemplation and self-restraint, until each one addressed felt that he, too, was proud of being a Free and Accepted Master Mason, and emulous of being a credit to his ancient craft.
In the building of that majestic, beauteous, mystic Temple, “No hammers fell, no ponderous axes rung;
Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung. Majestic silence!”
His descriptive powers, his witching imageries, held us spell-bound. But at one point the speaker paused, saying that here there seemed to be something well worth knowing, but which the centuries had hidden. It was evidently replete with symbolism of highest order; but the key to its mysteries was unfortunately lost. Some day, perhaps, the light of investigation might penetrate the gloom in which the mystery was enwrapped—if, indeed, those better versed in the craft had not already solved the interesting problem.
The point referred to was one of those in which occult ratio and mystic beauty of proportion unfold on every hand new virtuous teachings. It was so rich in reminder and suggestion, no matter from what side viewed, that its consideration roused the enthusiasm of all hearers.
When the speaker ceased, the quiet little gentleman next me seemed as one filled with inspiration.
“... With grave Aspect he rose, and in his rising seemed A pillar of state; deep on his front engraven Deliberation sat.”
In a well-modulated voice which had evidently been one of great power and beauty, he asked permission to endeavor to cast some light, however feeble, upon so interesting a subject. Something in the quiet dignity of his bearing, in the classic precision of his diction, and the graceful modulation of his voice, attracted all with more than usual force to the new speaker.
“... his look Drew audience and attention still as night Or Summer’s noontide air.”
He said that in order to find the fullest measure of symbolism in this, as in other Temple mysteries, we must go further than the Temple walls and question the inner chambers of the pyramids—we must ask of the Shepherd Kings what Solomon and the two Hirams told
them not. The point was beautifully elucidated both in itself and in its relation to others, so that its increased richness of allusion and teaching became at once surprisingly manifest.
Evidently all present felt that a master of the mysteries of the buried centuries was among us—and in gesture and expression all asked “the old man eloquent” to continue, and to give his views upon the work of those Shepherd Kings to whom he had so appositely alluded.
So far as I can remember the facts which he laid before us, and fill up gaps in my memory, by reference to standard authorities, he spoke as follows:—
“The Hykshos or Shepherd Kings came suddenly into this land of mystery; came with a purpose, which purpose accomplished, they departed speedily. That purpose, for which they travelled so far, was to build the great pyramid, a unique, symbolic, and prophetic structure, ‘star-y-pointing,’ raised on a site chosen from the whole surface of the earth by reason of its unique, its solitary fitness. That building, type of the ever-during gates of heaven, wonderfully symbolized the mystic wisdom of its time; imperishably recorded the principal facts in metrology, meteorology and astronomy, and prophetically embodied the discoveries of ages then to come. Temple and town have gone to the ground, but it has endured. It was the precursor of the great symbolic Temple of Solomon, built by the descendants of those shepherd builders, students of the heaven’s wide pathless way, and which although destroyed, could be reconstructed by the measures and dimensions familiar to our mystic craft, and recorded in that great book of symbols, the Bible.
“Now, the dimensions and rhythmic proportions on which Solomon, on which Hiram, King of Tyre, and on which Hiram Abiff builded the wondrous Temple, were enshrined in the Great Pyramid just five hundred years before.
“The Temple diagram, conceived under the starry cope of heaven, is made by drawing on a diameter of 1,000 inches, a circle, about which and in which is described a square, again a circle and a square circumscribed. The areas of the various squares and circles
here drawn, equal those of the porch of Solomon’s Temple (125,000 square inches), of the holy place (500,000 square inches) and the Holy of Holies; the latter of which is encircled in a nest of circles and squares and the original radius of which, five hundred inches, was the whole length of the Holy of Holies itself.
“Now let us retrace our steps through five centuries and enter the great monument of Chem, to obey the prophetic mandate of the angel to the holy St. John, and ‘arise and measure the temple and its altar.’
“In the king’s chamber the volume of a certain portion of the room equals fifty times that of the coffer—the relation of the ark to the brazen sea in the Temple. Drawing the diagram of the pyramid to a scale having as the height, the mean height of the king’s chamber (232.52 inches), the magistral line is 412.13 inches, or the length of the chambers. The base of the triangle is the number of days in a year, 365.24 inches, and the radius of that circle having an area of 365.24 inches squared, is 206.06 inches, or the width of the chamber. Constructing a pyramid triangle of height equal to the width of the chamber, the magistral line of the completed pyramid is the year number 365.24 inches—the perimeter of the base, double the two other important chamber dimensions—the length, 412.13 inches, and the second height, 235.24 inches. The entire pyramid design comports with that of the chamber, and those of the coffer and of the ante-chamber, which is in fact the ante-chamber to modern civilization.
“Leave the great step at the southern end of the Grand Gallery—a yard high and a yard plus a cubit wide—and we find stretching across the ante-chamber a granite leaf, of two blocks slid in vertical grooves. On the upper of these blocks is the only ornament in the pyramid—a boss, nearly semi-circular in face—exactly an inch high and an inch in westerly displacement from the centre of the leaf. The cubic contents of this inch-high boss are one pint. Its volume of water weighs just one pound. The inch, the pint, the pound, so often changed, so often lost; restored by one method and verified after such restoration, by the boss on the leaf which bars the way in the ante-chamber! The base of the boss is a chord of five inches or a
span; its centre one sacred cubit or five spans from the hidden end of the leaf. The top block, apparently irregular in upper outline, is 41.2 inches long, 15.7 wide, and 48.57 in mean height, giving a contents in cubic inches of 31,415.9-၊-, which contains the relation between the diameter and the circumference of a circle. The lower block has a contents of exactly one-fourth of the coffer, or an AngloSaxon ‘quarter’. On this leaf, by reference to the boss, we find also recorded or prophesied the twenty-four inch gauge and the threefoot rule, as well as that sacred cubit of twenty-five inches, which is commensurable with the polar diameter of the earth.
“The base of the boss is five, the central one of the nine digits, a number so hated by the Egyptians, even of the present day, as to be marked by them with a 0 on their watches—but the sacred number of the Shepherd Kings, who embodied it in the five-sided, fiveangled, five-proportioned monument which they came so far to build, and which was the key to the proportions and dimensions of that Temple in which the five books of Moses were sacred to a people who left the land of their oppressors, five abreast, ‘with high hands,’ with outspread fingers, flaunting their number in the faces of the Egyptians, to whom it brought so much bad luck.
“From the Pentalpha or five-pointed star may be reproduced the pyramid and the Temple proportions and those of the perfect human body—for this being inscribed in a circle, the centre of the star and circle being at the pubis, the arms and legs spread out easily just reach the points of the star—the centre of the breast being midway from the pubis to the crown of the head, and the base of the kneecap midway from the pubis to the sole of the foot. The pyramid diagram gives the correct proportions of the human body with equal exactness and detail.”
I felt attracted to this man who drew so freely from an apparently inexhaustible mental storehouse, and who so logically connected facts as to weave from mere numbers so wondrous a fabric; but I dared not intrude my callow personality upon one so well-rounded. As we went down the smooth stone steps, his foot slipped, and he would have fallen headlong had I not been fortunate enough to catch
and support him. Even as it was, he wrenched his foot, so that he gladly accepted my proffered assistance to his car.
It turned out that he, too, went down town, although further than I; and we entered the same surface car. He honored me by a request for an exchange of cards; and on the one which he handed me I read the name “Roger Brathwaite”; no address being given, although I learned from him that he resided in one of those old wards, once fashionable, where still a few old-fashioned people of means live in commodious old dwellings, and refuse to be crowded out by factory and warehouse, be they never so lofty and noisy by day, never so lonely and gloomy by night.
Some three weeks later, I met Brathwaite in the street, and in walking with him, for a few blocks, learned that he had been a friend of my grandfather—whose name I bore in full. He told me that he had been inquiring concerning me, of my employers, and of others; and that he had had such good reports that he wished me to call upon him the next afternoon, at the address which he now gave, and where, he remarked, he wished to make a business proposition which might be to my advantage.
It is needless to say that before the hour appointed, I bent my steps towards the place of meeting.
The house was one of those ugly comfortable-looking four-story and basement brick structures, with generous doors and wide and abundant windows, which the wealthy New Yorker of three generations ago, be he merchant prince or landed proprietor, built for himself and intended for his descendants, but which have been crowded out of notice by towering factories, storehouses and tenement buildings. Its wide granite steps and curiously-wrought iron railings, its great doorway, upheld by pairs of fluted pillars enclosing narrow lights at each side of the silver-handled single door, and capped by a semi-circular transom, whispered of the quiet dignified early days of the century; while the puffing of the exhaust steam across the way, and the snarling and buzzing of the machinery in the piano factory next door, spoke of its noisy and commonplace close.
Musk-rose and woodbine formerly luxuriated in its garden; star-proof elms once threw blue-tinted moonlight shadows on its nowmellowing walls; and high-bred dames once trod with dainty feet its smooth and polished floors. The glory of the neighborhood, like that of Ichabod, had departed—but the scrupulous neatness of the old mansion stood out among the dirt and squalor of its surroundings.
In response to my ring, the door was opened by a grave and quiet maid-servant of the olden school; capped, aproned and slippered, with gray hairs thickly sprinkling the brown. On learning my name she directed me to ascend to the study in the fourth story, where I would have no difficulty in finding the master of the house.
As I passed up the wide staircase trod by so many feet now motionless, I could see through the open doors, as well as in all the halls, shelves upon shelves of closely-packed books, and long tables and racks in great numbers, laden with what seemed maps and charts of nothing in particular, or things in general. It was evident, however, that whatever archives these were, they were numerous, well arranged, and of great diversity of age and subject.
The fourth story reached, I found myself in a great loft-like apartment, covering nearly the entire floor, and filled, like those below it, with book-laden cases, and tables thickly strewn with charts and great portfolios.
My host received me with the grave sweet courtesy which sat so well upon him, and begged me to permit him for a few moments to put the finishing touches upon a piece of work, before entering upon the matter concerning which he had, as he put it, done himself the honor to ask me to confer with him.
“While I complete my work,” said he, “look about you. Note well my friends of all ages, in whose company I have passed many busy years. They are ‘the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time.’ Around them, with tendrils strong as flesh and blood, my pastime and my happiness have grown. Milton said: ‘A good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life,’ and I have found it so. Browning wrote —and mark well that a hidden import lies in his words:
“‘Books are men of higher stature, And the only men who speak aloud for future times to hear.’”
I availed myself of the opportunity to look about me, and as the charts seemed but a meaningless tangle of long and short lines of black and the three primary colors, parallel and interlacing, I betook myself to an inspection of the book-shelves, each plainly lettered with the class of its contents. I could see that the works here were mainly historical, and arranged in divisions corresponding to periods and epochs in the world’s history.
Here for instance in the section of Modern History, and in that division devoted to the Formation of Distinct Nationalities were Longman’s “Lectures on English History,” Michelet’s “History of France,” Brougham’s “England and France Under the House of Lancaster,” Edgar’s “Wars of the Roses,” Kirk’s “Charles the Bold,” and scores of other histories proper, to say nothing of Botta’s “Dante,” Campbell’s “Life of Petrarch,” and similar works throwing light on men and manners between 1300 and 1490 A. D. The shelves belonging to “The Age of the Great Discoveries” were loaded with Major’s “Life of Prince Henry of Portugal,” Irving’s “Life and Voyages of Columbus,” and “Voyages and Discoveries of the Companions of Columbus,” Prescott’s “Ferdinand and Isabella,” Ranke’s and D’Aubigné’s histories of the Reformation, Prescott’s “Conquests of Mexico and Peru,” and all those other standards which tell of men and events from 1490 to 1530. The system was perfect; the manner in which it was carried out, wonderful.
I had no time to observe more, for Brathwaite having completed some careful plotting upon a chart which covered a long table, rose and led me to a seat near his desk, where, his earnest eyes gleaming with a strange sense of power, his rich voice vibrant with magnetism, he thus addressed me:—
“The other evening you heard the comments of our brethren as to the great money value of a knowledge of the near future; but not one word was said as to what an incalculable boon to the human race would be the revelation of the general condition of men, morals, law, liberty, and all things great and small, at each decade yet to come.
