Developments in Public Administration, 1929

Extract

American public administration continues to be the subject of an unparalleled degree of attention. In an address before the Governmental Research Conference in November, 1929, surveying administrative progress, Dr. Luther Gulick declared: “As a nation, we have adopted in conspicuous degree the habit of research. This is a milestone in our progress.” Our intense preoccupation with our administrative institutions is undoubtedly in part a reflection of their imperfection, but in part also a typical American conviction that there are no discoverable limits, as yet, to the opportunity for perfection.

On a national scale, the present tendency is signalized by the appointment by President Hoover of the National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement, on the basis of whose first reports the President recommended, among other things, the transfer of the prohibition unit from the Treasury Department to the Department of Justice, modification of federal court structure to relieve congestion, and consolidation of frontier services. The President has also called a White House Conference on Child Health and Protection, which is to meet in 1930, and for which much preparatory investigation was carried on in 1929. More recently, the President appointed a Commission on Social Trends, and directed it to present an analysis of social movements broadly parallel to the study of recent economic trends. Several units of this study will be devoted to aspects of public administration.

An enlarged program of research in public administration was inaugurated at the University of California under the direction of Professor Samuel C. May, with the assistance of a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation.