By “The Social Sciences and Public Administration,” the title assigned me by Professor Clokie, I am assuming he meant “Special Teaching in the Social Science Departments of Canadian Universities for Students Contemplating the Civil Service as a Career,” which is both more definitive and (being of eight words or over) even long enough for copyright. It is to “lead off” a symposium on “Training for Public Administration,” a vasty frame of reference indeed, taking in (some might go so far as to think) a course in the great school of Practical Politics itself.

Insinuating this role upon me, Professor Clokie pointed out that I had been a long time in the Public Service, and was now a teacher in a university. It is the logic of the redoubtable Pott, Mr. Pickwick's editor-friend, on Chinese metaphysics—an impregnable logic, says Mr. Bernard Shaw. In my case, however, whilst I was undoubtedly in the Service a long time indeed, at Toronto I am only what is called a “Visiting Professor,” i.e., one who lectures merely on what he knows, and can be let out at any time. Moreover, that new flower, the Course in Public Administration, which (again in the search for the particular) seems to represent a fortiori the “special teaching” aforesaid, was unknown in my generation as a student, and late-blooming in my generation as a civil servant. But one must not let one's style be cramped, and today therefore I take it as a sort of text, if only in the grand manner to which educationally speaking so old-fashioned a civil servant is accustomed.

The quality of the administration in a municipal government is probably more dependent on the quality of the officers and employees than is the case in either of the senior levels of government, for there is not that constant daily supervision of the work of the permanent personnel which obtains where the various departments operate under the full time direction of a member of the elected body. It is probable also, although one of those things which cannot be proven with exactitude, that the permanent personnel in the higher ranks in municipal service has more influence upon the policies of the elected body than is the case in either the provinces or the Dominion.

The purpose of my remarks is to raise for your consideration some thoughts with respect to the possibilities of public administration training at the municipal level and to outline briefly what is being done in the matter. It is not necessary here for me to argue the desirability of the aims of such training.

In considering what might be done it is necessary to keep in mind the circumstances of employment peculiar to the municipal field, some of which are advantageous to our purpose and some are not. It is difficult to generalize with respect to municipal problems because the range is so great. In the Province of Ontario for example, we have over 900 organized municipalities varying from a township with an assessed population of 78 and a total tax levy of $1,692 per annum to a city of 674,000 people with an annual tax levy of over $29 million. Consequently, we have a wide variation in the problems of administration. The public employees in municipal government fall into two general groups. There are those who are employed on a part time basis, usually at a very low salary, and whose public employment is not their main source of livelihood. These occur in the smaller or rural municipalities and probably form the larger portion of the total number. There are also those who are employed on a full time basis, who are paid a reasonable (?) salary and among whom are many extremely competent administrators.

The question of training for administrative posts in the Public Service gives rise to certain questions regarding administration in general, and public administration in particular. What do we mean by administration? Does public administration differ from private administration? What qualities are necessary to make a good public administrator? Can training aid in the development of these qualities? If so, what form should it take? And how can it best be given?

“Administration” has been defined as “the performance of the executive duties of an institute or business”; and “public administration” as “the activities of the executive departments in the conduct of government.” “Executive duties” as related to public administration have again been defined as “pertaining to the execution of the country's laws,” and for the purpose of this discussion, we can perhaps agree that the public administration which we have in mind consists of the carrying out of the law in the various departments of government.

Are there fundamental differences between this form of administration and that which prevails in private business? There are at least certain distinctive elements in each. In industry the profit motive is a much more important factor than it is in government. Similarly the question of remuneration bulks more largely in private industry than it does in public administration. While the old conception of a post in the Public Service as “a job for life and a pension afterward” may have passed away, the financial rewards at present attached to administrative positions in the Public Service are not such as to render the public administrator subject to what Seneca speaks of as the most fertile source of human sorrow, namely, great possessions. A public servant, on the other hand, must be much more responsive to public opinion than his counterpart in industry. He must not only carry out a policy but must sense whether or not that policy meets with public approval. He is subject at all times to public criticism and to investigations as to his acts, and this factor has a determining effect upon his methods of administration to a greater degree than exists in industry.

I have little to add to this discussion for the simple reason that my colleague, Dr. Coats, has said much of what I wanted to say, said it more interestingly, with a Dorothy Dix touch which I, in my academic restraint, cannot give, and also said it with more authority because of his long and distinguished public service. I can do little more than underscore a few broad propositions.

My first proposition is an emphasis upon the basic fact that public administration is the administration of the state, and not simply the administration of individual departments of government. It has to deal with the management of the state in its aggregated activities, and hence broadly with the whole subtle art of government. The tone of that management never depends simply upon what industrious and zealous civil servants in their offices may do, or how they may do it, but, among other things, upon the effective organization of parliamentary committees, the conscience and intelligence of their members, the modes of planning parliamentary work, and even the quality of discussion within the conclaves of parties, or the antics and verbal orgies of the demagogue in public debate. The genuine and profitable study of public administration in a democratic state cannot be narrower than the broad frame of government, if we are to appreciate duly the ultimate end sought—the competent management of the state. One phase of national government, designated by text-book writers as the administrative, cannot logically or wisely be isolated from other phases which in turn determine its character. To the institutions of general government must be applied those principles and axioms concerning organization which Henri Fayol, Major Urwick, Mary Follett, and many others, with varying wisdom and clarity, have done much to elaborate.

Hobbes is as renowned a name in political science as is Adam Smith in economics. Accordingly, prevailing notions of what Hobbes meant to say have varied from time to time. While his materialist utilitarianism has been a strong current since he propounded it, Hobbes's modern reputation dates from the re-emphasis on sovereignty and utilitarian morals by the Benthamists. The reaction against Benthamism led to strong criticism of Hobbes by English idealists such as T. H. Green. Their criticism of his materialist metaphysics and of his behaviourist ethics set the tone of the standard treatment of Hobbes, and seemed to have rendered his political views harmless. As long as Hobbes was regarded as primarily a materialist and his political doctrines were seen as consistent deductions from his materialist position, it was relatively easy to dispose of his unpleasant theory of the state, for materialism has had little standing in English political thinking since the eighteenth century when the historical materialism of Millar, Ferguson, and Robertson enjoyed some prestige.

Hobbes's stature, however, was too great for his political ideas to be tidied away in this fashion. Later generations of scholars set out to detach Hobbes's political theory from his materialism. Croom Robertson in 1886, John Laird in 1934, and Leo Strauss in 1936 have taken the position that Hobbes's political philosophy was not derived from his materialism or decisively influenced by his concept of science. While it is possible to show that Hobbes might have reached his political conclusions from certain moral attitudes and preconceptions unrelated to materialism or science, this position raises other difficulties. In view of the emphasis which Hobbes placed on his materialism and in view of his insistence on the scientific nature of his method it seems unsatisfactory to dismiss these attributes of his thought as merely his share in the current intellectual fashion, especially when the result is to say, as does John Laird, that his thought is mediaeval, or, as with some current text-book writers, to leave his theory rootless and unexplained except as the reaction of a timid man to the disturbed political conditions of his time.

Prior to 1930 discussion of public investment was conducted largely on the basis of an assumption of full employment within a closed economy. Consequently it centred around the productiveness of public investment as opposed to that undertaken in the privately-operated sector of the economy, the appropriate methods of financing the projects undertaken, and the legitimate spheres of operation of public bodies. The usefulness of public investment projects was believed, in the main, to be confined to their long term contribution to the productiveness of the economy. In practice, even well into the nineteen-thirties, governments, with exceptions, undertook public projects when finances were buoyant and borrowing relatively easy, and curtailed them, in attempts to balance budgets, when depression became serious.

After 1930 both in the thought and practices of some central governments and in economic writing the pendulum swung the other way. Main emphasis was laid on the current employment and income giving effects of public investment. This change in emphasis received additional impetus after the advent of The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money when economic discussion became much more concerned with the level of employment than the distribution of the factors of production among alternative uses.

The transfer of attention from the long term aspects of public projects to their effect on current employment and income maintenance was accompanied by the shortcomings of practice and thought which are inevitable in an undeveloped field. While a good deal was written and spoken about the desirability of well thought out and well planned investment, insufficient attention was given to its attainment and in practice resort was had to many undertakings whose value, from either a short or long term viewpoint, was dubious. The shortcomings were largely associated with failure to cope adequately with the institutional and administrative problem involved. Further, there was a penchant for fastening on single devices to meet the overall employment problem.

Economic theory has been powerfully advanced within the past decade by its new interest in national income and effective demand, and by its attention to the bearing of such magnitudes as savings, investment, consumption, and money holdings upon the aggregate employment of resources. After the first impact of a revolution, however, the signs of continuity with the past are bound to re-appear. In the field of economic doctrine it may be confidently expected that continuity will be established by exploration as to how particular equilibrium conditions—under the diverse situations of competition, monopoly, oligopoly, and the like—help to account for the behaviour of those large aggregates with which the “modern” theory has too exclusively dealt. With equal confidence one may expect that this synthesis of Marshallian and Keynesian theory will cast new light upon the problems of economic policy.

Fortunately, however, it is not necessary to await the full fruition of this cross-fertilization of ideas: its main features are already indicated in a very substantial field of agreement as to policy in all but the most extreme wings of economic thought. The language of popular discussion in America epitomizes this field in two cardinal ideas—the necessity of government action to secure full employment and the desire nevertheless to preserve a private enterprise system. To extremists on either side these ideas represent incompatibilities. But the effectiveness of economics and of economists in the current scene is primarily conditioned upon the elaboration of policies compatible with both of these cardinal requirements.

It is extraordinary that almost all the well developed analysis of the alleged drift toward collectivism in economic organization is composed of studies of industrial concentration, of the banking system, and of the relations in general between government and economic life. We have no comparable studies of labour markets. It is the intention of this paper to offer hypotheses relating to the part played by collective bargaining in the alleged decline of competition and the inevitability of its attacks on competition and also to make several suggestions on public policy.

My research interest in the settlement of the new North-West dates back to the summer of 1929 when I was asked to make a preliminary study of the Peace River Country which was one of the “Frontiers of Settlement” studies published during the first half of the nineteen-thirties. During the following summer the field study was completed and the Settlement of the Peace River Country was published in 1934. This study made familiar to the author the Alberta and British Columbia divisions of the Peace River region from Notikewin, seventy-five miles north of Grimshaw through the settlements of the Peace as far west as Fort St. John. Among many communities studied in this survey were Notikewin on the north-east fringe of settlement and Dawson Creek which forms the southern anchor of the Alaska Highway. The opening of the Alaska Highway, built between 1942 and 1944, together with the oil developments along the MacKenzie River and the mineral production of the Precambrian area just east of it, focused attention on this new North-West. The possibilities of settlement in this far north-western territory have received wide publicity. Among others, I spent the summer of 1944 in this great stretch of territory, which lies north of the Peace River and extends from a line drawn from Waterways to Coronation Gulf on the east, (approximately the western boundary of the Precambrian Shield), to the Alaska Highway on the west. The northern boundary of the territory studied is the Arctic Ocean. My own part of this survey included also that part of Alaska served by the Alaska railroad and the highway network which lies between Fairbanks and Anchorage.