FROM THE SOCIALISM OF INTELLIGENCE TO THE ARISTOCRACY OF KNOWLEDGE: ADMINISTRATIVE PRACTICE AND POLITICAL AUTHORITY IN AMERICAN DEMOCRACY, 1905–1921

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY AND THE COMMITTEE ON GRADUATE STUDIES OF STANFORD UNIVERSITY IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

AARON HORVATH JULY 2021

To Katey You were right: accounting is interesting. And I still can’t spell philanhropy on the first try.

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For forms of government let fools contest; Whate’er is best administered is best –Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man (1733)

Early writings are full of assurances that we can adopt the administrative devices of autocracy without accepting its spirit and its ends. –Dwight Waldo, The Administrative State (1948)

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Abstract “Government budgeting.” There is little in the phrase to arouse the passions or inspire excitement. And yet, beneath what sociologists have tended to regard as a relatively unremarkable set of bureaucratic procedures, one finds a history full of contingency and heated contestation. More than a mere means of allocating government funds, budgeting—and the specific procedural form it takes—is the financial embodiment of political authority. Budgets may determine who gets what; but budgetary practices determine who gets a say. As such, the history of this seemingly mundane administrative practice is the history of political power, one that centers on inclusion, exclusion, and the privileges of democratic voice.

This dissertation chronicles the early career of government budgeting in the

United States, tracing its emergence from New York municipal reform movements in

1905 to its codification into federal law in 1921. In its early days, budgeting was promoted as a device for shedding light on government activities, encouraging public debate about collective priorities, and empowering mass democracy. Annual municipal budgets were accompanied with well-attended public exhibits imploring citizens to

“come see how your money is spent” and encouraging public participation in the budgetary process. As budgeting moved into federal government, however, proponents recast the practice as a tool for expanding executive authority and minimizing public

“interference” in the policymaking process. The budget became, as one proponent put it, a “method of control without violence.” Although the new approach to public budgeting was initially rejected—seen as an instrument of despotism and oligarchic control—it was eventually institutionalized at the very heart of national government. Today, when an

American President announces a national budget, our attention is drawn to the amount of

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money to be spent or what it will be spent on—not the fact that the task of determining a national agenda falls with the President and not the people themselves. In a country avowedly committed to the principles of egalitarianism and popular sovereignty, how did such an arrangement come to exist?

Drawing on extensive archival materials from the New York Bureau of Municipal

Research, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Taft Commission on Economy and Efficiency, and the Institute for Government Research (later incorporated as the Brookings

Institution), I demonstrate how the emergence of the national budget was the result of political and cultural contestation over the meaning of democracy and the proper role of ordinary citizens within it. The ascendence of an aristocracy of knowledge was ultimately predicated on the invention of a unified national interest and a normative reconfiguration of the responsibilities of American citizenship. Contrary to a tradition in organizational sociology that views oligarchy as the natural byproduct of administrative rationalization, my account reveals that oligarchy is anything but inevitable. In the American case, it was the hard-won product of an elite social movement to redefine the character of political authority in democratic politics.

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Acknowledgements There is a ritual order to acknowledgment sections. Authors will typically remark on the loneliness of writing and credit the fellow scholars who had their back along the way.

They’ll thank the funders without whom the work would have been impossible, and the research assistants without whom the work would have never gotten done. And at long last, usually in a final paragraph of gratitude, they’ll offer their deepest, sincerest thanks to their long-suffering spouses.

I know the ritual well, but not nearly as well as my partner, my person, and my better half—Katey Webber—who, for eight years, has read the acknowledgements section of nearly every book I’ve brought home. She’s so familiar with the rigamarole that she’s probably instinctually flipped to the end to see what I’ve written about her. And sure, she’ll find something there. But it’ll be underwhelming; not at all commensurate with what she’s endured since we moved to California all those years ago. That’s because

Katey shouldn’t have to wait until the end to be acknowledged.

Katey has a patience and love for me that I’ve never had for myself. She’s proven that one really can blend the comic sensibilities of Rodney Dangerfield with the physical comedy of Charlie Chaplin and all the riot grrrl of Bikini Kill. I’ve been taught by her to stop using passive voice. Katey, through her selflessness, vulnerability, authenticity, and constant drive to build community, has taught me more about society—and what society ought to be—than any book or study ever could.

Others who have kept me afloat include Woody Powell, a guy whose class I took because, it was either organizations or demography and, while I didn’t really know what

“organizations” were or why anyone would want to study them, it sounded more

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interesting than demography. Best decision I made in grad school. After that first quarter,

Woody took me under his wing, entertaining my simplistic pitchfork-and-torch politics while giving me a vocabulary for complexity and an ability to problematize big ideas. His mentorship, co-authorship, and friendship have been indispensable to my intellectual and personal growth over the last eight years.

I also want to thank Sarah Soule who I first met in her class on organizations and social movements. Sarah is a constant source of energy and encouragement and a model of how to balance intellectual rigor with compassion and down-to-earth humanity. The many beers and bike rides to and from local watering holes that we’ve shared over the years have been some of my most cherished moments at Stanford.

The first time I met John Meyer in 2014, he casually imparted wisdom that has stuck with me ever since. As I ranted about my disgust that powerful people and organizations were effectively granted carte blanche to perpetuate social inequities, John told me that this was a wonderful perspective to have “after five o’clock.” But “before five o’clock” I ought to focus sociologically on how such a systems came to be. John’s wisdom, kindness, and critical perspective have been essential to my education, even if work rarely ends at five.

Thanks also go to Barbara Kiviat who, thanks to the pandemic, I have yet to actually meet in person. She has nevertheless been a vital source of encouragement both during the struggles of the 2020 academic job market and during the struggles of writing a dissertation.

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I am thankful to have a dissertation committee that understands, quite correctly, that the thing my dissertation most needs defending from is me. Thanks for helping me to keep it going.

At Stanford, I have had the pleasure of existing in multiple worlds at once—both as a student in the Sociology Department and as a member of the Stanford Center on

Philanthropy and Civil Society (PACS). In the Sociology Department, I am indebted to

Mark Granovetter, Doug McAdam, and Cristobal Young whose support, encouragement, and critical attention were indispensable in my early years at Stanford. And without

Natasha Newson and Randy Michaud in the front office, the University would have dispensed of me long ago. Thanks for keeping that from happening.

At PACS, I have benefitted greatly from my interactions with Lucy Bernholz,

Paul Brest, and Rob Reich. Rob is the consummate public scholar; his ability to speak truth to power and bridge between ivory tower and public relevance is something I seek to emulate in my own work. Also at PACS, I want to thank Kim Meredith, Priya Shanker, and Valerie Dao who have looked out for me, believed in me, and given me opportunities to pursue my various (and only occasionally sensible) intellectual interests.

Although this dissertation only came together over the last few months, it is part of a larger project that has been several years in the making. At the end of 2017, the

National Science Foundation was kind enough to support me with a Dissertation

Improvement Grant (SES #1801678) and the funds were sufficient to allow me to visit archives around the country. I traveled to places as far apart as Syracuse, New York

(where I got a crappy rental car stuck in a snowbank) and Santa Monica, California

(where I drank at the bar where Daniel Ellsberg allegedly released the Pentagon Papers).

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Between 2018 and the start of the pandemic, I was able to steal away enough time to visit

13 archives, pull material from 93 collections, and melt a hard drive with 160GB of archival images—only a fraction of which is used in this dissertation. It was one ski mask short of a smash and grab operation and were it not for the incredibly generous archivists, librarians, and historians who helped me along the way, all that smashing and grabbing would have been for naught.

In particular, I want to thank the staff the Rockefeller Archive Center, the

Columbia University Rare Book & Manuscript Library, the Newman Library Archives at

CUNY’s Baruch College, and the Brookings Institution Archives.

At the Rockefeller Archive Center, I am indebted to Tom Rosenbaum and Jim

Smith who helped me to make sense the Center’s vast holdings. Tom’s archival knowledge is second to none. Even after reminding me that “you really don’t find a smoking gun in a gestalt,” Tom proceeded to find the smoking gun I was looking for.

Jim, having written the book on think tanks in America, was a phenomenal resource as well. His knowledge on the complex relationship between early 20th century philanthropy and public policy research helped to make my time at the Center incredibly productive.

Jen Comins at Columbia has been a dependable source of knowledge and encouragement. No one knows the Carnegie Corporation materials better and, on more than one occasion, she has gone out of her way to scan and send materials I somehow missed during my multiple visits to New York.

At Baruch, Sarah Rappo helped me to find several needles in the Institute of

Public Administration haystacks. Although Baruch has only recently received these

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materials, Sarah was able to steer me toward items that have proved essential in my account.

At Brookings, Sarah Chilton successfully identified my wide-eyed wonder at the

Brookings Institution’s forerunner, the Institute for Government Research. In addition to granting me access to the Institute’s physical records, Sarah gifted me with a USB stick chock-full of digitized materials.

I want to thank the staff of several other archives that I visited both for this dissertation and the larger project of which it is a part: the National Archives in College

Park; the Library of Congress; the Syracuse University Archives (where it turns out the

Bird Library is not an ornithological collection); the RAND Corporation Archives (a visit made possible by Cara McCormick); the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library

Archives; the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library Archives; the Historical Society of

Pennsylvania; the Harvard University Archives; and Mudd Manuscript Library at

Princeton University. There are also the many archivists and librarians at places I was unable to visit in a physical sense: the Digital Public Library of America, HathiTrust,

Internet Archive, and JSTOR. Closer to home, I want to thank the staff at Berkeley’s

Institute of Governmental Studies Library and at the Stanford University Libraries where

James Jacobs has been particularly helpful.

Along the way, I have benefitted from conversations, correspondence, and critiques from numerous scholars. First and foremost, I want to thank my undergraduate advisor, Viviana Zelizer. Viviana is the one who set me on this path of sociology and has, ever since our first meeting, had a profound influence on my thinking. Her warmth, generosity, and critical eye has always been just an email away. Also from my

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undergraduate days, I want to thank Stan Katz for sparking my interest in civil society and providing critical feedback on my work. For this dissertation, Lis Clemens was an early and influential voice. Her thoughtful engagement with a very preliminary draft was crucial in helping me to articulate an interest that I had yet to fully realize. Similarly, early feedback from Claire Dunning, Damon Mayrl, and Marion Fourcade helped give direction to a shapeless mass of ideas. Others that have helped along the way have been

Nina Bandelj, Steve Barley, Hokyu Hwang, Ted Lechterman, Chris Rea, Pat Rosenfeld,

Ben Soskis, David Suarez, and Ed Walker.

I have had many fellow travelers who have helped me over the past eight years. In my early days at Stanford, I looked up to the late Eliza Evans, Charlie Gomez, Karina

Kloos, and Elina Mäkinen, all of whom helped me find my footing in grad school. Jean

Lin has been a dream collaborator whose passion for community and teaching is contagious. Christof Brandtner enticed me to come to Stanford and, when I got here, let me co-author papers with him, sleep butt-to-butt in numerous Airbnb’s, and drive him to the hospital when I almost killed him while mountain biking. I also want to thank

Consuelo Amat, Clarke Bernier, Anna Boch, James Chu, Bob Eberhart, Jared Furata, Ece

Kaynak, Ling Han, Max and Natalie Hell, Jennie Hill, C.P. Lee, Julia Lerch, Elizabeth

McKenna, Jacob Model, Taylor Orth, Juan Pedroza, Ale Peters (my favorite Austrian economist), Hatim Rahman, Leah Reisman, Sebastian Schuster, Birthe Soppe, and Scott

Westenberger. I am indebted to many others in the Comparative Sociology, Economic

Sociology, Networks and Organizations, and PACS workshops at Stanford as well as the

Stanford Civic Life of Cities team.

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I am fortunate to have been supported throughout my time at grad school—and my time in life—by my family of JDs (they always ask, “What’s the law?” and I always ask, “Why’s the law?”). My mom and dad, Teena Grodner and Steve Horvath, have taught me everything I know about working hard, living well, and doing what I love. My sister, Rachel Horvath, has been an inspiration since the day I was born and has always known how to put me in my place. I’m sad not to live closer to her, my brother-in-law,

Chris, and my brilliant nephews Noah and Zevi. Keith Webber and Naomi Webber— a.k.a. my other parents—have cheered me on along the way and commiserated about this weird liminal state called grad school.

My found family has been a steady source of joy, my home, and my ride home when I need it. I want to thank James Miceli who texts me every morning without fail with hot takes on cycling, federal bureaucracy, Northern Virginia politics, newly released records, or whatever adorable thing his daughter just did. And Shanna Miceli is the only one of us doing an actually important thing. Dave Schwartz, who it’s terrifying to think I never would’ve met had I not forgotten something in my office that day, and Kathryn

Tooker Schwartz have been both beer buddies and best friends. Mariah “MarMar” Wood has made the difficult last year worth something—not just bearable, but somehow fun.

Thanks for being the beautiful nerd you are. I also want to thank Lydia Scott, Simon

Hochberg and Emily Liu, the Ghost Hand Collective, Noah Bruegmann, Dwigt, Ari

Frost, the McElroy brothers, Ian Wilson, the Woodside Road Lamborghini Fire, Niamh

Shalvey, Michael Gary Scott, Bentley Dog, and the COVID-19 vaccine.

Also: thanks, Katey.

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Table of Contents

Abstract vi Acknowledgements viii List of Figures xvi Abbreviations xvii Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions 1

Capitalist Financial Management in a Democratic Polity 10 Government Budgeting and Administrative Centralization: Prevailing Accounts 19 The Public Politics of Administrative Practice: An Alternative Account 23 The Chapters Ahead 30 “The City Invites You To See How Your Money Is Spent” 36

Social Surveys, Financial Investigations, and Municipal Besmirch 49 Municipal Research and the Divergent Pulls of Progressive Era Thought 56 Budgeting as a Technical And Democratic Accomplishment 65 “Adenoid Bulletins” and the Downsides of Philanthropic Support 81 The End of Publicity 86 A Mistaken Theory of Government 90

Building The President’s Commission On Economy And Efficiency 92 Standardization, Classification, And The First Federal Org Chart 100 The Need For A National Budget 106 Administrative Practice As Democratic Transgression 110 College Boy Versus Jasper Gerflump, or, Budgeting and Responsible Citizenship 116

Executive Budgeting For State Governments 120 The Institute For Government Research 123 Administrative Propagandists 133 “So That Business Methods Can Be Introduced” 142 A Unified Budget For A Unified National Interest 150 The Creation Of A National Budget 159 Toward An Organizational Sociology Of Democracy 166

How An Elite-Led Campaign Reconfigured Democracy 171 After 1921 175 Revisiting The Democracy-Administration Tension In Organizational Theory 181 The Possibility Of An Organized Democracy 185

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List of Figures

Exterior of 1912 New York City Budget Exhibit at Broadway and Pearl St. 75

Map of Municipal Research Organizations Across the U.S. 1905–1928. 79

Percent of Newspaper Pages Mentioning “National Budget,” 1905–1922 135

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Abbreviations

BIA Brookings Institution Archives, Washington, DC

BNL Baruch College Archives, Newman Library, New York, NY

CCNY Carnegie Corporation of New York Records, 1872-2000

LOC Library of Congress, Washington, DC

NARA National Archives at College Park, MD

OMR Office of the Messrs. Rockefeller, Rockefeller Archive Center, Tarrytown,

NY

RAC Rockefeller Archive Center, Tarrytown, NY

RBML Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University, New York, NY

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Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions

1

Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions

On the question of democracy, Alvin Gouldner wrote in 1955, organizational theorists

“have become morticians, all too eager to bury men’s hopes.”1 He was not wrong.

Sociologists, political scientists, and other theorists of bureaucracy up until then had offered a processional of fatalism on whether the democratic spirit could withstand its encounter with administration. Max Weber believed bureaucracy would “inevitably” come into conflict with democracy.2 Robert Michels took the point further, arguing that all organizations, regardless of context, their commitment to freedom, or their aversion to authoritarianism, would inevitably give rise to an oligarchical elite. In fact, Michels was so disillusioned by this finding, he renounced his membership to the German Social

Democrats, changed his name to Roberto and pledged allegiance to Benito Mussolini. If administration is “incompatible with the most essential postulates of democracy,” he

1 Alvin Gouldner, “Metaphysical Pathos and the Theory of Bureaucracy,” American Political Science Review 49, no. 2 (Jun., 1955): 507. 2 Max Weber, Economy and Society, Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, Eds. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 985.

1 Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions reasoned, one might as well support strong, charismatic leaders.3 In the US, Philip

Selznick reached a similarly unsettling conclusion—albeit without the same personal conversion. Studying the “grassroots” Tennessee Valley Authority, Selznick argued that,

“wherever there is organization, whether formally democratic or not, there is a split between the leader and the led.” The need for bureaucracy, Selznick concluded, was the

“fundamental weakness of democracy.”4

Political theorists—approaching the problem from a different angle—have offered no less pessimistic of an appraisal. John Stuart Mill considered bureaucracy a “vast net- work of administrative tyranny” which leaves no one free except for the person “who pulls the wires.”5 When Harold Laski was asked to contribute an entry on “Bureaucracy” for the first-ever Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, he opened his account with the requisite gloom, defining bureaucracy as “a system of government the control of which is so completely in the hands of officials that their power jeopardizes the liberties of ordinary citizens.”6 And in a similar spirit, Hannah Arendt dubbed bureaucracy the “form of government in which everybody is deprived of political freedom,” an unaccountable

“tyranny without a tyrant.”7

There is no doubt that the borderlands of democracy and formal organization are fraught with anxiety. But as Gouldner concluded in 1955, perhaps “it is the pathos of

3 Robert Michels, Political Parties: A Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy (New York: The Free Press, 1911 [1962]), 364; Barry D. Karl, Charles Merriam and the Study of Politics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 174. 4 Philip Selznick, TVA and the Grass Roots: A Study of Politics and Organization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1949), 9. 5 Antiquus [John Stuart Mill], “Armand Carrel,” Westminster Review 28, no. 11 (Oct., 1837): 71– 72. 6 Harold J. Laski, “Bureaucracy,” in Edwin R.A. Seligman, Ed., Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. 3 (New York: Macmillan Company, 1930). 7 Hannah Arendt, On Violence (New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1970), 81.

2 Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions pessimism, rather than the compulsions of rigorous analysis that lead to the assumption that that organizational constraints have stacked the deck against democracy.”8 Indeed, organizational scholars have tended to treat oligarchy as the mechanical byproduct of organization itself: large organizations necessitate centralized power for the sake of efficiency; operational complexity favors specialization; and persons who benefit atop the hierarchy have little interest in ceding control.

Oligarchic tendencies, however, are not oligarchic inevitabilities. As Seymour

Martin Lipset and colleagues demonstrated, the iron law of oligarchy is actually quite malleable. In their study of the International Typographical Union, they observed that peculiar organizational features—opposing factions, active membership, and frequent leadership turnover—all conspired against the ossification of a centralized elite.9 And as

Elisabeth Clemens has observed, early 1900s women’s movement organizations were less susceptible to oligarchy because their members depended on their husbands, and not their position in the organization, for financial well-being.10

More recently, scholars have pointed to organizational forms that either inhibit oligarchy or, at the very least, weaken its dominion over decision making. Some have found that open-source projects like Linux and Wikipedia are remarkably productive despite the absence of formal bureaucracy and managerial centralization.11 Others have found that the extensive use of new media platforms in some organizations can foster

8 Gouldner, “Metaphysical Pathos,” 505–506. 9 Lipset, Trow, and Coleman, Union Democracy: The Internal Politics of the International Typographical Union (New York: Free Press, 1956). 10 Elisabeth S. Clemens, “Organizational Repertoires and Institutional Change: Women's Groups and the Transformation of U.S. Politics, 1890-1920,” American Journal of Sociology 98, no. 4 (Jan., 1993): 765–766. 11 Yochai Benkler, “Coase's Penguin, or, Linux and ‘The Nature of the Firm’,” Yale Law Journal 112, no. 3 (Dec. 2002): 369–446.

3 Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions broad-based deliberation and provide opportunities for rank-and-file members to influence top brass.12 Similar arrangements seem to work on a much broader scale as well. The “institutionalization of civic knowing” in the United States—through media, watchdog groups, and government disclosures—has provided the public with a new means of holding elites in check.13 And as research on deliberative democracy has shown, there are numerous cases where active citizen participation has become routine in government decision making.14 Surely organized democracy is possible.

Nevertheless, deviant cases are seen as just that: exceptions to the rule—rare glimmers of inclusiveness and decentralized control in a landscape of gray flannel suits and power elites. If only organizations were left to run their “natural” course, it would seem, then they would default to hierarchical domination. Viewed differently, however, such cases challenge the inherency of the rule itself. The problem with iron laws,

Reinhard Bendix argued, is that they fail to consider the cultural and institutional contexts in which organizations are formed. There is no inherent connection “between rational administration and oligarchical abuse” just as there is no such connection “between rational administration and democratic institutions.” Whether one or the other results,

Bendix argued, “depends on the social and psychological setting in which a technically

12 Catherine J. Turco, The Conversational Firm: Rethinking Bureaucracy in the Age of Social Media (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016). 13 Michael Schudson, The Rise of the Right to Know: Politics and the Culture of Transparency (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2015). See also Archon Fung, “Infotopia: Unleashing the Democratic Power of Transparency,” Politics & Society 41, no. 2 (2013): 183–212. 14 John S. Dryzek, André Bächtiger, Simone Chambers, et al. “The crisis of democracy and the science of deliberation: Citizens can avoid polarization and make sound decisions,” Science 363, no. 6432 (Mar., 2019): 1145.

4 Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions rational administration is attempted.”15 Following this logic, it is not only the exceptions to the rule that require explanation but also the existence of the rule itself.

Herein lies the central ambition of this dissertation: to denaturalize the oligarchic tendency, treating it not as a unilinear property of organization but as a sociohistorically contingent product of contestation over organizational purpose and deep-seated normative conceptions regarding the character of the public sphere. Such a perspective does not seek to abandon the Weberian idea that social closure is part and parcel of organization. Indeed, all organizations—through administrative practices and structures—allocate privileges and draw lines of inclusion and exclusion. But there is nothing preordained about where these boundaries are drawn and to merely posit their existence it to overlook how they are formed.16 Accordingly, this dissertation shifts the organization-democracy tension away from theoretical maxims: not oligarchy per se, but implications for control; not secrecy per se but implications for oversight. Oligarchy cannot be assumed, but it can be created.

Reframed as such, the questions that democracy asks of administration are questions of standing. Whose interests are served and how are they prioritized relative to others? Who gets to know what information and when? Who is allowed to voice opinions

15 Reinhard Bendix, “Bureaucracy: The Problem and its Setting,” American Sociological Review 12, no. 5 (Oct., 1947): 495. Bendix also wrote on the role of ideologies in shaping and legitimating authority structures in industry. See Bendix, Work and Authority in Industry: Managerial Ideologies in the Course of Industrialization (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1956). 16 Andrew Abbott, “Things of Boundaries,” Social Research 62, no. 4 (Winter, 1995):857-882; Charles Tilly, “Social Boundary Mechanisms,” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 34, no. 2 (Jun. 2004): 211–236; Damon Mayrl and Sarah Quinn, “Defining the State from within: Boundaries, Schemas, and Associational Policymaking,” Sociological Theory 34, no. 1 (Mar., 2016): 1–26.

5 Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions or participate in deliberations? Who has a say in determining plans and making decisions, and at what stage of the decision-making process?17

Different administrative practices provide distinctive answers. Consider, for example, the various methods through which organizations solicit feedback or permit influence over their activities. Public opinion polls and focus groups have markedly different implications for how (if at all) public voice is realized in organizational action.18

Similarly, while elections and random selection both offer viable means for selecting political representatives, each has different implications for deliberation.19 Such democratic implications are evident in seemingly mundane administrative activities as well: how states delineate census categories determines the composition of political influence; different decision technologies, such as cost-benefit analysis, shape “how, when, and which citizens [are] allowed to participate” in determining the course of organizational activities; and different methods of accounting and reporting privilege different subsets of the population as the rightful overseers of organizational action.20

Inasmuch as such practices afford opportunities for inclusion they may also be exclusionary and foreclose public involvement altogether.

17 To Weber, the answer to the first question is bureaucracy’s saving democratic grace. Bureaucracy, in theory, is particularly well-suited for equal treatment before the law. But to Weber, such mechanical consistency necessarily came at the expense of public accessibility and open discourse (Weber, Economy and Society, 979–980). 18 Sarah E. Igo, The Averaged American: Surveys, Citizens, and the Making of a Mass Public (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007); Liza Featherstone, Divining Desire: Focus Groups and the Culture of Consultation (New York: OR Books). 19 Hélène Landemore, Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020). 20 G. Cristina Mora, Making Hispanics: How Activists, Bureaucrats & Media Constructed a New American (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2014); Wendy Nelson Espeland, “Bureaucratizing Democracy, Democratizing Bureaucracy,” Law & Social Inquiry 25, no. 4 (Autumn, 2000), 1078; Michael Power, The Audit Society: Rituals of Verification (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).

6 Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions

How do organizations come to be dominated by an elite minority? A partial answer can be found in the specific practices through which organizations—either intentionally or incidentally—restrict the possibilities for access, participation, or influence. A fuller answer, however, must attend to where such practices come from, how they become inscribed with particular conceptions of the public, and how they are incorporated into particular organizational settings. Only by understanding how restrictive practices are assimilated into relatively egalitarian and decentralized settings can we understand the emergence of organizational oligarchy.

In order to develop these ideas, this dissertation follows the development of the

American administrative state—and its attendant administrative elite—through the emergence of public budgeting between 1905 and 1921. While on the surface, budgeting seems a relatively straightforward and unobjectionable administrative practice, it is anything but. Far from being a timeless set of technocratic procedures, budgeting has a history that is as turbulent as it is contingent. At the turn of the 20th century, the very term “budget,” at least as we understand it today, was not yet a mainstay in American political parlance. When a newspaper headline announced a “National Budget” one would more often find a digest of national news or an inventory of “gossip at the National

Capitol” than a discussion of federal financial matters.21

And yet, over the next two decades, financial budgets—and more importantly, the specific procedural form budget-making ought to take—would became a divisive

21Topeka Plaindealer (Mar. 15, 1901). To be sure, there are instances where the “national budget” is used to characterize federal expenditures. But these moments are quite rare before 1905. References to a city budget appear to have a financial connotation well before the national budget, however. Regardless, a Google n-gram search reveals that, before 1905, the phrase “national budget” was virtually non-existent. From 1905 to 1914, the use of the phrase grows steadily before experiencing a sharp increase between 1914 and 1921.

7 Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions political issue, the resolution of which would fundamentally transform the possibilities for citizen participation in the state. Indeed, according to Alfred Chandler, budgetary procedure is the “deciding factor which determines the locus of ultimate authority” in an organization.22

To be sure, the fact that American government underwent administrative rationalization is not unique. By the turn of the 20th century, numerous other countries had already developed highly elaborate administrative regimes; and as I will show, these countries served as models in the development of the American administrative state. Also serving as a source of inspiration were the burgeoning corporate enterprises of Second

Industrial Revolution. But the nations and businesses to which American budget proponents turned for inspiration (Great Britain and railroad companies being the foremost) were founded on monarchy, aristocracy, and the centralization of decision- making power.23 In such settings, the elevation of a dominant elite was less of an affront to tradition than it was in United States government.

Indeed, as A. Lawrence Lowell wrote in 1913, “the use of experts is as normal in a monarchy” and in a “great industrial enterprise” as it is “foreign to the genius of democracy.”24 And as Alexis de Tocqueville observed, no “aristocracy of knowledge”

22 Alfred D. Chandler and Fritz Redlich, “Recent Developments in American Business Administration and Their Conceptualization.” Business History Review 35, no. 1 (1961): 26. 23 As other scholars challenging the Weberian paradigm have argued, the absence of the expected international convergence in terms of state administrative structure is a puzzle still awaiting explanation. See Bernard S. Silberman, Cages of Reason: The Rise of the Rational State in France, Japan, the United States, and Great Britain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). 24 A. Lawrence Lowell, Public Opinion and Popular Government (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1913), 269.

8 Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions had emerged among the Americans because “equality is their idol.”25 Accordingly, this case raises the question in its sharpest terms: how did an aristocracy of knowledge emerge in a setting where oligarchy was not only anathema to cultural and political values, it was also actively resisted?

As I will demonstrate, there was no necessary connection between the development of the American administrative state and the ascendence of an oligarchic elite. In fact, there were two predominant models of government budgeting. Although the approaches were similar in their reliance on modern bookkeeping and elaborate accounting classifications, each channeled information and authority in opposite directions. The first model, developed at the interstices of Progressive Era charity work and municipal reform movements sought to render the state more inclusive and participatory. By contrast, the second model, known as the “executive budget,” was highly centralizing. Hewing closely to financial management practices used in American industry, it sought to put the executive (i.e., the President) and a staff of unelected administrative experts in charge of formulating national plans and prioritizing government expenditures. Surprisingly, although the first model readily resonated with the principles enshrined in American political institutions, it was the second model— rejected at first as an instrument of despotism—that ultimately took hold.

Certainly, the case fits the typical pattern: administrative rationalization was associated with the rise of an oligarchic elite. But the typical explanations for this transformation come up short. The emergence of executive budgeting was not due to its relative efficiency, nor its superiority in solving the problems of administrative

25 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. I, trans. Henry Reeve (London: Saunders and Otley, 1835), 65, 68.

9 Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions coordination, nor was it the product of an administrative elite seeking to fortify its position atop the government hierarchy. In fact, there was no a priori reason to believe one budgeting model was more efficient or better suited for coordination than the other.

And for its implementation, the executive budget actually required those who held the reins of administration (i.e., Congress) to cede considerable control.

I argue that the oligarchic transformation of the American administrative state was the hard-won product of political and cultural contestation over the meaning of community and the ability of informed and engaged citizens to intelligently chart a collective course. The success of executive budgeting—and the ascendence of an administrative elite—was ultimately predicated on the invention of a national democratic interest and the normative reconfiguration of citizen responsibilities. These ideas were imprinted into the financial machinery of government administration and institutionalized at the very heart of democratic decision making.

Capitalist Financial Management in a Democratic Polity It is hard to imagine how something so seemingly mundane as budgetary procedure could arouse much in the way of political excitement. Perhaps owing to Joseph Schumpeter’s treatment of the budget as the “skeleton of the state stripped of all misleading ideologies,” most sociologists tend to treat budgets as dry and uninteresting; valuable for what they say about the distribution of resources in society, but not worthy of much sociological investigation themselves.26 To be sure, the budget—a consolidated statement

26 Schumpeter was quoting another Austrian scholar, Rudolf Goldscheid, with whom he agreed (Joseph A. Schumpeter, “The Crisis of the Tax State,” in The Economics and Sociology of Capitalism, ed., Richard Swedberg (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 100). Important sociological engagements with government budgeting, see John F. Padgett, “Hierarchy and

10 Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions of organizational goals and activities made definite through dollar values—is a familiar arena for the various scuffles and brawls that comprise contemporary political dramas.

Deciding how to allocate funds between different objectives (say, renovating schools, fixing potholes, or arming police) is, by its very nature, a political act.27

Beyond these disputes, however, lie a deeper set of political questions regarding how budgets are made. Budget-making is not only an arena for political struggle, it is also a silent participant in that struggle, determining who gets a say, how, and when.28

Indeed, as one proponent of executive budgeting remarked in 1919, “budget-making is something which, if considered at all, must be integrated with that part of our moral philosophy which concerns itself with the interrelations of people and government.”29 On this, executive budget opponents agreed: any claim that budgeting was politically neutral was a sham. “When you have decided upon your budget procedure, you have decided on the form of government you will have as a matter of fact.”30

Before 1908, no American government entity—city, state, or federal—had prepared a systematically classified annual budget. New York City was the first. Prior to

Ecological Control in Federal Budgetary Decision Making,” American Journal of Sociology 87, no. 1 (Jul., 1981): 75–129; Sarah Quinn, “‘The Miracles of Bookkeeping’: How Budget Politics Link Fiscal Policies and Financial Markets,” American Journal of Sociology 123, no. 1 (Jul., 2017): 48–85. Remarkably, recent surveys of fiscal sociology have focused almost exclusively on taxation. See Isaac W. Martin and Monica Prasad, “Taxes and Fiscal Sociology,” Annual Review of Sociology 40 (2014): 331–345. 27 Aaron Wildavsky, “Political Implications of Budgetary Reform,” Public Administration Review 21, no. 4 (Autumn, 1961): 183-190; Harold D. Lasswell, Who Gets What, When, and How (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1936). 28 As V.O. Key put it, “On what basis shall it be decided to allocate X dollars to activity A instead of activity B?” (Key, “The Lack of a Budgetary Theory,” American Political Science Review, 34, no. 6 (Dec., 1940): 1138. 29 Frederick A. Cleveland, “Popular Control of Government,” Political Science Quarterly 34, no. 2 (Jun., 1919): 238. 30 Edward A. Fitzpatrick, Budget Making in a Democracy (New York: Macmillan Company, 1918), viii (emphasis in original).

11 Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions that milestone, government appropriations processes were largely an ad hoc affair with legislatures typically serving as the central nodes. In federal government, for example, departments would send expenditure estimates via the Treasury Secretary to a shifting cast of House appropriations committees which would consider the requests one-by-one.

Although requests were compiled into a Book of Estimates, the absence of standard accounting procedures and item classifications made estimates exceedingly difficult to compare across departments without deconstructing and reclassifying a jumble of line items. The process could take months. Furthermore, there was little capacity for systematically balancing revenues against expenditures and no real ability (or intention) for considering the expenditure needs of the government as a whole.31

Alternative systems of financial administration were certainly possible. Modern methods of accounting and budgeting were quickly becoming essential to the operation of the country’s vast and complex business enterprises. Elaborate accounting systems first appeared stateside among railroad companies intent on attracting foreign capital and assuring investors—increasingly distant from day-to-day operations—that the company managers were working in their best interests.32 It was a system that facilitated diffuse corporate ownership and concentrated managerial control. As Adolf Berle and Gardiner

Means put it, managers would hold their power “in trust” for the interests of the

31 Leonard White, The Republican Era, 1869–1901: A Study in Administrative History (New York: Macmillan Co., 1958), 97–98; Edward D. Durand, The Finances of New York City (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1898), 264-277; Webber and Wildavsky, A History of Taxation and Expenditure. 32 Bruce G. Carruthers and Wendy Nelson Espeland, “Accounting for Rationality: Double-Entry Bookkeeping and the Rhetoric of Economic Rationality,” American Journal of Sociology 97, no. 1 (Jul., 1991): 31–69. From a different perspective, double-entry bookkeeping shifted economic emphasis from the transaction to the relationship (John F. Padgett and Paul D. McLean, “Economic Credit in Renaissance Florence,” Journal of Modern History 83 (Mar., 2011): 14–15.

12 Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions shareholder community.33 Such rhetorical uses of accounting soon became mandatory. In

1887, the Interstate Commerce Act required companies to file annual financial reports according to uniform standards and by 1899, any company listed on the New York Stock

Exchange was required to publish regular financial statements.34

Accounting and budgeting grew up alongside managerial hierarchies too. Beyond serving as a means of fostering external trust, financial administration offered a device for internal managerial control.35 Railroad management, for example, could compare books across a system’s many divisions and branches, enabling them to ascertain relative efficiencies (e.g., operating costs per ton-mile) and gauge worker productivity.

Retrospective accounts served as the basis for prospective planning as well. According to

Henry Haines, a Confederate Colonel with a knack for railroad administration, budgeting required the division chief to “state in detail…how much he would require to operate his department for the year.” These estimates would then be added together with those produced in other departments and an executive team with an eye toward the needs and priorities of the entire enterprise, would adjust these figures as they saw fit. The executives would determine who got what and managers would be held responsible for sticking to these numbers.36

33 Adolf A. Berle and Gardiner C. Means, The Modern Corporation And Private Property (New York: Macmillan Co., 1933), 247–288. 34 Gary John Previts and Barbara Dubis Merino, A History of Accountancy in the United States: The Cultural Significance of Accounting, Revised Edition (Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 1998), 103–173. 35 On this point, see Alfred D. Chandler, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1977), 267–269. 36 Henry S. Haines, American Railway Management (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1897), 161. See also Frederick A. Cleveland and Fred Wilbur Powell, Railroad Finance (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1912).

13 Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions

As financial management spread throughout private enterprise, it quickly became the technical embodiment of capitalist ideology and centralized control.37 As Schumpeter wrote, double-entry bookkeeping was a “creation of capitalism” that had helped to further ingrain a “rational attitude.” By “crystalizing and defining numerically,” he wrote, accounting “propels the logic of enterprise.”38 Indeed, some of the most notorious industrialists of the day—Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller among others—had begun their careers as bookkeepers. Their success in business was due in part to an exacting attention to accounting detail. Rockefeller in particular was considered “a kind of economic super-clerk, the personification of ledger-keeping.”39

But the “logic of enterprise” was not the logic of the state. As the early years of the 20th century would reveal, encounters between business and state were the source of considerable public anxiety. Although it was technically possible for government to adopt financial management methods from capitalist enterprise, such a move was largely inconceivable. To many, business was the corrupting influence on democratic government—a perspective fueled both by the social fallout of industrialization and a cascade of revelations regarding the extent to which businesses had been manipulating

American government at all levels.40 Many viewed business as a threat to American values. According to Henry Adams, America’s “enormous corporate bodies” had been

“able to override and trample on law, custom, democracy, and every restraint known to

37 Chandler, Visible Hand, 109-121; see also Paul J. Miranti, Jr. Accountancy Comes of Age: The Development of an American Profession, 1886-1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990). 38 Joseph Schumpeter, Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (New York: Harper, 1950), 123 39 Quoted in Jonathan Levy, “Accounting for Profit and the History of Capital,” Critical Historical Studies (Fall 2014): 183-184). 40 Richard L. McCormick, “The Discovery That Business Corrupts Politics: A Reappraisal of the Origins of Progressivism,” American Historical Review 86, no. 2 (Apr., 1981): 247-274.

14 Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions society.”41 And Thorstein Veblen, writing in his characteristically sardonic tone, concluded in 1904 that, if left unchecked, government would become little more than “a department of the business organization…guided by the advice of businessmen.”42

Despite anxieties about a “businesslike” government, there had been sporadic

(and often unsuccessful) efforts to introduce modern financial management into government administration. In 1894, Congress authorized the comptroller, then working within the Treasury, to perform audits on government books. And in 1907, heeding the recommendation of a Roosevelt-appointed commission, the Treasury was the first federal department to adopt double-entry bookkeeping. Before then, government books were kept using the single-entry method and were balanced only once per year.43 One can see in this halting uptake of modern accounting an unease about institutionalizing the methods of industry in the affairs of the state.

The predominant obstacle to adopting financial management practices from industry, however, was that they “were shaped in a context that was in very important aspects undemocratic.”44 By design, modern accounting and budgeting served to centralize authority within organizations and vest supreme control in the executive. Such centralization was hardly compatible with American political ideals which tended toward diffuse and decentralized government. Indeed, Alexis de Tocqueville in his study on the

41 Henry Adams, “The New York Gold Conspiracy,” in Charles F. Adams and Henry Adams, eds., Chapters of Erie and Other Essays (Boston: James R. Osgood and Company, 1871), 134. 42 Thorstein Veblen, The Theory of Business Enterprise (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1919), 287. See also Lincoln Steffens, The Shame of Cities (New York: McClure, Phillips & Co., 1904). 43 Oscar Kraines, “The President versus Congress: The Keep Commission, 1905-1909: First Comprehensive Presidential Inquiry into Administration,” Western Political Quarterly 23, no. 1 (Mar., 1970): 5-54. 44 Dwight Waldo, “Development of Theory of Democratic Administration,” American Political Science Review 46, no. 1 (Mar., 1952): 83.

15 Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions social organization of American democracy concluded that one whiff of centralized administration would, through its “more perfect instruments of tyranny,” result in an

“insufferable despotism.”45 Indeed, the United States was founded as a rejection of executive sovereignty—the executive being the English monarchy—and, chief among its complaints in declaring independence were the overbearing “swarms” of administrative officers, and the lack of public say in matters of government finance.46

American governing institutions were designed with such concerns in mind: local authority would balance federal authority, legislative powers would check executive powers, and elected officers would direct the actions of appointed officials.47 No where were these concerns more evident than in the design of government financial practices.

The Constitution granted the power of the purse to the elected representatives closest to the people. The act to establish the Treasury Department stipulated that its director would be directly responsible to Congress. Only through the rarely exercised veto power would the President have any say over government expenditures. What government budgeting reformers would later criticize as an administrative system devoid of any overarching principle was, in actuality, quite principled.48 As Justice Brandeis would later write,

45 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Vol. II, trans. Henry Reeve (London: Saunders and Otley, 1838), 101. This point comes with an important caveat. Restraints on the intrusions of federal pertained largely to intrusions into the lives of native-born white men. The federal government was quite active in removing indigenous Americans from their land, maintaining slavery, and enforcing virulent forms of discrimination and segregation. See, for example, Richard White, “It’s Your Misfortune and None of My Own”: A New History of the American West (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991); Robin L. Einhorn, American Taxation, American Slavery (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006). 46 Declaration of Independence, 1776. 47 Novak, “The Myth of the ‘Weak’ American State,” American Historical Review 113, iss. 3 (Jun. 2008), 763. 48 Webber and Wildavsky, A History of Taxation and Expenditure.

16 Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions

America’s governing institutions were designed “not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power [and] save the people from autocracy.”49

These dual aversions—against the influence of business and the centralization of authority—make it all the more perplexing that Congress would eventually embrace (and

Americans would accept) corporate financial practices premised on administrative centralization.50 But that is exactly what happened under the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921. Passed after a protracted debate over the compatibility of administrative efficiency and democratic principles, the Budget and Accounting Act turned the appropriations process on its head. The President would now be in charge of formulating the national budget. To assist with this task, the act established a new administrative department, the Bureau of the Budget, which would collect departmental estimates

(prepared using standard procedures and accounting classifications), weigh trade-offs in accordance with presidentially determined priorities, and balance expenditure needs against available resources.

For the first time ever, the budget would present the federal government as a financially unified whole operating under the centralized administrative control of the country’s chief executive.51 In a country that, before 1921, lacked anything resembling a

49 Myers v. United States, 272 U.S. 293 (1926). 50 By “acceptance,” I have in mind the perspective, common in neoinstitutionalist sociology, that one can gauge the legitimacy of some idea or practice by attending to changes in the commotion that surrounds it (see Marc Schneiberg and Elisabeth S. Clemens, “The Typical Tools for the Job Research Strategies in Institutional Analysis,” Sociological Theory 24, no. 3 (2006): 195–227). In this regard, the most important change is not the Budget and Accounting Act itself, but the form of politics it engendered. Had a rogue Congress passed the budget act, an angry public might have refused to accept their new role. Yet, following the creation of the national budget, new processes were quickly assimilated as the way things are done in government. It would not be until the Nixon presidency that Congress would again recognize the flaws of an executive dominated budget process. 51 The Bureau of Budget became the Office of Management and Budget in 1970 and the General Accounting Office became the Government Accountability office in 2004. Some legal scholars

17 Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions systematic budget at the federal level, the Act represented “the greatest landmark of our administrative history except for the Constitution itself.”52

The act was a turning point in American democracy as well. To quote legal scholar Henry Campbell Black, it represented a radical departure from American political tradition because it increased the “control of the executive over the entire government,

[making] the executive, and not the legislature, the policy determining organ.”53 Under the new scheme, Congress would be neither the leading edge of government expenditure nor able to actively represent constituent interests in drawing up appropriations. Instead, it would serve as a board of approval, weighing in on the financial plans prepared by the

President and his team of administrative experts.54

By laying the intellectual and administrative foundations for centralized planning, national budgeting transformed the boundaries of American government, reconfiguring the possibilities for citizens to participate in determining collective priorities or to influence the direction of the state. Under the national budget, the American experiment in self-government came to more closely resemble an experiment in political spectatorship.

have come to regard the bureau’s secretive operations and discretionary powers—baked into the very function of the office—with concern (see Eloise Pasachoff, “The President’s Budget as a Source of Agency Policy Control,” Yale Law Journal 125, 2182 (2016): 2250–2289). 52 Herbert Emmerich, Federal Organization and Administrative Management (University, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 1971), 40-41; Webber and Wildavsky, A History of Taxation and Expenditure in the Western World. 53 Henry Campbell Black, “A National Budget System,” The Constitutional Review 4, no. 1 (Jan., 1920), 43. 54 To be sure, the General Accounting Office, a creature of compromise in the Budget and Accounting Act, was created to give Congress power over the audit. Although this is certainly a check against executive aggrandizement, it is important to note that the audit only provides post hoc control over expenditures. The GAO continues today as the Government Accountability Office (renamed in 2004). For other details in this paragraph, see Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, Pub. L. No. 67-13, 42 Stat. 20 (1921).

18 Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions

Far from representing what Weber called the “irresistible advance of bureaucratization,” the administrative reconfiguration of democratic participation presents a puzzle.55 For one, it is surprising that a practice premised on executive control and administrative centralization would ever be established at the heart of a political system founded on the rejection of monarchy and an aversion to federal bureaucracy. Second, it is remarkable that financial management practices developed among business corporations would ever be seen as a legitimate solution to the woes of democratic governance. We take this for granted now—it is common for politicians to describe their business management chops as qualifications for office—but this has not always been the case in the American context. Third (and perhaps most remarkable), the particular administrative approach codified in the 1921 act represented only one of multiple efforts to introduce capitalistic financial management practices into government administration. And among those alternatives, it was the most centralizing one. If, as I have argued, neither centralization nor budgeting were the inevitable outgrowths of the administrative state, then how did this striking transformation in American government come about?

Government Budgeting and Administrative Centralization: Prevailing Accounts Although the history of the national budget has many chroniclers, prevailing accounts do not adequately explain how financial practices drawn from capitalist enterprise made their way into American government or how these transgressive practices were

55 Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretive Sociology, eds. Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 1403.

19 Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions reconciled with democratic principles. In fact, many accounts bypass these matters entirely, characterizing administrative centralization as an “efficient” solution to the challenges of the day.

Such accounts variously depict administrative centralization as a direct outgrowth of the era’s efficiency craze, a government reflex to the growing (and growingly complex) needs of society, a necessary response to the enormous debt incurred during the

First World War, or the product of affluent Americans agitated by the newly imposed federal income tax.56 Such accounts are not incorrect insofar as they identify the cultural and economic conditions in which executive budgeting and administrative centralization would become possible. Americans were obsessed with efficiency in all its forms; an increasingly diverse, urbanized, and interconnected society certainly created complexity for government; and newly taxed Americans were eager to call attention to the financial challenges plaguing the state. But these conditions do not in and of themselves explain how executive budgeting rose to the fore or how this particular form of budgeting would became legitimate in a democratic context. The challenge with such accounts is that, much like Weberian invocations of bureaucracy’s irresistible advance or inevitable conflict with democracy, they imbue administrative centralization with a teleology, effectively arguing that it had to happen this way.57

56 Samuel Haber, Efficiency and Uplift: Scientific Management in the Progressive Era, 1890- 1920 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964); Webber and Wildavsky, A History of Taxation and Expenditure; Peri E. Arnold, Making the Managerial Presidency: Comprehensive Reorganization Planning, 1905-1996 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 5. 57 The teleology motif in early work on American political development is evident in the adjectives used to describe the state: “laggard,” “incomplete,” “backward,” “reluctant.” Such terms suggest a higher form of existence that the state had yet to realize or had avoided becoming (see Novak, “The ‘Myth’ of the Weak American State,” 754).

20 Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions

Other accounts, most notably one by Stephen Skowronek, build more contingency into the administrative centralization of the American state. “After 1900,” Skowronek argues, it was “no longer a question of whether or not America was going to build a state that could support administrative power,” but rather “who was going to control administrative power in the new state that was to be built.” To answer the question of

“who,” Skowronek puts the adversarial relationships between government officials,

Congress, and the President at center stage, arguing that this power struggle ultimately

“mediated the quest for administrative rationality.”58

In his emphasis on political contests over administrative control, however,

Skowronek effectively treats administrative rationality as an orthogenetic force, operating with a “logic of its own.” Administrative centralization, he writes, was a “response to industrialism” and a recognition that a “centralized bureaucratic apparatus” was the “best way to maintain order.”59

Despite the American tendency to oppose centralization, the question of how this resistance was overcome—a question of legitimation in terms of political values and cultural traditions—does not factor in Skowronek’s analysis.60 Instead, defenders of the established order are characterized by their drive to maintain political power.61

58 Skowronek, Building a New American State, 165, 4. 59 Skowronek, Building a New American State, 178, 4. 60 Skowronek characterizes defenders of the established institution by their drive to maintain positional advantage. But that advantage, it should be noted, was the product of a governmental apparatus designed to embody particular values. Building on Skowronek’s work, John Dearborn asks why Congress would ever consider surrendering its authority to the President and argues that growing acceptance of “presidential representation” helps to explain the change of heart (Dearborn, “The ‘Proper Organs’ for Presidential Representation: A Fresh Look at the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921,” Journal of Policy History 31, no. 1 (2019): 1-41). 61 Absent from the analysis are the ideational underpinnings of the institutions these persons sought to preserve. Defenders’ advantages were rooted in a political system premised on decentralization and averse to the strong executive.

21 Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions

Accordingly, while Skowronek successfully demonstrates the mutability of America’s governing institutions, he is unable to fully account for how an entirely new political order even became possible or how else the power struggles he so masterfully describes might have played out.

The challenge with such accounts, as several historians and sociologists have observed, is that they tend to overemphasize the role of the state in its own administrative development.62 And by operating as if there were an “impermeable boundary between state and society,” they fail to explain how features of historical context—that is, various cultural, ideological, and economic resources available at the time—became instantiated in the state’s administrative machinery.63 Because they overlook the civic action taking place outside the state and begin with the budget idea fully formed, prevailing accounts miss the contingencies and alternate storylines that animated the administrative transformation of American democracy.

And given the potency of American business and associational life in the in early

20th century, there is good reason to look beyond the imaginary lines of the state. At the time, business corporations dwarfed government in terms of size and social influence.

And American civil society was teeming with numerous overlapping and conflicting

62 Such an approach is the product of a literature that, at its founding sought supplant passive characterizations of the state (e.g., as an instrument for class rule or a setting for interest group conflict) with a model premised on autonomy, actorhood, and path dependency (Peter B. Evans, Dietrich Rueschmeyer, and Theda Skocpol, Bringing the State Back In (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985).This approach offers powerful explanations for institutional durability, but it nevertheless struggles to explain institutional transformations without resorting to incrementalism or cataclysm (Marc Schneiberg, “What’s on the path? Path dependence, organizational diversity and the problem of institutional change in the US economy, 1900–1950,” Socio-Economic Review 5 (2007): 52 63 Balogh, The Associational State, 8.

22 Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions movements for social and governmental reform.64 Indeed, before budgeting ever figured in national discourse, it took hold in the rich associational life of American cities, promoted as a tool for making municipal administration responsive to public needs.65

Executive budgeting was not a spontaneous outgrowth of democratic government and the path it traveled from capitalist enterprise to public administration was both tortuous and full of dispute. To more fully account for the emergence of the executive budget and the ascendence of an oligarchic elite in American government, it is necessary to understand how such administrative transformations became conceivable and legitimate within a democratic polity.

The Public Politics of Administrative Practice: An Alternative Account In order to advance an alternative account, I draw from sociological research that views states and organizations as assemblages of the various models and resources available in their institutional environment at the time of their founding.66 The institutional environments out of which organizations and administrative practices emerge are often

64 Harvard president Charles Eliot described how a relatively small, Boston-based railroad company overshadowed the state of Massachusetts both in terms of employees (18,000 compared to 6,000) and annual revenues ($40 million compared to $7 million). Quoted in Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform (New York: Vintage Books, 1955), 231-232; Nell Irvin Painter, Standing at Armageddon: The United States, 1877-1919 (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1989). 65 Jonathan Kahn, Budgeting Democracy: State Building and Citizenship in America 1890-1928 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997). Kahn is exceptional on this point. Kahn’s account is largely consistent with my own. But where Kahn emphasizes that budgeting embodies particular values (a point with which I agree), I emphasize the interaction between budgeting practices and existing conceptions of democracy in American government. Understanding the reciprocal dynamics between these oppositional forces, and how institutional configurations result, is this dissertation’s central problematic. 66 Arthur L. Stinchcombe, “Social Structure and Organizations,” in James G. March, Ed., Handbook of Organizations (New York: Rand McNally, 1965), 142–193; Victoria Johnson, “What Is Organizational Imprinting? Cultural Entrepreneurship in the Founding of the Paris Opera,” American Journal of Sociology 113, no. 1 (Jul., 2007): 97–127.

23 Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions awash with a plurality of evaluative principles, social identities, and organizational forms.

These raw materials afford countless possibilities for novel recombinations and new forms of social action.67 Building from this perspective, Clemens has argued that state building is a “fundamentally combinatorial project” emerging from the fraught intersections of incompatible or dissimilar social domains.68

But not all recombinations are equally conceivable or legitimate. Inasmuch as institutional environments are full of new possibilities, they are also full of old constraints. Novel recombinations are often perceived as threats to the existing social order either because they are incompatible with established organizational repertoires or because they transgress important social and symbolic boundaries. Consider, for example, early efforts to introduce commercial patenting into university-based life sciences, attempts to foist impersonal accounting metrics onto community organizations steeped in personal forms of accountability, the bid to monetize human life through life insurance, or—given the case at hand—attempts to introduce capitalist financial management into democratic government.69 In each case, the new practice threatened to erode meaningful distinctions, met stiff resistance, and risked being reject outright.

67 David Stark, The Sense of Dissonance: Accounts of Worth in Economic Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009); John Padgett and Walter W. Powell in Emergence of Organizations and Markets (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012). 68 Elisabeth S. Clemens, Civic Gifts: Voluntarism and the Making of the American Nation-State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020), 6–7. 69 Jeannette A. Colyvas and Walter W. Powell. “Roads to Institutionalization: The Remaking of Boundaries between Public and Private Science,” Research in Organizational Behavior 27 (2006): 305–353; Aaron Horvath, “Organizational supererogation and the transformation of nonprofit accountability” (manuscript under review); Viviana A. Zelizer, Morals and Markets: The Development of Life Insurance in the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1979).

24 Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions

On the rare occasion such recombinations are stabilized within a new context—or, perhaps more importantly, as a consequence of how these recombinations are stabilized— they can trigger radical transformations in the way things are done. Previously unthinkable organizational forms, administrative practices, and social identities may result. Links forged between commerce and academy gave rise to new organizational structures and career paths. Hardheaded accounting metrics were repurposed as tools for expressing the distinctive and locally meaningful nature of nonprofit work. And the redefinition of death as a financial event made previously unthinkable market practices socially legitimate.70

Informed by this approach, we may look to the social processes by which practices designed to centralize decision-making power are ultimately reconciled with the principles of egalitarianism and popular sovereignty.

One way such reconciliation might occur is for the practices themselves to be reconfigured such that they fit with the values of the setting into which they are being introduced. Restrictive practices may be rearranged such that they are rendered more inclusive. Rather than granting power to the select few at the top of the organizational hierarchy, practices may be implemented in ways that empower the rank and file or deliberative bodies comprised of the organization’s general membership. Alternatively, practices that typically favor centralized authority might be coupled with other practices

70 In addition to the pieces cited above, see: Fiona Murray, “The Oncomouse That Roared: Hybrid Exchange Strategies as a Source of Distinction at the Boundary of Overlapping Institutions.” American Journal of Sociology 116, no. 2 (Sept., 2010): 341–88; Morals and Markets; Roi Livne, “Economies of Dying: The Moralization of Economic Scarcity in U.S. Hospice Care,” American Sociological Review 79, no. 5 (October 2014): 888–911; Barbara Kiviat, “The Moral Limits of Predictive Practices: The Case of Credit-Based Insurance Scores.” American Sociological Review 84, no. 6 (Dec., 2019): 1134–58.

25 Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions that afford opportunities for broad-based access, voice, deliberation, or participation in decision-making processes. Reconfigured as such, a once-restrictive practice is unlikely to unsettle the established social order. In this sense, organizations can be made more formal, orderly, and capable of managing technical complexity without being leached of their underlying democratic ideals.

Building from this idea, it would seem that oligarchic transformations depend on restrictive practices being introduced without being transformed to fit the values of their new context. But this again raises the challenge of reconciliation: practices that tread on established norms are often rejected as illegitimate. One cannot assume the ready acceptance of an administrative innovation that reorganizes political power—e.g., stripping the public of its ability to influence organizational activities. This contention, of course, follows a familiar pattern. Michels argued that no elite, once established, would be willing to surrender its power. Why then would we expect such concessions to be readily forthcoming from the organizational membership?

This oversight is one of the fundamental deficiencies of Michels’ iron law. As

Bendix put it, studies proceeding in the Michelsian tradition tended to obsess over the

“superior power of organized minorities without giving sufficient attention to the causes of dissensus inside and outside the organizations studied.”71 Indeed, the history of states is dotted with the paroxysms of peoples who feel their right to rule had been challenged.

And on a smaller scale—for instance, among unions or civic associations—those who have lost their privileges may exit the organization and opt to join or form another.

71 Bendix, “Bureaucracy: The Problem and its Setting,” 494.

26 Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions

According to Gouldner, “this would appear to be an organizational constraint that makes oligarchies…no less inherently unstable than democratic organization.”72

Following this reasoning, the ascent of organizational oligarchy is as much a product of the introduction of restrictive administrative practices as it is a product of the broader political environment that permits these practices to be implemented.

Accordingly, one must understand not only how particular practices consolidate or disperse administrative authority, but also the cultural milieu and historical moment into which such practices are launched.73 But these contextual features are neither static nor unchangeable. The question, then, in a setting like the early 20th century United States— vigorously opposed to centralization and the ascendence of an oligarchic elite—was how such administrative transformations became not only politically legitimate but also desirable.

To this end, I look to a second form of reconciliation between transgressive practice and social context. Here, reconciliation concerns not the reconfiguration of practice, but the reconfiguration of the norms and values of the setting into which it is introduced. In one sense, this cultural reconfiguration may occur slowly over time. As cultural contexts evolve and disparate spheres of social activity grow increasingly interconnected, endeavors that were once viewed as anomalous or objectionable may come to garner widespread support.74 In another sense, however, cultural change may

72 Gouldner, “Metaphysical Pathos,” 506. 73 William H. Sewell Jr., The Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 10. 74 Johnson and Powell, “Organizational Poisedness and the Transformation of Civic Order in Nineteenth-Century New York City,” in Naomi R. Lamoreaux and John Joseph Wallis, eds., Organizations, Civil Society, and the Roots of Development (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017).

27 Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions result from deliberate campaigns and social movements seeking to reconfigure the meaning of government, community, and political participation.

Accordingly, it is necessary to consider how restrictive administrative practices resonate with the interests, cognitive frameworks, and political ideals of powerful alters who are positioned to mobilize (or suppress) support for restrictive practices.75 Such allies may also provide the necessary resources to sustain the development of such practices despite their unpopularity.76 And given the importance of broad cultural support in the legitimation of oligarchy, it is important to understand how, if at all, such support is generated.

Put differently, to explain the ascendence of an oligarchic elite in a setting characterized by egalitarian values, it is necessary to account for how popular conceptions of democracy are transformed. One must explain how silence and detached surveillance—not voice and active participation—become the valued attributes of political citizenship.

Applying this argument to the emergence of executive budgeting, I follow a shifting cast of intellectual, social, and economic elites—effectively the interlocking directorate of

Progressive Era thought—as they conceptualize and promote models of government budgeting at the municipal, state, and national levels. Despite harboring distinctive ideological ambitions, these groups converged in 1905 with the shared ambition to introduce modern financial management practices into public administration. Conflicting

75 See, for example, Isaac William Martin, Rich People’s Movements: Grassroots Campaigns to Untax the One Percent (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), and Edward T. Walker, Grassroots for Hire: Public Affairs Consultants in American Democracy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014). 76 John D. McCarthy and Mayer N. Zald, “Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A Partial Theory,” American Journal of Sociology 82, no. 6 (May, 1977): 1212–1241.

28 Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions ideals, however, ultimately led to an acrimonious split. By 1912, there were two divergent models of budgetary practice, each with radically different implications for citizen participation in American government.

The first model, which emerged in New York City from the intersection of elite municipal reform movements and social science-driven charitable relief sought to repurpose capitalist budgetary practices to better conform with democratic values. In this approach, budgeting would detail the indisputable facts of government expenditure that, when coupled with information campaigns, civic education, and interactive public exhibits, would stimulate public debate over collective priorities and facilitate direct citizen control over government administration. Reconfigured as such, budgeting was unlikely to result in oligarchic centralization. On the contrary, it would actually expand opportunities for citizen involvement and influence.

The second model—the executive budget—hewed more closely to budgetary practices employed in industrial enterprise, emphasizing executive power, the centripetal flow of authority, and retrospective accountability to the public (i.e., ‘Here is what we have done’). Early efforts to introduce this approach into federal government—first attempted in 1912 with President Taft’s Commission on Economy and Efficiency—were vehemently rejected. Opponents considered the practice the harbinger of despotism and castigated executive budget proponents for failing to understand the basic premise of the

American political system. To accept the executive budget, they worried, would be to accept oligarchy, if not outright autocracy.

Although the second model presented an obvious challenge to democratic values and political institutions, it also resonated with powerful backers: newly formed

29 Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions philanthropic foundations and ultra-wealthy financial supporters, national business associations, a growingly self-confident academic elite, and a handful of influential politicians. After the executive budget’s initial failure, these groups worked together to orchestrate a national movement to redefine the meaning of responsible citizenship. By attaching the national budget to the emergent idea of a common national interest, the movement built widespread support for the idea that only the President—with the support of disinterested experts trained in the precepts of administrative science—could represent the nation’s collective will. Through this transformation, the hierarchical authority inscribed in executive budgeting, once viewed as objectionable to democracy, came to be seen as democracy’s highest expression.

The Chapters Ahead I marshal several types of historical data to develop my account. Public documents (e.g., budget proponents’ books, reports, and articles) allow me to trace the evolution of administrative reform from 1905 to 1921. Often produced under the auspices of research institutes and movement organizations, these documents speak alternately to expert and general audiences, often intermingling administrative science, accounting procedure, and political theory. Some explicitly propagandistic documents—namely pro-budget groups’ bulletins, periodicals, and op-eds—help to illustrate the rhetorical appeals associated with the administrative reconfiguration of political authority. Adding depth to these public materials, I also draw heavily on private correspondence, confidential memoranda, and personal diaries. Such data permit an insider view into pivotal moments, often laying bare the prejudices and inter-organizational coordination operating outside of public view. In several cases, I use data from multiple sides of an interaction or event in order to

30 Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions triangulate between alternative accounts of pivotal moments in the narrative arc. Lastly, in order to demonstrate changes in public discourse, I examine extensive newspaper and periodical coverage, legislative records, and first-hand accounts.

I narrate my argument over three empirical chapters, each centering on the people and organizations that animated the emergence of the national budget and the legitimation of an administrative elite.

Chapter 2 examines the New York Bureau of Municipal Research, founded in

1905, an organization that brought together Gilded Age philanthropy with technocratic scholarship and a socialistic orientation to reform.77 The Bureau temporarily held in suspension divergent ideas about the broader ends such reform ought to achieve. One of the Bureau’s founders, Frederick Cleveland, saw government as a corporation and, just like any other corporation, it was to be operated on behalf of its shareholders (i.e., taxpayers) and in accordance with the universal principles of administrative efficiency.

Efficient administration required curtailing opportunities for citizen influence. Another founder, William Allen, believed city government had become too inaccessible to the layperson. He envisioned a “socialism of intelligence” wherein citizens would, through education and discourse, exert control over government activities. Both approaches were on display when the 1908 New York City budget—the first systematically classified government budget in American history—was accompanied with a multi-week budget exhibit designed to foster public debate and citizen participation in determining funding priorities. Such “publicity,” however, was concerning to the Bureau’s financial supporters, especially the Rockefeller Foundation who saw an empowered citizenry as a

77 The organization was initially established as the City Betterment Bureau in 1905 before being incorporated as the New York Bureau of Municipal Research in 1907.

31 Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions threat to philanthropic legitimacy. Allen’s 1914 ouster from the Bureau and subsequent ostracism by philanthropic funders represents a path not taken in public administration and the severance of a link between proactive public participation and government budgeting.

Chapter 3 follows the rise and fall of President’s Taft Commission on Economy and Efficiency from 1910 to 1913. Keen on a businesslike, executive-led federal administration, Taft selected Cleveland to lead his Commission, appointing other administrative experts—William Willoughby and Frank Goodnow—to assist with the work. Leaning on the principles of a budding administrative science, the Commission sought to reconfigure federal government as an administratively unified whole under the command of a chief executive. Drawing inspiration from industrial management, the

Commission promulgated standard administrative methods (e.g., files must be stored flat and letters stripped of complementary close), elaborated accounting classifications for all conceivable expenditures (everything from inkwells to projectiles), and created the first federal organizational chart (all lines of authority converged at the executive). Tying these reforms together was the Commission’s 1912 proposal for an executive budget. If government was a corporation, it ought to be administered like one. To Congress, however, the proposal was an attack on democratic government. With the Commission’s proposal rejected, funding cut, and the incoming Wilson administration unwilling to expend political capital on the cause, Cleveland, Willoughby, and Goodnow came to understand their defeat as a failure to mobilize public support and stimulate popular demand for administrative reform.

32 Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions

Chapter 4 picks up where the Taft Commission leaves off by following a powerful national coalition of budget proponents as they work to generate widespread political enthusiasm for federal administrative reform. At the center of this coalition was the Institute for Government Research, which was incorporated in 1916 in Washington,

DC with Willoughby as its director.78 Much like the Bureau of Municipal Research, the

Institute brought together philanthropists (Rockefeller money played a central role), industrialists, social elites, and administrative experts. Unlike the Bureau however, the

Institute disavowed any effort to inform public opinion, preferring instead to maintain an

“objective” public profile. Behind the scenes, however, Willoughby and his staff helped coordinate a national campaign to implement the executive budget in federal government.

Two other organizations joined in the cause. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce put its national membership behind the budget and encouraged local chambers to “induce” support among neighbors, newspapers, and political representatives. The National Budget

Committee encouraged similar efforts by establishing local “Budget Clubs” and working through established civic networks to rally support for the idea.

The campaign’s timing was, as Willoughby would put it, “opportune.” The First

World War cultivated feelings of collective national interest. Reliance on citizen-based funding of the war effort—through federal income taxes and government bonds—helped to foster feelings of a personal stake in public finance. Drawing on this “psychological moment” (as one member of the Rockefeller Foundation called it), the campaign worked to link national budgeting to the national interest. Propaganda argued that the national

78 In 1927, the Institute for Government Research was incorporated along with the Institute of Economics (founded 1922) and the Robert Brookings Graduate School of Economics and Government (founded 1924) as the Brookings Institution.

33 Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions interest required national representation. And because the President was the only nationally elected official, only the President could speak for the nation as a whole.

Making government more inclusive—either through direct citizen involvement or allowing local representatives to determine federal spending—would necessarily bias national interests toward parochial concerns.

In this sense, the executive budget was the tool of the national interest. It envisioned a country speaking with one voice, unencumbered by plurality and parochialism. But that voice was distinctly white, male, Protestant, and educated.79

Budget proponents valorized the selfless citizen who would be willing to relinquish his immediate and local interests out of duty to an abstract, national public good. But such selflessness only went one way: allegiance to the national interest was not reciprocated by concern for the local. The budget campaign was a success. Willoughby was invited to draft the Budget and Accounting Act, which, after years of debate and delay, was signed into law on June 21, 1921.

I conclude the dissertation in Chapter 5 by considering the implications of the national budget and the ascendence of an American administrative elite for the development of American democracy in the years since. Using the budget case as an example, I consider revisions to time-worn Weberian and Michelsian approaches to administrative theory, proposing the further development of an organizational sociology of democracy attentive to both how political ideologies become instantiated in

79 Of course in early 1900s America, “public” never meant public in the fullest sense of the word. And universal suffrage, until the end of the period examined here was only universal for white men, and then (and unfortunately still) only unconditional for white people. I reflect this lopsided state of affairs throughout the text both directly and through the language I use to describe the few persons privileged with power over the masses.

34 Democracy and its Administrative Contradictions administrative practice and how, in turn, these practices structure the possibilities of inclusion and allocate political privileges. By engaging directly with how illiberal thought—especially racism and classism—became instantiated in an enduring set of administrative practices and their underlying assumptions, I aim to illustrate how

America’s problematic history continues to structure the possibilities for citizen participation and restrict political imaginations of how democracy could be. I close by reflecting on the role of organizational theory itself in structuring democratic possibilities and considering how alternative democratic-organizational arrangements, rather than being “exceptions” to the so-called iron laws, might be given a durability of their own.

35 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent”

2

“The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent”

The decades surrounding the turn of the 20th century were a period of rapid industrialization, urbanization, and immigration in America. Between 1870 and 1900, the

United States transformed from a largely disconnected agrarian economy to a complexly interconnected industrial economy driven by new forms of transportation, communication, and finance. Over just thirty years, railroads grew from under 50,000 miles of track to over 160,000 miles with competition so intense a traveler could pick from 20 alternate routes between Atlanta and St. Louis.1 Telegraph lines sprang up alongside rail, establishing a trans-local network of commerce and distribution and minting previously untold wealth through new economies of scale.2 Coal and oil extraction fueled economic growth, steel mills produced the raw material from which

1 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of the United States, Colonial Times to 1957 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1960), 423; Gabriel Kolko, Railroads and Regulation 1877–1916 (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1965), 7. 2 Alfred D. Chandler, Jr. The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1977), 195–205.

36 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent” other industries were built, and finance channeled ever-larger sums of money into new industrial ventures.

Alongside people like Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and Jay Gould emerged another kind of business magnate, people like William Marcy Tweed, who turned politics—rather than steel, oil, or rail—into a viable commercial enterprise.

Tweed’s Tammany Hall political machine ran New York politics in much the same manner as its industrial contemporaries: ruthless in competition and unencumbered by law. It sold clout by the railcar and took bribes to tip legislation and judicial opinion in favor of the highest bidder. When scandals came to light—Crédit Mobilier, Whiskey

Ring, Erie Ring—they tarnished political reputations and ended government careers. And yet, the political machines, much like any other well-run business, persisted.

Much like other enterprises, political machines had their detractors. The fiercest critics belong to a self-appointed aristocracy of professionals, journalists, and well-to-do government reformers distressed that politics had become the purview of the acquisitive and unprincipled entrepreneur. “The gutter,” remarked one reformer, was now

“governing the sidewalk.”3

There is no doubt that machine politics was unsightly. But the many accounts of graft and patronage—frequently detailed in the pages of The Nation, Harper’s Weekly, and the North American Review—smoldered with racist, classist, and anti-immigrant vitriol. The concern with misgovernment belied an even deeper set of antipathies and anxieties of a social order in flux. Indeed, the country was changing. Between 1870 and

1900, the American population had doubled and, with Americans moving cityward, the

3 John G. Sproat, “The Best Men”: Liberal Reformers in the Gilded Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 46–50.

37 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent” country’s urban population grew by a factor of three. Accompanying the nation’s internal growth, 12 million immigrants—many from Ireland, Germany, and southern Italy— arrived stateside, spreading across the country’s city centers.4

Outpacing the nation’s already rapid urbanization, New York City’s population grew fourfold since the end of the Civil War. What was once a small port town was now a bustling metropolis of 3.4 million people, 1.4 million of whom were foreign born.5 In many ways the city was flourishing. It had quickly become the nation’s financial center, publishing house, and lecture hall. Beneath these outward markers of success, however, was a municipality strained beyond capacity. Newcomers struggled in low-wage jobs with few workplace protections. For housing, they had little option but to crowd into ramshackle tenements where diseases like typhus, cholera, and smallpox ran rampant.

Roads needed to be built, schools constructed, and miles of water mains laid.

Reflecting on the struggles of America’s urban frontiers and the depredations of machine politics, James Bryce concluded “there [was] little denying that the government of cities” was the country’s most “conspicuous failure.”6 To Bryce, New York City was the manifestation of the defective principles of democracy.

Bryce’s assessment, however—soon to become a rallying cry for municipal reformers—carried a distinctly patrician flavor. Shady dealings notwithstanding, political machines acted as a de facto welfare state before there was much of any welfare state to

4 U.S. Census Bureau, “Historical Census Statistics On Population Totals By Race, 1790 to 1990, and By Hispanic Origin, 1970 to 1990, For Large Cities And Other Urban Places In The United States,” Population Division, Working Paper no. 76 (Feb., 2005). 5 U.S. Census Bureau, “Historical Census Statistics.” 6 James Bryce, The American Commonwealth, Vol 1 (New York: Macmillan and Co., 1895), 637.

38 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent” speak of.7 New York’s Tammany Hall offered financial support to individuals in need, helped community members find work when they lost their jobs, and secured housing for families that lost their homes. What reformers decried as the evils of patronage was, for the many Irish, Germans, Italians, Catholics, and Jews employed by municipal government, a means of social and economic advancement otherwise unavailable in

American society. Because machines depended on working-class communities to stay in power, they were directly responsive to these communities’ needs. However undemocratic their methods, municipal machines offered a sort of refuge and representation otherwise unavailable in American politics.8

The arrangement offended the sensibilities of an urban upper class possessed with the ideals of systematization, efficiency, orderliness, and respectability.9 A young

7 Theda Skocpol, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers: The Political Origins of Social Policy in the United States (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1992), 93–100. Skocpol offers two nice examples on this point. One is that of Tweed working through the New York State legislature to channel substantial state funding to Catholic charities that had previously received little public support. There was also are far more personable element to machine welfare. Whereas elite charity reformers tended to “work on” the needy, the machine politician tended to “work with” the people. The contrast being that of a generous neighbor positioned to help versus a condescending professional tending to dictate. 8 David Montgomery, Citizen Worker: The Experience of Workers in the United States with Democracy and the Free Market During the Nineteenth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 130–144; David C. Hammack, Power and Society: Greater New York at the Turn of the Century (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 89, 159, 180. This synoptic treatment of political machines, especially in New York requires two caveats. First, despite the image of coordination and consistency implied by the “machine” metaphor, organizations like Tammany Hall were, in practice, a congeries of ward bosses and factions, the relations of which shifted frequently. Second, machine service to community was often symbolic or transactional. That said, it was not until the early 1900s that populists would come to support anti-machine candidates. This was, in part, due to the work of thew New York Bureau of Municipal Research and its ability to link the previously conflicting aims of financial efficiency with social welfare and public participation (see Kenneth Feingold, “Traditional Reform, Municipal Populism, and Progressivism: Challenges to Machine Politics in Early-Twentieth- Century New York City,” Urban Affairs Review 31, no. 1 (Sept., 1995): 20–42). 9 James Weinstein, The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State, 1900-1918 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968)

39 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent”

Theodore Roosevelt complained that members of the “lowest stratum of New-York life…are allowed to rule over us.” 10 Another reformer wrote that the city had been entrusted to “a crowd of illiterate peasants, freshly raked in from Irish bogs, or Bohemian mines, or Italian robber nests.”11 Such lowly officials, they argued, hereditarily incapable of governing, had sold out the city’s general interests for the parochial concerns of the neighborhood and the private wants of the contractor’s bribe. Nowhere was this more evident than in the growing costs of municipal administration.12. Sure, the city had quadrupled in size and faced an increasingly complex set of public demands. But the greatest challenge, in the minds of municipal reformers at least, were the myopic desires of working-class residents and the reprobate city officials who would stop at nothing to satisfy these interests. The “taxpayers” wrote one reformer, were “at the mercy of the tax eaters.”13

If unscrupulousness was the ailment, the antidote lay in finding incorruptible men to execute the duties of public office.14 At first, such men cast a familiar silhouette. They would be cultured, of good blood, and of high social standing—men “like ourselves or better,” wrote Henry Adams to his brother.15 But such nakedly self-serving proposals were a poor substitute for self-serving party bosses. Accordingly, reformers began to

10 Jon Teaford, The Unheralded Triumph: City Government in America, 1870-1900 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), 18. 11 Andrew D. White, “The Government of American Cities,” Forum 10 (Dec., 1890): 368. 12 Indeed, city’s expenditures had grown 26 percent since the 1870s a remarkably low figure given the population quadrupled over the same period (Edward D. Durand, The Finances of New York City (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1898), 378). 13 Quoted in David C. Hammack, Power and Society, 9. 14 To be clear, good government reformers were, by and large, not envisioning administrative roles for women, hence the usage of “men” here. 15 Sproat, “The Best Men,” 7. The Adams brothers were descendants of the Adams political family.

40 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent” construct more abstract conceptions of the ideal administrator, arguing that intelligent, capable, and qualified men—like the managerial professionals one might find in a

“corporation or mercantile firm”—ought to assert themselves in public affairs.16 After all, the city was “purely a business institution” and would only succeed when “administered by officers…selected on account of their special adaptation to the work” of business management.17 As members of the Civil Service Reform Association argued:

[P]ublic business differs from private business only in the fact that any pecuniary loss incurred through negligency or dishonesty falls upon a larger number of persons. Human nature in a Government office is the same as human nature in a bank or counting-house, and calls for precisely the same checks and guaranties and encouragements to keep it up to a proper standard of honesty and efficiency.18

Such analogies were not without irony. The exact issue that had galvanized reformers was that entrepreneurial city officials had degraded politics by treating government like any other field of business. And yet, when pressed to identify an alternative, it was business to which reformers turned for a model of administrative perfection.19 Unless government were recast in the mold of business administration, expenditures would continue to climb and inefficiency would continue to result.

But such a reform agenda never stood a chance—not as long as machine politicians continued to curry favor with the working class. The problem, reformers argued, was best addressed at the source: restrict participation in local elections. Lest

16 “Purposes of the Civil Service Reform Association,” Publications of the Civil Service Reform Association 1 (May, 1882): 1–2. 17 Frank P. Crandon, “Misgovernment of Great Cities,” Popular Science Monthly 30 (Feb., 1887): 521. 18 “Purposes of the Civil Service Reform Association,” 10. 19 Note that the analogy was not as far-fetched then as it may seem today. Legally speaking, the corporation was a concession of sovereignty from the state, only given if the corporation could be said to serve some public purpose.

41 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent” such restrictions be “denounced as a conspiracy of wealth, talent, and social pride to depress the poor and get control of the City,” one reformer argued, the common man must be made to understand that government had grown too complex for him to

“comprehend [from the papers on] any morning before breakfast.”20 And if government was, at its core, the “faithful administration of financial trusts,” it made little sense for anyone but taxpayers to vote. Only taxpayers held a financial stake in local government.21

How streets were laid out, where schools were located, and who had access to clean drinking water—these were questions related to property to be answered only by those who had a “title” to it. According to one reformer, “No voter has a right to participate in the care of funds to which he does not contribute.”22 It was a simple matter of financial ownership. “Political rights, inalienable or otherwise, [were] not in any true sense involved.”23

In 1877, reformers proposed an amendment to the New York State constitution that would, in effect, cut the electorate of New York City by half. The amendment failed—defeated by working-class voters at risk of losing the franchise—but the effort inaugurated a decades-long assault on expansive conceptions of democracy.24 Over the

20 Dorman B. Eaton, “Outline of a Plan for an Honest and Economical Administration,” reprinted in “City Government,” New York Times (Dec. 11, 1872). 21 “Report of the Tilden Commission,” excerpted in Municipal Affairs 3 (1899): 437. 22 Dorman B. Eaton, “Municipal Government,” Journal of Social Science 5 (1873): 8. The idea persisted for several decades. See Andrew D. White, “The Government of American Cities” Forum 10 (Dec., 1890): 368. 23 Francis Parkman, “The Failure of Universal Suffrage,” North American Review 127, no. 263 (Jul.-Aug., 1878): 20. Despite their attack on the suffrage, reformers saw their campaign to make city government more “businesslike” as fundamentally in the service of democracy. What it would cost in terms of the vote would be more than recouped in governmental efficiency (Geoffrey Blodgett, “The mugwump Reputation,” Journal of American History, 66 (March 1980): 863). 24 Sven Beckert, “Democracy and Its Discontents: Contesting Suffrage Rights in Gilded Age New York,” Past & Present, no. 174 (Feb., 2002): 116–157.

42 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent”

1880s and 1890s, bourgeois civil society blossomed. Civic groups like the Civil Service

Reform League and its network of Good Government clubs organized behind the banner businesslike efficiency in government. The Citizens’ Union and the City Club promoted restrictive qualifications for government appointment and maintained lists of candidates they deemed suitable for office. The City Reform Club—founded by Roosevelt to

“promote the election of honest and capable representatives”—counted J.P. Morgan and

Cornelius Vanderbilt among its members.25 Indeed, the reform movement resonated with many corporate capitalists who sought a stable business environment insulated from unions and socialists which had been steadily gaining support and accumulating victories.

The movement also resonated with a fledgling band of social scientists and administrative scholars who called for technically skilled public administrators to run government on the people’s behalf. Woodrow Wilson, a political scientist at Bryn Mawr, was enthusiastic about the national implications of local reform: “City government, instead of national government, [was] to be the field of experiment and revolution for the future.”26

Despite its elite support, the government reform movement’s various efforts to install strong mayors, reduce the number of offices determined by election (i.e., the

“short ballot” campaign), and diminish the power of neighborhood representatives in municipal administration only found partial success. Indeed, it was a dubious assumption that the citizenry would willingly cede power to an increasingly centralized administration. Reformers’ chosen candidates rarely fared well at the polls and even

25 Robert Muccigrosso, “The City Reform Club: A Study in Late Nineteenth-Century Reform,” New York Historical Society Quarterly 52, no. 3 (Jul., 1968): 239. 26 Woodrow Wilson, “The Study of Administration,” Political Science Quarterly 2, no. 2 (Jun., 1887): 216; Quoted in Martin J. Schiesl, The Politics of Efficiency: Municipal Administration and Reform in America, 1880-1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977), 16.

43 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent” when they did triumph, were rarely re-elected.27 When reform candidates did enter office, they squared off against a labyrinthine municipal administration, difficult to manage let alone transform. Reform was a ploddingly slow business.

Disillusioned by the difficulties of placing “good men” in government, reformers began to explore alternative approaches less focused on administrators themselves and more focused on the methods and structures of administration.28 In one sense, the shift was strategic, reflecting an awareness, forged through experience, that any direct challenge to the fundamental principles of democracy would be met with widespread contempt and popular rebuke. In another sense, it reflected an acceptance that the search for the great administrator had failed. “He wasn’t found because he doesn’t exist,” one reformer explained. “A great administrator needs the tools and techniques of sound administration.”29 The corporation would continue to serve as inspiration for government reform, but it was its administrative methods and structures—not the integrity of its officers—that would take center stage.

Taking up the new approach, the National Municipal League was founded in 1894 on the grounds that it would offer a “positive basis” for municipal administration that extended beyond the “destructive” approach that had been employed in the past.30 Along

27 Electoral success, especially for the adoption of reform charters, generally followed from efforts to suppress the working-class vote (Amy Bridges and Richard Kronick, “Writing the Rules to Win the Game: The Middle-Class Regimes of Municipal Reformers,” Urban Affairs Review 34, no. 5 (May 1999):691-706). Note that, city-rooted civil service campaigns did achieve national results in 1883 with the passage of the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act. Although the act was only selectively applied, it succeed in diminishing patronage and instituting civil service examines for select government positions. 28 Richard L. McCormick, From Realignment to Reform: Political Change in New York State, 1893-1910 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981), 185–186. 29 Henry Bruère quoted in Jane S. Dahlberg, The New York Bureau of Municipal Research (New York: New York University Press, 1966), 4. 30 L.S. Rowe, “Public Accounting Under the Proposed Municipal Program,” A Municipal Program (New York: Macmillan Company, 1900), 88.

44 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent” with the usual crowd of reformer elites, the League drew members from top universities, including professors and presidents from Columbia, Cornell, Harvard, the University of

Chicago, and the University of Pennsylvania. Whereas municipal reform rhetoric had long been steeped in moralizing and vitriol, the League’s writings were couched in the dry language of systems and methods and premised on the idea that cities were subject to universal principles. Indeed, as one League report announced, each city was an

“experiment” from which other cities could learn. As such, there ought to be “some means of interchanging our dearly bought knowledge.”31 Although the League did not completely relinquish the well-worn tropes of good government by good men, it did present these claims in terms of general principles. Any good business must distinguish between ownership and management or, in the case of government, politics and administration.

Moving beyond the good administrator, the League also promoted the maintenance of uniform financial accounts and the preparation of annual budgets. If city governments were to be properly regarded as the “faithful administration of financial trusts,” they would need to adopt financial management practices from their corporate contemporaries. Indeed, “the close relation between public accounting and administrative efficiency [was] most clearly shown in the financing of private corporations.”32 Yet cities lagged behind, paying only “scant attention to the estimates or recommendations from

31 National Municipal League, A Municipal Program (New York: Macmillan Company, 1900), iv. Similar ideas developed in Wisconsin. In what was called the Wisconsin Idea—a union of “seminar and soil”—the political scientist Charles McCarthy founded the first legislative reference library, through which state officials could learn from the experiences of other governments and tailor their own policies in light of this information. 32 Rowe, “Public Accounting,” 90.

45 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent” administrative officials” in allocating funds. They opted instead to rely on guesswork and blind adherence to precedent.33

In contrast to restricting the suffrage, accounting methods and budget-making were far easier to justify on democratic grounds because they were designed to make the administrator efficient and dependable. As Leo Rowe argued,

No businessman or private corporation can afford to incur the odium resulting from negligent financial management. Civic life suffers no less than private business relations under such circumstances.34

Adopting such practices would ensure that citizens—stockholders of the city corporation—could hold their public servants responsible.

To be sure, modern financial management was still a relative novelty in American business, adopted among railroads in response to the demands of overseas investors and quickly spreading throughout new industrial enterprises. What was once a strategy for attracting investors soon became a regulatory requirement. The Interstate Commerce Act of 1887 required railroads to adhere to common accounting standards and file annual reports accordingly. By 1899, companies of any sort had to publish their balance sheets to be listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Regulatory developments recognized the important role public accountants played in building investor trust and encouraged professionalization and state certification. The American Association of Public

33 John A. Fairlie, “Municipal Development in the United States,” A Municipal Program (New York: Macmillan Company, 1900), 30. 34 L.S. Rowe, “Public Accounting,” 93.

46 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent”

Accountants was formed in 1886 and the American Institute of Accountants was established the following year. New York licensed the country’s first CPAs in 1896.35

Beyond its role in regulating business, accounting offered an almost transcendentalist perspective on financial information. One leading proponent, Charles

Waldo Haskins (nephew to Ralph Waldo Emerson) saw in accounting a system for mankind’s perfectibility. Well-kept books helped to crisply delineate social relationships, identified harmonies between nature and society, and clarified complex webs of interconnectedness. Through accounting, Haskins argued, people could wrest control of the immutable laws governing business and social order—an idea he helped to promote both in industrial enterprise and through the National Municipal League’s Committee on

Municipal Accounts and Statistics.36

Before the League’s model city charter of 1898, accounting, budgeting, and financial management writ large had hardly figured in political discourse. Timing was everything. The 1898 consolidation of the five boroughs to form the City of Greater New

York brought with it the difficulties of reconciling inconsistent, incomplete, and incomprehensible financial records. According to one report, it was “practically impossible for citizens, or for officers…to understand [the accounts] and detect errors or frauds.”37 Disorderly finances, and aborted attempts to make them intelligible, provided an opportunity for accounting reform. Representatives of several professional and reform associations—including the American Economic Association, the American Society of

35 Paul J. Miranti Jr., Accountancy Comes of Age: The Development of an American Profession, 1886-1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990). 36 Miranti, Accountancy Comes of Age, 36–38. For an eloquent statement on the transcendentalism of accounting, see Charles Waldo Haskins, “Accountancy,” The Accountant (Nov. 10, 1900): 1010. 37 Durand, Finances of New York City, 352.

47 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent”

Civil Engineers, the American Society of Municipal Improvements, and the National Gas

Light Association—began to propose new accounting schedules and uniform reporting schemes for cities to adopt.38

By 1904, the “movement for uniform municipal reports and accounts” had reached a point, one reformer wrote, “where it may be considered safely established as a matter which must be reckoned with by every progressive city.”39 But the very idea of reporting and accounting had remained somewhat vague, in part, as one member of the

National Municipal League wrote, because the “difficulties of the situation were evident” and “the means for overcoming these difficulties and getting uniform methods practically applied in cities were not then evident.” In other words, it would be a tall order to introduce financial management ideas from private business into public administration and the process would certainly meet resistance of all sorts.40 How these ideas were to be worked out in practice and if these practices would ever be accepted by the public— especially one weary of elite attempts to reconfigure the nature of American government—was yet to be seen.

38 See for example, Henry Carter Adams, The Science of Finance: An Investigation of Public Expenditures and Public Revenues (New York: Henry Hold and Company, 1899); Frederick R. Clow, A Comparative Study of the Administration of City Finances in the United States, with Special Reference to the Budget, part of a series of Publications of the American Economic Association 2, no. 4 (New York: Macmillan Company, 1901). But seriously, the National Gas Light Association was a thing. 39 Harvey Chase, quoted in Jonathan Khan, Budgeting Democracy: State Building and Citizenship in America 1890-1928 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), 24. 40 Harvey Chase, “A Brief History of the Movement Towards Municipal Reports and Accounts in the United States,” The Accountant 30 (Jan.-Jun., 1904): 395.

48 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent”

Social Surveys, Financial Investigations, and Municipal Besmirch At the same time that government reformers were advancing a corporate metaphor for city administrations, another set of reformers—charity workers, social scientists, social workers, and others dedicated to the cause of poverty relief—had been developing investigative methods for exposing (and thereby addressing) the social challenges plaguing urban neighborhoods. Their method of choice was the social survey, a practice that originated in Europe before being further refined in American settlement houses.

Surveys were premised on the idea that, by carefully examining the community, one could understand what problems persisted unrecognized and what needs remained unmet.

Pioneering studies by Jane Addams, Florence Kelley, Robert Hunter, and W.E.B. Du

Bois used surveys of household living conditions to map a social geography of racial, ethnic, and class inequalities.41 Reports like the Hull House Maps and Papers (1895) and

The Philadelphia Negro (1899) provided color-coded evidence that poverty was neither a genetic predisposition nor a personal pathology but rather a product of social conditions—discrimination, the ravages of capitalism, and the shortcomings of government. To make such claims, methodological rigor was paramount. Du Bois argued that social reform was only possible by comprehending the facts “in the light of the best scientific research.”42

41 Alice O’Connor, Poverty Knowledge: Social Science, Social Policy, and the Poor in Twentieth- Century U.S. History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 29-39. 42 W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Study of the Negro Problems” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 11 (Jan., 1898): 10. Indeed, collecting statistical data was so novel and difficult, one felt that, if only they could describe the community’s needs in their entirety, the amelioration of these needs would surely follow (Thomas L. Haskell, The Emergence of Professional Social Science: The American Social Science Association and the Nineteenth- Century Crisis of Authority (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977), 102).

49 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent”

As reflected in the contranymic quality of the verb survey—both ‘to examine closely’ and ‘to provide a broad overview’—reformers routinely paired data collection with data presentation. They used educational campaigns to provide members of the public with a wider lens on the issues facing their community.43 By giving the public a new way to discover itself and understand the many shades of common experience, the survey cultivated associationalism by way of empiricism. Facts only mattered if they roused community consciousness, stimulated the civic imagination, and spurred collective action.

The survey, and the idea of reform via investigation more generally, quickly found its way into numerous Progressive pursuits including muckraking journalism, labor organization campaigns looking to expose workplace conditions, and anti-vice associations demanding that vice laws be enforced.44 The idea also took hold at New

York’s Association for Improving the Conditions of the Poor (AICP), one of the city’s oldest charitable relief societies. In 1903, the AICP’s General Agent, William H. Allen, innovated on the longstanding practice of enumerating the root causes of destitution (e.g.,

“Want of work, 4,495 cases; Intemperance, 683 cases; Shiftlessness, 301 cases”) by attempting to ascertain what role city government might play in mitigating these causal conditions.45

43 See Jean Converse, Survey Research in the United States: Roots and Emergence 1890-1960 (New York: Transaction Publishers, 2010), 18. 44 Richard Skolnik, “Civic Group Progressivism in New York City,” New York History 51, no. 4 (Jul. 1, 1970): 429–430. 45 For an example of the AICP’s longstanding approach, see “Forty-Eighth Annual Report,” Oct., 1891, Box 72, Series IV: Association for Improving the Condition of the Poor, Community Service Society Records 1842-1995, RBML, 47.

50 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent”

In one study, Allen surveyed malnourishment among children at New York public schools. His finding: “children who went to school each day inadequately breakfasted…were mentally incapable of [schoolwork] because their bodies weren’t adequately nourished.”46 If it was the city’s responsibility to provide children an education, he reasoned, it was also the city’s responsibility to ensure that the education it provided was effective. If undernourishment was impeding educational success, then it was the city’s responsibility to provide children with a free lunch.

Following the study, Allen fastened his attention on city government as a means of providing poverty relief, an activity that had long been the purview of private charity organizations like the AICP. In his view, government was the “most important agency for benevolence.”47 If one could “get this idea implanted in public administration” Allen argued, “many lives could be saved [and] many more people properly educated.”48 The reverse was also true. An inefficient government “can cause more wretchedness in one year than private benevolence will assuage in a generation.”49

Allen’s approach struck a chord with R. Fulton Cutting, heir to an established

New York family and president of both the AICP and the Citizens Union. The latter association was reeling from Mayor Seth Low’s failed 1903 re-election bid against the

Tammany-backed George McClellan.50 The loss signaled not only a return to power for

46 “Reminiscences of Henry Bruère, 1949,” Columbia University Oral History Collection, RBML, 21. 47 “Elaboration of the Work to be Done,” Gifts and Grants to Bureau of Municipal Research, New York, N.Y., Reel 79, 5, General Donations, Subseries A, Gifts and Grants, Series II, Files on Microfilm, CCNY, RBML. 48 “Reminiscences of Henry Bruère,”18. 49 Allen in “Proceedings of the Pittsburgh Conference for Good City Government and the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the National Municipal League, November 16-19, 1908, Clinton Rogers Woodruff, ed. National Municipal League (1908), 127. 50 Richard L. McCormick, From Realignment to Reform, 186.

51 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent” the Tammany machine, but also the final straw for government reform centered on upright and self-abnegating good men. Low—like others before him—was seen as out of touch with the common man and therefore struggled to inspire much working-class political support.

Recognizing the opportunity, Allen persuaded Cutting that good government would never be achieved by elections alone. As he was fond of arguing, “politics must adopt, as has business enterprise, methods of control that make inefficiency too dangerous to practice because too easy of detection.” To Allen, accounting and budgeting served a purpose similar to his studies. But where external investigations could only offer sporadic impetus for reform, a proper system of financial management would provide the public with a steady flow of information, thereby facilitating a “wide-awake, intelligent lay interest,” in the city’s administrative matters.51 Cutting was convinced.

In 1905, acting on Allen’s recommendation, Cutting hired Henry Bruère, a young settlement house worker and associate of Jane Addams to help explore how financial oversight—an extension of the social survey idea—might further the government reform agenda.52 Upon Bruère’s arrival, Cutting established the City Betterment Bureau in under the auspices of the Citizens Union to be run on a trial basis for one year.53

Eager to apply Allen’s investigative “thesis” to the Tammany administration,

Bruère launched an investigation into the city’s Public Works Department, home to a sprawling network of streets, sewers, public baths, and countless private contracts. The survey was bound to unearth inefficiency. Denied access to official records, however,

51 William H. Allen, “The Importance of Publicity in Educational and Charitable Work,” North American Review 181, no. 584 (Jul., 1905): 28, 26. 52 “Reminiscences of Henry Bruère, 16–17. 53 “The Municipal Research Idea” Municipal Research, no. 71 (Mar., 1916): 2

52 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent”

Bruère made do and focused his study “largely out-o’-doors” on the city’s streets and reasoning that any citizen could undertake such research if they took the trouble.54 As

Bruère later recalled:

One of my assistants and I…charted all the holes in the pavement on Eighth Avenue before and after repaving. We did that as a typical street—charting every square from 42nd Street to 59th Street. We marked the holes on the charts and tried to measure enough of them to have provable facts…it gave us something to stand on that couldn’t be denied.55

Through his investigation, Bruère found that the majority of city streets were in dismal condition, full of holes, dangerous trenches, and abandoned rail tracks. Among the streets for which the city had paid a contractor to repave, only 58 percent showed any sign of improvement. The remaining 42 percent were evidence that public money had been spent without any work being done.

Expanding his study to other divisions of the Public Works Department, Bruère found that city officials had inflated counts of how many people used its public baths. To establish this fact, Bruère stood outside the baths, counting patrons as they entered and left. The official numbers were three times what Bruère observed. This fact, coupled with slipshod financial accounts pointed to a concerning conclusion: the department had spent over $1 million without any public record of where the money had gone.56

With Bruère’s studies demonstrating the value of financial investigation, Cutting,

Allen, and Frederick Cleveland—a professor of finance at New York University and

54 “The Municipal Research Idea,” 4. 55 “Reminiscences of Henry Bruère,” 28. 56 How Manhattan is Governed. New York: Bureau of City Betterment, 1906), 7, 10-11, 59-61, 87, 114

53 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent” colleague of Charles Waldo Haskins—prepared a prospectus for establishing such work on a permanent basis. They named their endeavor the Bureau of Municipal Research “so as to sharpen the idea that it was dispassionate, scientific, and removed from partisan intentions.”57 The planned organization was, in effect, the marriage of Allen’s ideas with the emergent interest in accounting that had developed at the National Municipal League.

The Bureau would use “scientific methods of accounting,” in order to secure

“constructive publicity in matters pertaining to municipal problems.”58 Careful analyses of city finances would serve to minimize waste, improve efficiency, and ensure that public funds were used to meet public needs. Accordingly, the Bureau would serve as an independent and objective factfinder, providing citizens with accurate information about government administration and therefore equipping them to agitate for change.59

In 1906, while planning for the Bureau was underway, Bruère released his study on Public Works. It “exploded like a bomb.”60 His report—subtitled “Facts You Should

Know About the Administration of the Borough of Manhattan”—included 58 photographs plainly illustrating the department’s shoddy work and routine deception. The public was incensed by the revelations. So too was the Manhattan Borough President, albeit because he was implicated as responsible for misconduct at Public Works. He sued

Cutting for libel and demanded $10,000 in damages. But when Bruère’s report held up to official scrutiny, the Borough President was dismissed. As the Bureau later reported, it

57 “Reminiscences of Henry Bruère,” 36 58 “Purposes and Methods of the Bureau of Municipal Research,” 1907, Folder 17, Box 3, “History,” Subseries C, General. IPA Series I, BNL, 1. 59 “Purposes and Methods of the Bureau of Municipal Research,” 5–6; see also “Brief for the Establishment of an Institute for Municipal Research,” Folder 5, Box 2, Bureau of Municipal Research: Correspondence and Contributions, 1905-1911, Civic Interests, OMR, Rockefeller Family Archives, RAC 60 “Reminiscences of Henry Bruère,” 19.

54 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent” was the first time an elected official had been removed for “maladministration”—that is, failing to efficiently execute the duties of his office—and not for “peculation or personal dishonesty.”61

The Tammany machine acknowledged the dismissal by launching a bitter counteroffensive, dubbing the bureau the municipal “Besmirch Society” and the “Bureau of Municipal Besmirch” while also orchestrating street side exhibits—replete with circus animals and carnival barkers—that maligned the Bureau as a shill for city elites to

“influence public opinion in their own interests.”62

The more Tammany thrashed about, the more the Bureau benefitted from free advertising. Allen, who had been doggedly making appeals to potential donors, now had the attention of John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie. Writing to these magnates, he promoted the Bureau as “doing for municipal government what the Carnegie Institution

[was] doing for scientific research, Mr. Phipps for the prevention of tuberculosis, and Mr.

Rockefeller for medical research.” The oilman and the steelmaker were sufficiently impressed. Each pledged $12,000 for the Bureau’s first year of operation.63 With its

61 “Purposes and Methods of the Bureau of Municipal Research,” 13. 62 “The ‘Besmirch Society’; Park Commissioner Attacks Municipal Research Work,” New York Times (Feb. 9, 1909); “The Municipal Research Idea,” Municipal Research, no. 71 (Mar., 1916): 6. One embattled commissioner, contacted Bureau’s growing list of supporters with a promise of “eternal vengeance” and lawsuits, should they not cease their funding. It was enough to inspire one donor to respond, “The effect of your letter is to make me more than ever anxious to do all in my power to assist the Bureau of Municipal Research.” (Ingen to Smith, Folder 5, Box 2, Bureau of Municipal Research: Correspondence and Contributions, 1905–1911, Civic Interests, OMR, Rockefeller Family Archives, RAC). Smith was out of office by the following year. 63 William H. Allen to Andrew Carnegie, Dec. 12, 1906, Gifts and Grants to Bureau of Municipal Research, New York, N.Y., Reel 79, 5, General Donations, Subseries A, Gifts and Grants, Series II, Files on Microfilm, CCNY, RBML; Starr J. Murphy to John D. Rockefeller, Jr. Mar. 7, 1907, Folder 5, Box 2, Bureau of Municipal Research: Correspondence and Contributions, 1905-1911, Civic Interests, OMR, Rockefeller Family Archives, RAC; R. Fulton Cutting to Andrew Carnegie, Dec. 30, 1907, Gifts and Grants to Bureau of Municipal Research, New York, N.Y., Reel 79, 5, General Donations, Subseries A, Gifts and Grants, Series II, Files on Microfilm, CCNY, RBML.

55 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent” newfound support, the Bureau of Municipal Research was incorporated on May 3, 1907, setting up shop at 261 Broadway—a fitting location, directly opposite City Hall and the

Tweed Courthouse.

Municipal Research and the Divergent Pulls of Progressive Era Thought Through its staff, board, and funders, the Bureau of Municipal Research brought together several distinctive (and, at times, incompatible) strains of Progressive Era society. Bruère became director, Cleveland technical director, and Allen secretary. Under the charge of these three leaders were 16 additional staff including five CPAs, and four social workers.

The board included scholars, government reformers, magazine editors, charity society directors, and philanthropists. Among them: Edwin Seligman, economist at Columbia;

George McAneny, former secretary at the Pennsylvania Railroad Company and Civil

Service Reform Association member; and Albert Shaw, editor of the Review of Reviews, constitutional historian, and chair of Rockefeller’s General Education Board. The

Bureau’s financial backers were no less esteemed. Alongside industrialists like

Rockefeller and Carnegie were railroad executives like Edward H. Harriman and Jacob

Schiff, as well as financiers like J.P. Morgan, Frank Vanderlip, and Felix Warburg.64 The group, as described in an editorial, “was one of the rare coalitions of men actuated almost wholly by altruistic motives and hard-headed Big Business men prompted by enlightened

64 “Purposes and Methods of the Bureau of Municipal Research,” 2–3; Dahlberg, New York Bureau of Municipal Research, 15–16.

56 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent” selfishness.”65 These divergent agendas represented a unique combination: both the

“spirit…[of] democracy and the method of science.”66

Whatever their differences, members and supporters of the Bureau shared a common agenda: establish efficient city government via financial investigation, accounting reform, and improved budgeting procedure. Yet, individual members of the group held distinctive understandings of just why such an agenda should be pursued and what broader outcomes its pursuit ought to achieve. For those grounded in charitable relief (such as social workers and members of the AICP), accounting and budgeting were a means for stimulating civic engagement and thereby ensuring government responsiveness to citizen needs. For those involved in government reform movements

(such members of the Citizens Union and City Club), the agenda promised to restore respectability to city government by helping to drive the degenerate element out of office.

And for the Bureau’s philanthropic backers, the agenda offered a means of securing the social, economic, and political stability conducive to business. Indeed, many of them were heavily invested in city bonds and were of the belief that that “stable standing of their holdings…depended in large measure” on the establishment of “efficient economical government.”67

For many supporters, the connection between financial management and efficient administration was an idée fixe. Harriman sought to incorporate in government “what he had strongly advocated and had fostered in the Union Pacific and other

65 “A Civic Asset Welcomed,” The North American (Nov. 15, 1911). 66 Edward M. Sait, “Research and Reference Bureaus,” National Municipal Review 2, no. 1 (Jan., 1913): 48. 67 “A Civic Asset Welcomed.”

57 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent” railroads…namely…a solid basis in accountancy.”68 Vanderlip, who underwrote and dealt New York City bonds, grumbled to fellow bankers that there was “no true balance sheet in the City of New York,” and the accounts it did keep were littered with

“meaningless credits that have been improperly carried year by year.”69 Through the

Bureau of Municipal Research, these divergent—even discordant—perspectives were held in suspension behind the banner of “administrative efficiency.” But the term was a floating signifier—an inoffensive slogan masking the ideological frictions lurking beneath the Bureau’s work and enabling coordination without consensus, even if only temporarily.

Nowhere were frictions more evident than in the respective ideas of Cleveland and Allen. Remarkably, the two had much in common. Both were from the rural Midwest

(Illinois and Minnesota, respectively), both wrote their dissertations at Wharton, and both received their PhDs from the University of Pennsylvania on the same day in 1900. They both worked with the National Municipal League—Cleveland with the Committee on

Municipal Accounts and Statistics, Allen with the Committee on Instruction in Municipal

Government. And when Allen led investigations at the AICP, he often called upon

Cleveland for assistance. The two had grown so close, in fact, that they named their sons after each other.70 Yet, despite the near-constant presence in each other’s lives, they

68 “Reminiscences of Henry Bruère,” 36. Former Mayor Seth Low reflected this sentiment as well: “I think it is not open to question that the science of statistics, as applied to railroads, has been revolutionising, both as to economy of operation and as to efficiency. Bookkeeping is only one form of research; but it is absolutely fundamental, wherever the efficiency and economy of administration is concerned” (quoted in William H. Allen, Efficient Democracy (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1907), 294). 69 Frank A. Vanderlip, “New York City’s Credit,” in Proceedings of the Annual Meeting, Savings Bank Association of New York State (New York: J.B. Babcock, 1906), 57. 70 “Reminiscences of William Harvey Allen, 1950,” Columbia University Oral History Collection, RBML, 70; A Record of University of Pennsylvania Men Residing in New York City

58 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent” approached the Bureau’s work with markedly different attitudes about the nature of democracy and what role accounting, budgeting, and expertise ought to play within it.

Relative to Allen, Cleveland’s views most closely aligned with those of the

Bureau’s financial supporters. Through his scholarship, first at Wharton and then at the

New York University School of Commerce, and through his work as a CPA at Haskins &

Sells, Cleveland wrote and lectured extensively on matters related to railroad and corporate finance, accounting methodology, and the relationship between audits and corporate control.71 In one paper, Cleveland argued that the ultimate source of “fidelity and trust” in corporate management was through financial reporting to shareholders.

“Financial statements,” he wrote, were the only means by which investors could hold corporate officers “to strict account.”72 The system was so effective, Cleveland argued, that the business corporation was fundamentally “a democratic institution.” He even went so far as to call it “the prototype of modern democratic government.”73 Public or private,

“the elements that make administration successful…are exactly the same.”74

Such perspectives meant that good government was a technical question—a matter of aligning government administration with the methods of private business. And

and Vicinity (New York: University of Pennsylvania Club of New York City, 1908), 9, 18; Frederick P. Gruenberg, “Wharton School and its Middle Westerners,” The General Magazine and Historical Chronicle of the University of Pennsylvania (Spring-Summer 1955): 108-110 [on file in Folder 24, Box 6, Frederick P. Gruenberg Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA; Dahlberg, New York Bureau of Municipal Research, 28. 71 Cleveland’s work on railroad finance eventually culminated in two volumes, Railroad promotion and capitalization in the United States (1909) and Railroad Finance (1912), both written with Fred Wilbur Powell. 72 Frederick A. Cleveland, 1907, “Bonds in their Relation to Corporation Finance” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 30, no. 2 (Sept., 1907): 232–233. 73 Frederick A. Cleveland, “The Relation of Auditing to Public Control” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 26, Issue on Federal Regulation of Corporations (Nov., 1905): 55. 74 Frederick A. Cleveland, Chapters on Municipal Administration and Accounting (New York: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1909), 208.

59 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent”

Cleveland thrived on technical questions. His office walls were covered with

“organization charts, flow charts, analysis subject matter, and histograms” and his incessant need to “chart every complicated problem” often made him “foggy and hard to understand.”75 Cleveland’s taste for technicality led him to enumerate every point at which government accounting deviated from practices common in business. When he served on New York’s Advisory Commission on Taxation and Finance in 1905,

Cleveland identified a litany of municipal accounting shortcomings: revenue accrual accounts not kept, books not balanced, department books and borough books maintained on a different basis, duplicated expenditure records, and the absence of standard classifications that would allow for summary accounts and statistics.76 Unlike any large business enterprise, the city still relied on single-entry bookkeeping. Without consistent reporting, classification, and upkeep, Cleveland argued, there could be “no intelligible basis for appropriations; no means for ascertaining revenue surplus or revenue deficit…no logical basis…from which a rate of taxation may be determined.”

Taken together, the city’s financial shortcomings interfered with the realization of another tenet of administrative efficiency: the centralization of administrative control.

“Increased efficiency,” Cleveland argued, required “highly centralized and responsible control, and such control becomes effective only when intelligible records are at hand to guide the exercise of official discretion.”77 Recognizing that centralization implied a

75 “Looking Backward to 1915 by Luther Gulick,” Folder 17, Box 3, Subseries C, General, IPA Series I, BNL, 4. 76 Report of Mr. Cleveland to the Committee on Accounting and Statistics (New York: Advisory Commission on Taxation and Finance, 1906). 77 Frederick A. Cleveland, “Municipal Accounts” Political Science Quarterly 19, no. 3 (Sep., 1904): 393.

60 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent” considerable departure from the principles of American government, Cleveland concluded that

Citizens must first be forced out of their customary habits of thought [and made to recognize that] efficiency in public administration is dependent upon the same conditions upon which success in private corporate business is already known to depend.78

If citizens could accept the private corporation as the paragon of democracy, Cleveland reasoned, their habits of thought would not be difficult to change.

Allen represented a radically different approach. At Wharton, he had been the protégé of Simon Patten, an economist who believed that no true social analysis was possible “without bringing political and moral principles into relation with the economic.”79 Patten’s guiding question was one of praxis: “What are we going to do now?” Allen received job offers from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and the

U.S. Census Bureau. But as Allen later recounted, Patten placed his hand on Allen’s shoulder, looked him in the eye, and encouraged him to “help the other fellow.” Allen turned down the Dartmouth and Census offers, opting instead for a position at the New

78 Frederick A. Cleveland, “Municipal Accounts,” 393–401. Cleveland’s tepid view on participatory democracy is even more evident in his first book, The Growth of Democracy in the United States. In it he argues that, because social conditions have changed, the conception of politics on which government was premised must also change. As he saw it, a political system premised on “the superiority of numbers over merit” gave too much authority to “the ignorance, the prejudice and the cupidity of the negro and poor white.” Government, much like business, would be better off if “managed by the best talent” (Frederick A. Cleveland, The Growth of Democracy in the United States (Chicago: Quadrangle Press, 1898), 94). 79 Quoted in Steven A. Sass, “An Uneasy Relationship: The Business Community and Academic Economists at the University of Pennsylvania,” in William J. Barber, ed, Economists & Higher Learning in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Transaction Publishers, 1993), 234; On the role of Patten and other Progressive Era economists in the social transformation of financial economics in business schools, see Marion Fourcade and Rakesh Khurana, “From social control to financial economics: the linked ecologies of economics and business in twentieth century America,” Theory & Society 42 (2013): 121–159.

61 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent”

Jersey State Charities Aid Association where he would work on prison and poorhouse reform.

When Allen relocated to New York to begin investigative work for the AICP, he befriended Jacob Riis and joined the X Club, a group of socialists and radical writers including Graham Phelps Stokes, Lincoln Steffens, and Upton Sinclair—people who made their careers from exposing unsavory social conditions and mobilizing public support for reform. Despite the company he kept, Allen was somewhat hesitant in his embrace of socialism, undecided if capital should be socialized through control or ownership. Allen was also less critical of philanthropic largesse than his fellow X Club members. When Stokes denounced Rockefeller and Carnegie for attempting to “buy off the public,” Allen took spirited exception, arguing that a $10 million gift to build a library was no less ingenuous or sincere than charitable acts of a much smaller scale.80

Allen was also an ardent feminist who believed that women, despite not being able to vote, were “setting new standards of training for participation in government” and were destined for leadership in public service.81

Working with fellow adherents to the survey idea and its attendant concerns with publicity, Allen grew convinced that the “greatest menace to American institutions is not immigration, lack of education, private monopoly of public utilities, nor the indifference

80 “Reminiscences of William Harvey Allen,” 44–49, 62–63, 88. Cleveland, on the other hand, celebrated the new crop of American philanthropists, declaring Carnegie’s “Gospel of Wealth” both a sophisticated economic theory and a promising agenda for social reform (Frederick A. Cleveland, “Mr. Carnegie as Economist and Social Reformer,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 17, no. 3 (May, 1901): 78–84). 81 William H. Allen, Woman’s Part in Government: Whether She Votes or Not (New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1911), 357. In this book, Allen handily dismisses common arguments against women’s suffrage (e.g., women are too unreasonable or too emotional to vote) and doubles down on his belief that only when all citizens are informed and active in deciding governmental matters will America achieve an “efficient” democracy.

62 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent” of the best citizens.” Instead, the problem was the “manner of conducting public business which fails to keep citizens currently informed as to official acts.”82 As city administration grows more complex, he argued, “the layman is forgotten and little or no attention is given to the technical means of obtaining or holding his intelligent interest.”83

In his view, “the great problem of democracy [was] not the control of the officer, but the education of the citizen.”84 Accordingly, Allen saw methodical accounting and budgeting as the cornerstones of successful reform—not because they were a means of concentrating authority in the executive office, à la Cleveland, but because they were a means of making the arcane details of government “readily accessible to everybody who can read.”85

To be sure, Cleveland also recognized financial reporting as a means for popular control. This was the premise of this corporation-as-democracy argument. But

Cleveland’s control was retrospective, emphasizing after-the-fact checks on work that had already been done. Allen’s control, however, was decidedly forward looking. An actively informed citizenry would participate in determining public purposes and setting government priorities.

On this point, Allen was emphatic. In order to make government more businesslike without doing violence to the tenets of popular sovereignty, one would need to couple financial management procedures with engaging publicity and opportunities for

82 Allen, “Proceedings of the Pittsburgh Conference,” 127. 83 Allen, “Publicity in Educational and Charitable Work,” 25. 84 William H. Allen, “A National Fund for Efficient Democracy,” The Atlantic Monthly 102 (Oct. 1908): 459. 85 “Purposes and Methods of the Bureau of Municipal Research,” 19.

63 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent” public participation. Because “inequality of knowledge precedes monopoly of opportunity,” accounting reforms without publicity would be “but instruments of evil.”86

To Allen, budgeting was an instrument for the “socialism of intelligence.”

Without such instruments to enable “intelligent control by the public,” he argued, “no efficient, progressive, or triumphant democracy is possible.” The perspective required a deep faith in the intelligence and educability of the lay citizen—a faith that, while common among social reform movements, was rare among the elite crowd of government reformers. As Allen wrote in his treatise, Efficient Democracy, there was no a priori reason to assume that “100 so-called best citizens” were any more capable of governing than “100 frequenters of a Bowery saloon.” All that mattered was whether the citizen was “mildly curious” and “willing to be informed” about public affairs.87

Allen practiced what he preached. He targeted his writing toward the lay reader, approaching complex topics in a sympathetic, digestible, and often comical tone. For example, he presented statistics—a most uninviting subject—in a simple and straightforward manner, explaining the pitfalls of comparing rates and using helpful illustrations to demonstrate the importance of standard classifications. Cautioning against mathematical deception and manipulation, Allen encouraged readers to demand that statistics, just like medicines, come with “ingredients…printed on the label.”88

Under Allen’s influence, the Bureau published a series of periodicals aimed at laypeople including No Matter Who Is Elected and Efficient Citizenship, mailed weekly to New York City residents. The Bureau designed the bulletins to capture attention, spark

86 Allen, “Proceedings of the Pittsburgh Conference,” 127. 87 Allen, Efficient Democracy, vii–x, 266. 88 Allen, Efficient Democracy, 493.

64 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent” interest, and “get inside the minds of citizens, however intelligent.”89 Printed on colorful paper, with bold headlines, and detailed graphics, each edition shared findings from ongoing investigations into government administration, disclosed some recently uncovered municipal misdeed, or suggested ways for citizens to involve themselves in city affairs. Headlines announced, “Information Dead Unless Used,” “Five Sets of Details to Watch” and “What Voters Can Do Now.” Graphics included a series of pie charts illustrating the city’s annual expenditures and an unsettling figure showing that 89.7 percent of all public complaints against police officers had been referred directly to the accused officer to handle.

Encouraging active public participation, one mailer recommended citizens use vacations to other cities as an “opportunity to enlarge your civic perspective and to awaken new interest in the working of your local government.” To assist in this awakening, the piece provided a three-page list of questions to ask oneself during a vacation and suggested that, upon return, the individual continue asking these questions of their own city:

Approach your city with the eye of an outsider…Why don’t they keep the streets a little cleaner?…Why don’t they keep the parks a little cleaner?…Did you ever stop to think THEY means YOU?90

Budgeting as a Technical and Democratic Accomplishment In addition to its survey investigations and publicity campaigns, the Bureau busied itself with reforming the city’s financial administration. Although Cleveland and Allen

89 Henry Bruère, “Efficiency in City Government,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 41 (May, 1912): 20. 90 “Municipal Research, nos. 1–56,” Institute of Public Administration Records, BNL.

65 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent” ultimately disagreed on who should control the budgeting process, both agreed that budgeting was necessary to destroy ‘invisible government’—a system where officials and party bosses were responsible to no one.91 If only for a brief period, the shared ambition rendered Cleveland and Allen’s goals compatible.

Since 1871, control over New York City’s expenditures resided with the Board of

Estimate and Apportionment, a group comprised of the Mayor, an independently elected

Comptroller, the president of the Department of Taxes and Assessments, and the president of the Board of Aldermen. Before November 1 of each year, the Board would create a provisional set of estimates, based on departmental reports that had been vetted by the Comptroller, and passed them to the Aldermen. In turn, the Aldermen (the city’s legislative council and representative voice of the neighborhoods) would publish the estimates in The City Record, giving citizens 15-days’ notice of a public hearing on the provisional appropriations. In practice, the estimates lacked sufficient detail and notice came too late for any meaningful public input. “Few taxpayers,” Bruère explained, “had the temerity to appear for cross-examination by the fiscal officers as to their rights to an opinion, because opinions were difficult to acquire and more difficult to substantiate.”92

After the city’s consolidation and the subsequent Charter of 1901, the role of the

Aldermen (and therefore the possibility for direct citizen input) was further limited. Now,

Aldermen could only reduce the Board’s estimates—a decision that was easily overridden by Mayoral veto.93 As such, the Board operated without much of a check on

91 Jesse Burkhead, Government Budgeting (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1956), 14. 92 Henry Bruère, “The Bureau of Municipal Research” Proceedings of the American Political Science Association 5, 5th Annual Meeting (1908): 117. 93 As a compromise for the restriction on Aldermanic powers, the Charter allowed for the inclusion of the consolidated city’s five borough presidents on the Board of Estimate. The consolidation and charter themselves represent the tension between good government reformers

66 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent” its power. Yet, because departmental estimates provided only sparse detail, the Board had little ability to correlate between public needs, department activities, and requested funds.

Accordingly, appropriations were, at best, the result of guesswork and accident. The process was susceptible to corruption and out of touch with citizen interests.94

According to Allen, improving such a system would require, at the very least, that each department show “exactly how its share of the budget was used,” and for the budget to be developed “not by guessing, but by forecasting with the aid of former years’ classified experience the probable expense of each department during the next year.”95

The approach was first applied in a 1907 report, Making a Municipal Budget which documented the Bureau’s investigation into the City’s Department of Health.

Collaborating with the Haskins & Sells accounting firm and a sympathetic Chief Medical

Health Officer who provided access to the department’s books, the Bureau organized and reclassified expenditures along the lines of functional purpose.

They were dismayed by what they found. “Appropriations did not match the needs, were not applied to specific needs so that you never knew how much you were getting for how much you were spending.” The books were “a jumble of confusion and deception.”96 According to the report, disorderliness concealed both administrative and

(interested in strong executive power) and democratic uneasiness about the centralization of political authority. Nevertheless in the race- and class- tinged struggle, over municipal authority in the 19th century, the Board of Aldermen, once the centerpiece of municipal government, had been relegated to the periphery. They remained the “big men at the corner saloon” but had become “small fry when compared to the bankers and brokers downtown” (Teaford, Unheralded Triumph, 15-25). 94 Teaford, Unheralded Triumph, 15–18; see also Harold D. Force “New York City's Revision of Accounts and Methods.” Journal of Accountancy 8, no. 1 (May, 1909): 1–7; Durand, Finances of New York City, 264–277, Bruère, “Bureau of Municipal Research,” 117. 95 Allen, Efficient Democracy, 156–159. 96 “Reminiscences of Henry Bruère,” 24-25.

67 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent” democratic failures. It was almost impossible to compare a department’s current books with its past accounts or those kept by other departments. Financial abuses rarely came to light. And officials were free to foreground popular programs while rushing “less popular or questionable” appropriations past the Board without being subjected to adequate questioning.97

The Bureau’s report suggested several reforms: create standardized classifications such that each item corresponded to a designated functional activity, charge accounts only for strictly defined purposes, and keep systematic inventories so that cost statements were readily available. The approach won some popular support. According to the

Brooklyn Daily Eagle, there was no more important work than that of “establishing a unform system of bookkeeping in various departments.”98

By implementing such reforms, the city could prepare a “properly constructed budget”—the only document, the Bureau argued, that could “tell in such condensed form so many significant facts about community needs and government efforts to meet those needs.”99 The new approach promised several benefits. Because consistent records would take the guesswork out of appropriations, city officials would be able to forecast future needs based on experience. Because departments would have to demonstrate how they had used their portions of the budget, the public would be able to decide if their money had been well spent. And because one could compare estimated expenditures with actual expenditures both within and across departments, one could readily identify inefficiencies

97 Making a Municipal Budget (New York: Bureau of Municipal Research, 1907): 6–7. 98 “Uniform Municipal Bookkeeping” Brooklyn Daily Eagle (Nov. 5 1907). 99 Making a Municipal Budget, 5.

68 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent” and explore administrative remedies. Both Cleveland and Allen’s aims were satisfied by the Bureau’s proposal.

As had come to be expected with Bureau work, the report ruffled feathers. Many city officials and employees claimed the reforms would be too much “red tape,” would require “too many clerks,” and would add “too much work.”100 Presenting the Bureau’s recommendations to the Board of Estimate, Bruère was scolded for attempting to inject foreign budgetary concepts into city politics:

This budget business—where did we get that idea? Didn’t that come from England? Didn’t [Bruère] know that the United States had fought a war of liberation from England? Did we have to go to England for ideas?101

Others, however, were receptive. The city’s Comptroller, Herman Metz—a Tammany man, business owner, and, in mixed-up social world of early 1900s New York, friend of

Cutting—encouraged the Bureau to continue its work and offered the collaborative assistance of his office.102

Metz’s cooperation would prove fortuitous. By 1908, the Bureau had produced a systematically classified budget—the first of its kind both for New York City and for any government entity in the United States. At Metz’s invitation, the Bureau assisted with functionally segregating department accounts and reclassifying each expenditure in

100 Force, “New York City's Revision of Accounts,” 4–5. 101 “Reminiscences of Henry Bruère,” 25–26. Indeed, much of how Bruère came to understand the introduction of business methods into public administration was through the British budgetary system, an idea he had been introduced when Thorstein Veblen came to visit him, Allen, and Cleveland in New York in 1906. Understanding that accounting methods from the management of private busines could operate in a government milieu helped to reassure Bureau staff of their agenda. The comparison would also feature prominently in the campaign for the national executive budget in later years. 102 Ryan P. McDonough, Paul J. Miranti, Jr., and Michael P. Schoderbek, “The Search for Order in Municipal Administration: Herman A. Metz and the New York City Experience, 1898-1909,” Accounting Historians Journal 47, no. 1 (Jan., 2020): 14–15.

69 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent” accordance with the specific purpose it served. The Bureau then helped to establish in each department a system of accounts that would allow for costs and expenditures to be continuously tracked.

Realizing that his staff was ill-equipped to supervise the city’s new financial system, Metz, acting on the Bureau’s recommendation, hired 12 expert accountants from local firms.103 The decision effectively institutionalized the Bureau’s model of financial investigation within the central business office of New York City government. “For the first time in this country,” one editorial remarked on the Bureau’s work, “a great municipality was viewed as a business corporation.”104

With the accounting pieces in place, comprehensive financial information became the basis for budget making. Departments would use standard forms, accounting classifications, and supporting data when submitting appropriation requests. In turn, every appropriation would be connected to a specific purpose. Appropriations would dictate the number of employees carried on department payrolls and the rates at which they would be compensated. Likewise, appropriations would dictate what materials and equipment departments could purchase, what services they could contract for, and how other contingencies were to be handled. By classifying each item in accordance with a specified function, it would be difficult for department employees to subvert funds for personal use. A more specific budget meant more direct control over how money was to be spent. General classifications—“purchase of equipment,” “materials,” “contract or

103 New York City’s Department of Finance, Part 1: Report on Present Methods with Suggestions for Reorganization (New York: Bureau of Municipal Research, 1908); Bruère, “Bureau of Municipal Research,” 120. 104 “A Civic Asset Welcomed.” Of course, many in the government reform movement had viewed the city as a business corporation for decades. But they had little success in garnering popular acceptance for their version of the idea.

70 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent” open order service” and other categories—multiplied into ever more granular subclassifications.

Crude measures tell a detailed story. The 1908 budget document (prepared in

1907) ran 130 pages and described total expenditures of $143.6 million. Each page described approximately $1.1 million. The following year’s budget document—the first prepared with the assistance of the Bureau—ran 392 pages in length, amounting to

$380,000 per page. The city’s budget document peaked in 1913: 836 pages for a $193 million total budget, or $230,000 per page. The budget that year contained 3,992 unique item-function classifications.105 As detail per dollars grew, the public had increasingly more information on exactly how their money was being spent and how their needs were being met.

In this regard, the 1909 budget was not only a technical accomplishment, it was an accomplishment of publicity as well. The budget proposals printed in The City Record would now lay bare in exacting detail how the City planned to spend public money. And citizens, if so motivated, could now attend budget hearings and participate in setting public priorities.106 As Allen put it, “more can be done for good government on budget day than on election day.”107 But a printed proposal alone was insufficient. To Allen more had to be done to “invite co-operation of all citizens who wish to play a part [and] influence official action.”108 Cleveland’s solution was simple and top-down: an

105 Figures in this paragraph derived from the Board of Estimate and Apportionment’s final Budgets (for 1908 and 1909 respectively) as well as Dahlberg, New York Bureau of Municipal Research, 171. 106 See Herman A. Metz, Manual of Accounting and Business Procedure of the City of New York (New York: Martin B. Brown Company, 1909. 107 Allen “Proceedings of the Pittsburgh Conference for Good City Government,” 127. 108 How Should Public Budgets Be Made? (New York: Bureau of Municipal Research, 1909), 5.

71 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent” administrative executive would give a budget speech that “explains and interprets what has been done and what is proposed.” He likened the speech to an opening salvo of military gunfire used to locate enemy strongholds.109

For Allen, however, a speech was not enough. It would be too dull to arouse the interests of busy citizens for whom accounting and budgeting remained abstract and inaccessible. To address the challenge, the Bureau coupled the City’s 1908 budget proposal with a “budget exhibit”—a public, free-admission, museum-like event with a carnival-like atmosphere.

The first exhibit, co-sponsored with the City Club, was undoubtedly inspired by the recent World’s Fairs in St. Louis and Chicago.110 For two weeks in advance of the annual budget hearings, the public meandered through the event space at 165 Broadway, visiting stalls and examining charts showing, for instance, what the city had paid for a mop, a pin, and five hours of mending a clock (an exorbitant $64).111 One display showed findings from a recent Bureau investigation into the city’s purchase of coat hooks.

Beneath the words GET THE HOOK and a replica of the hook in question, the sign explained: “Anybody can get it for six cents anywhere. The City [paid] sixty cents.”112

Visitors were captivated, Bruère explained; “Everybody stopped and examined that hook the city paid sixty cents for.”113

Such exhibits, as Allen later put it, were essential to publicity:

109 Frederick A. Cleveland, “Budget Making and the Increased Cost of Government,” American Economic Review 6, no. 1, Papers and Proceedings of the 28th Annual Meeting (Mar., 1916): 54. 110 Dahlberg, New York Bureau of Municipal Research, 164–167 111 Dahlberg, New York Bureau of Municipal Research, 164-165; “Pictures that Tell Stories of a City’s Waste” New York Times (Oct. 11, 1908). 112 How Should Public Budgets Be Made?, 4. 113 “Reminiscences of Henry Bruère,” 64.

72 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent”

Men would come in from the subway, truckmen and longshoremen, to see the free show. They’d pick these things up, nudge the next man, and show him. So they’d go around the floor.114

Visitors who had previously never shown any interest in the details of government administration now wanted to have their voices heard. The annual budget hearings— which, in prior years had been a quiet and perfunctory hour and a half—were now overwhelmed with citizen interest. “This year the room was crowded to the doors,” Allen reported at a National Municipal League conference. “There were far more citizens who wanted to be heard than could be heard.”115 It was foreign territory for members of the city’s Board who were unaccustomed to members of the public “dilating on the state of the Union.”116

As the budget exhibit became an annual event, it was met with increasing buy-in from city departments which began preparing displays and sending representatives to engage with visitors. Capturing the scene in 1910, Leonard Ayres of the Russell Sage

Foundation described the large block letters stretching across the facade of the Tefft-

Weller Building at 330 Broadway: “THE CITY INVITES YOU TO SEE HOW YOUR

MONEY IS SPENT.” The exhibit had been “splendidly advertised,” he wrote. Taxpayers had received invitations along with their annual tax bills, local papers had been replete with announcements, and signs had been strategically placed around town—including

114 “Reminiscences of William Harvey Allen,” 97. 115 Allen in “Proceedings of the Pittsburgh Conference for Good City Government,” 124. 116 William H. Allen, “The Business of Citizenship in New York City” The American Review of Reviews, 40 (Jul.-Dec., 1909): 598. Indeed, the Board was so unaccustomed to the citizen participation that they advertised the following in advance of the 1909 hearings: “Persons and associations desiring to appear before the board at the budget hearing…must submit in advance outlines of the matters they wish to discuss to prevent the discussion becoming too rambling.” See “Cuts His Budget Down $400,000,” New York Times (Oct. 9, 1909).

73 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent” one hanging from the Brooklyn Bridge. Ayres described his experience of the exhibit itself:

More than an acre of space on three floors was devoted to illustrating the city’s activities. The director on the first floor showed that these municipal activities fell within fifty-four divisions, and that they were illustrated in over 350 booths. The booths were made of green burlap, mounted on light scantling, and served as a background for charts, pictures, photographs and exhibited articles.117

“The object,” Ayres remarked, was evidently to “enlist the intelligent cooperation of the citizens in the approval or rejection of the items of appropriation asked for by the department heads.”118 On hand at the booths were the various measures and scales that the Bureau of Weights and Measures had confiscated from shopkeepers who had used them to bilk customers. The Street Cleaning Department and Fire Department brought their horses into the event space, standing them alongside charts and maps that described what the departments had accomplished during the past year and detailed what was planned for the next. The Tenement House Department exhibited the new fire escapes it was hoping to install. The Water Department displayed a full-size cross-section of its new aqueduct. Departments displayed receipts alongside expenditures, using red and black coloring to emphasize and compare. “Chromatic distinction was essential,” Ayres wrote.119

117 Leonard P. Ayres, “The New York Budget Exhibit,” Publications of the American Statistical Association 12, no. 92 (Dec., 1910): 371. 118 Ayres, “The New York Budget Exhibit,” 371. 119 Ayres, “The New York Budget Exhibit,” 372–374.

74 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent”

Exterior of 1912 New York City Budget Exhibit at Broadway and Pearl St.120

120 Due to mid-20th century construction, this is now close to Broadway and Thomas, near the Atomic Wings. “Manhattan: Broadway - Pearl Street,” 1912 (Images: 717244F and 717235F), Manhattan, Photographic views of New York City, 1870's-1970's, Irma and Paul Milstein Division of United States History, New York Public Library, New York, NY.

75 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent”

Ayres reported that, on average, 50,000 visitors wandered through the exhibit each day—70,000 on Saturdays—with the total number approaching one million visitors by the exhibit’s end. With the exhibit’s extensive press coverage, countless others experienced the event from afar. Popular periodicals like the socialist New York Call, social reformer Survey, and the progressive Review of Reviews covered the event. Budget publicity caught on in churches, and, with the encouragement of the Bureau, some clergy instituted Budget Sundays, incorporating questions of municipal finance into sermons on scripture.121

Independent of the Bureau, the city government began instituting publicity practices of its own. In 1913, for example, the city held a civic parade with municipal employees marching up 5th Avenue alongside carts carrying “very large charts, curves, and other statistical displays” arranged so that they could be seen from either side the street. The Health Department showed in a “most convincing manner how the death rate is being reduced by modern methods of sanitation and nursing.”122 New York City’s

Commissioner of Accounts, Raymond Fosdick (later to be the President of the

Rockefeller Foundation), claimed he was able to save the city $35,000 a year by adopting modern business methods at the Bureau of Sewers and eliminating workers who “loafed” on sewer cleaning jobs.123 As one city official wrote, the Bureau’s approach had

121 Reminiscences of William Harvey Allen,” 217. 122 Willard Cope Brinton, Graphic Methods for Presenting Facts (New York: The Engineering Magazine Company, 1914), 342–343; see also Mary Ryan “The American Parade: Representations of the Nineteenth-Century Social Order,” in Lynn Hunt, ed., The New Cultural History (Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press), 131–53. 123 Raymond B. Fosdick, Chronicle of a Generation: An Autobiography (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1958), 112. Fosdick was interviewed on the matter in “Does New York Get the Worth of its Money?” New York Times (Jan. 7, 1912), where he explained “there are hundreds of demands for expenditure in a great city like New York, which, under the present wasteful

76 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent” succeeded at “inject[ing] into public business the same scrupulous regard for business detail and management that now characterizes private business. It was something that, in the past, had met with “persistent and readily understood opposition.” Yet the Bureau succeeded at convincing departments to “carry on their business in a more businesslike way.”124

The Bureau’s ideas quickly spread around the country as well. Indeed, this was the intention. Allen even invited Carnegie to a budget exhibit on the grounds that his presence “would help tremendously to show the country that there are few more interesting or urgent problems than those of municipal government.”125 Although it is unclear if Carnegie ever did attend, the Bureau’s ideas seemed to travel on their own volition. Metz prepared a Manual of accounting and business procedure of the city of

New York (1909) which spread to other municipalities, becoming a sort of Summa de arithmetica for the modern American city. And after he retired from his position as

Comptroller, Metz donated $30,000 to establish a National Fund for Promoting Efficient

Municipal Accounting and Reporting.126 Others involved in government reform prepared how-to guides on effectively running budget exhibits, offering tips on the use and display of statistics as well as the facilitation of comparisons.

system, cannot be met without extravagantly high tax rates. They might be met if every cent was made to count.” 124 William A. Prendergast to Andrew Carnegie, Dec. 28, 1910, Gifts and Grants to Bureau of Municipal Research, New York, N.Y., Reel 79, 5, General Donations, Subseries A, Gifts and Grants, Series II, Files on Microfilm, CCNY, RBML. 125 William H. Allen to James Bertram, Oct. 26, 1910, Gifts and Grants to Bureau of Municipal Research, New York, N.Y., Reel 79, 5, General Donations, Subseries A, Gifts and Grants, Series II, Files on Microfilm, CCNY, RBML. 126 Six Years of Municipal Research for New York City (New York: Bureau of Municipal Research, 1912), 59.

77 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent”

Organizations around the country soon took up the cause. Of the 29 municipal research bureaus founded in the U.S. by 1916, the New York Bureau had a direct hand in founding 20. Early off-shoots included Philadelphia (1908), Memphis (1909), Cincinnati

(1909), Hoboken (1910), and Chicago (1910, with the support of philanthropist Julius

Rosenwald).127 Philadelphia’s Bureau of Municipal Research began releasing its own version of the Bureau’s provocative mailers that it titled Citizens’ Business. Each edition came inscribed with a Madisonian reminder: “A popular government without popular information, or a means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy.”128 By

1928, there were approximately 85 such bureaus in the country, with members of the

New York Bureau spreading the idea around the world. Outside the U.S., Charles

Beard—who would serve as the Bureau’s director—helped establish municipal research organizations in Wusong, China and Tokyo, Japan, both in 1922.129

127 Data compiled from several sources including “A National Program to Improve Methods of Government,” Municipal Research, no. 71 (Mar., 1916): 21 and “Off-Shoots,” (n.d.), Folder 16, Box 3, IPA Series 1, BNL. 128 “A Few Facts about the Bureau of Municipal Research of Philadelphia,” WZ.987, Box 1, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA. 129 “Off-shoots,” BNL.

78 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent”

Map of Municipal Research Organizations Across the U.S. 1905–1928130

1905 (NY Bureau) 1908−1910 1911−1914 1915−1920 1921−1928

Other city governments also got in on the act. Denver began issuing its weekly

Denver Municipal Facts. In 1910, the socialist Milwaukee city council voted to establish a Bureau of Economy and Efficiency—a publicly operated version of the New York

Bureau’s privately run model.131 The San Francisco Bureau of Governmental Research sought to restore hope to San Francisco voters who had, in the years after the 1906 fire, developed a “firm, fatalistic belief that municipal government must be less competent and

130 Data compiled from several sources. Note that I list the founding date for the New York City Betterment Bureau, 1905, which was later incorporated as the Bureau of Municipal Research in 1907. 131 J. E. Treleven, “The Milwaukee Bureau of Economy and Efficiency,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 41 (May, 1912): 270–278.

79 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent” less honest than private business.”132 The Philadelphia Public Works department, led by

Morris Llewellyn Cooke (pretender to the Taylorite throne of scientific management) offered a noteworthy example. Its annual report, Plain Talk, enjoined the reader to “at least look at the pictures!” Following in the mold of Bruère’s report on New York Public

Works, Plain Talk provided before and after photographs of work on public buildings and streets, showed city employees on the job, and incorporated illustrative cartoons alongside detailed explanations of official records.133 The fact that these reports were produced under Cooke’s leadership revealed that hardheaded administrative science and personable, citizen-centric publicity could certainly coexist.

The Bureau’s ideas reached the federal government as well. Indeed, the city budget they had successfully reformed was one-fourth the size of the national government’s annual expenditures. In 1910, President Taft invited Cleveland to join his

Commission on Economy and Efficiency.

While Cleveland was away, Allen became more involved in running the Bureau’s affairs. During that time, with financial support from Mary Harriman—wife of recently deceased Bureau supporter Edward H. Harriman—Allen launched the Bureau’s Training

School for Public Service in 1911. It was the nation’s first school of public administration and would count among its students people like Robert Moses (the great New York power broker), Luther Gulick (an important American administrative theorist who would go on to lead the Bureau and serve on Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Committee on

Administrative Management), and Raymond Moley (who along with Rexford Tugwell

132 Bruce Cornwall, “A Bureau of Governmental Research,” Journal of Electricity 38, no. 1 (Jan. 1, 1917): 5. 133 Plain Talk (Philadelphia: Philadelphia Department of Public Works, 1914.

80 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent” and Adolf Berle would form the core of Roosevelt’s “Brains Trust” that helped develop plans for the First New Deal).134 Through apprenticeships and hands-on fieldwork experience, the school turned out several cohorts of administrators and public servants trained in methods of accounting, financial investigation, and surveys.

In Cleveland’s absence, Allen also expanded the Bureau’s publicity efforts. By

1914, the Bureau had sent 780 editions of Efficient Citizenship, averaging approximately two per week since the organization’s founding.135 But Allen’s belief in the educability of all citizens and his practice of rendering municipal affairs accessible (so as to foster public deliberation) would ultimately raise concerns among philanthropists worried about the political legitimacy of their work. Allen—who Bruère lovingly described as a man of

“passionate conviction” who “makes himself a damned nuisance and often with good effect”—soon became a problem for several of the Bureau’s philanthropic supporters, especially those in the Rockefeller circle.136 His days as a leading voice in the budding field of public administration were numbered.

“Adenoid Bulletins” and the Downsides of Philanthropic Support Entering the 1910s, the philanthropic environment that sustained the Bureau’s work was facing a mounting crisis of legitimacy. Rockefeller, who since 1907 had become the

134 Dahlberg, New York Bureau of Municipal Research, 134–135. Robert Moses enrolled in the Bureau’s Training School before serving a brief stint on the Bureau’s staff claimed that “the voluminous filing and cross-filing of all information [and] the Bureau’s constant emphasis on procedure was a waste of time” (Robert A. Caro, The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1974), 65). 135 “A National Program to Improve Methods of Government,” Municipal Research, no. 71 (Mar., 1916): 83. 136 “Reminiscences of Henry Bruère,” 20, 40.

81 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent”

Bureau’s leading funder, was quickly becoming the most despised person in America.137

In 1908, a jury found Standard Oil guilty of 1,903 counts of taking railroad rebates, a judgment that resulted in a $29 million fine and U.S. Marshalls searching for a fugitive

Rockefeller who had been evading subpoena.138 In 1911, the Supreme Court determined that Standard Oil was in violation of the Sherman anti-trust act, leading to the dissolution of the oil empire. Parceling out the company had helped Rockefeller double his wealth.139

Capturing the national attitude, Ida Tarbell wrote: “Our national life is on every side distinctly poorer, uglier, meaner, for the kind of influence Mr. Rockefeller exercises.”140

Public censure came to a head when the aging oilman attempted to create the

Rockefeller Foundation with a deed of trust for 73,000 shares of Standard Oil. His effort to secure a federal charter from Congress resulted in a protracted political debate. Was it a “Trojan Horse?” Was it “an act to incorporate John D. Rockefeller?” The charter bill languished for several years before it was withdrawn. A charter from New York state was more easily forthcoming.141

137 Rockefeller contributed a total of $125,000 between the Bureau’s founding and 1915, more than any other contributor. “Statement of Facts and Editorial Comment Concerning Charges of Mr. William H. Allen as to Rockefeller Domination,” Box 1, Subseries C, General. IPA Series I, BNL. 138 Ron Chernow, Titan: the Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (New York: Vintage Books, 1999), 519–535. 139 John Ensor Harr and Peter J. Johnson, The Rockefeller Century (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1988), 115–116. 140 Ida M. Tarbell, “John D. Rockefeller: A Character Study, Part Two” McClure’s Magazine 25 (August 1905): 397. Tarbell attributed Standard Oil’s success to the very sorts of administrative activities that the Bureau, namely Cleveland, was advocating for government: centralization, strict financial management, and an almost neurotic ability to control administrative details. See Ida M. Tarbell, The History of the Standard Oil Company, Vol. 1 (New York: McClure, Phillips & Co., 1904). 141 Raymond B. Fosdick, The Story of the Rockefeller Foundation (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1952), 14–20.

82 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent”

Anti-Rockefeller sentiment continued to grow when, over the course of a 15- month strike in 1913 and 1914, a Colorado militia killed 200 mine workers. At one

Standard Oil subsidiary, militiamen killed 10 strikers as well as their families—including two women and 11 children—who they burned to death in their sleep.142 The

Rockefellers were condemned in the press and, in response, the Rockefeller Foundation hired an industrial consultant, Mackenzie King, to investigate the cause of the unrest.

King’s report recommended anti-union reforms that would preclude worker voice in management.143 The massacre and King’s study—which, to many, resembled a cover- up—piqued the interest of the federal Commission on Industrial Relations (the “Walsh

Commission”), established by Congress in 1912. Up for debate at the Commission’s hearings were questions of whether the Rockefeller Foundation along with other organizations of its ilk should be dissolved and have their funds redistributed to the nation’s poor.144

Although these proposals were never effected, the Commission raised public concerns that if philanthropic foundations went unchecked, they would be used “as instruments to change the form of the government of the U.S. at a future date…there is a

142 Howard M. Gitelman, Legacy of the Ludlow Massacre: A Chapter in American Industrial Relations (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988. 143 When the Russell Sage foundation later produced a report criticizing the Rockefeller study’s findings, Rockefeller attempted to block its release (Richard Magat, Unlikely Partners: Philanthropic Foundations and the Labor Movement (Ithaca: ILR Press, 1999), 41–43). And when Rockefeller Jr. was called to testify before a Congressional hearing on Labor Relations, he didn’t do the Foundation any favors. Asked whether he would stand by his anti-union principles even if it “costs all his property and killed all his employees,” Rockefeller replied flatly: “It is a great principle.” (Quoted in Commission on Industrial Relations, Industrial Relations: Final Report and Testimony, Vol. 8, 64th Cong., 1st sess., doc. no. 415 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1916), 7838). 144 Ellen Condiffe Lagemann, The Politics of Knowledge: The Carnegie Corporation, Philanthropy, and Public Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 55; Magat, Unlikely Partners, 46.

83 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent” fear of monarchy.”145 John D. Rockefeller Jr.—who Walter Lippmann described as “the supreme negation of all equality”—was met with rallies and death threats (including several failed bombing attempts) wherever he went.146 Sensing the precarity of the situation, the Rockefeller Foundation decided to focus its funding on a “narrow range of noncontroversial subjects” in order to “avoid suspicion of ulterior interest.”147

Accordingly, when Cleveland returned to the Bureau after his work on the Taft

Commission, Foundation officers advised him that “there was quite a different situation to be considered now than had been present in the past.”148 If the Bureau wanted to continue receiving Rockefeller support, it would need to approach public administration

“in a purely scientific spirit.” It would need to distance itself from the “questionable tendencies [of] Dr. William H. Allen.”149 Jerome Greene of the Rockefeller Foundation told Allen directly that his “adenoid bulletins” were “inconsistent with the dignity or scientific detachment and the impersonality which should characterize…the Bureau of

Municipal Research.”150 In the current political climate, Foundation members decided it was “unwise” for the Bureau to be “launching capricious attacks against city officials and

145 Quoted in Richard Magat, Unlikely Partners, 44. 146 Walter Lippmann, “Mr. Rockefeller,” New Republic (Jan. 30, 1915); John Ensor Harr and Peter J. Johnson, The Rockefeller Century (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1988), 129. 147 Quoted in Richard Magat, Unlikely Partners: Philanthropic Foundations and the Labor Movement (Ithaca: ILR Press, 1999), 46. 148 Frederick A. Cleveland to Starr J. Murphy. Jul. 7, 1914, Folder 318, Box 40, Civic Interests, Series D, Research, OMR RAC. 149 “Memorandum by Mr. Jerome D. Greene Concerning the Bureau of Municipal Research,” Mar. 17, 1913, Folder 6, Bureau of Municipal Research: Correspondence and Contributions, 1905–1911, Civic Interests, OMR, Rockefeller Family Archives, RAC. 150 Jerome D. Greene to William H. Allen, May 16, 1913, Folder 6, Box 2, Bureau of Municipal Research: Correspondence and Contributions, 1905–1911, Civic Interests, OMR, Rockefeller Family Archives, RAC.

84 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent” others.”151 Allen’s publicity, they feared, might lead some to conclude that the

Rockefellers were running the city.

At a lunch meeting in May 1914, the Rockefeller Foundation dangled the possibility of a $30,000 contribution in front of the Bureau’s trustees. As Rockefeller records reveal, the offer was “informal”—conditional on trustees accepting the

Foundation’s “plans for the reorganization of the Bureau.” Those plans, quite simply, required that Cleveland be made sole director and inaugurate a series “improvements” in the Bureau’s work.152

Within a few months, Allen was out of a job. But not without first running to the presses with a story of Rockefeller domination.153 Catching wind of the conditional gift, papers reported incendiary headlines like “John D.’s Cash Splits Bureau,” “Too Much

John D.,” and “Flees from Rockefellerism.”154 Bureau stalwarts were firm in their denial.

There had been no conditional gift and the Rockefeller Foundation had nothing to do with

Allen’s exit. Giving an interview to the New York Times, Cleveland explained that

Allen’s departure concerned “matters of policy only.” He added, “Dr. Allen and I differed on a thousand things and could not agree on the smallest matters.” But when the reporter

151 Starr J. Murphy to John D. Rockefeller Jr., April 24, 1919, Folder 315, Box 40, Civic Interests, Research, OMR, Rockefeller Family Records, RAC. 152 “Relation of the Rockefeller Foundation to the Bureau of Municipal Research” (n.d.). Folder 315, Box 40, Civic Interests, Research, OMR, Rockefeller Family Records, RAC; see also from R. Fulton Cutting’s perspective, Commission on Industrial Relations, Industrial Relations: Final Report and Testimony, Vol. 8, 64th Cong., 1st sess., doc. no. 415 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1916), 7951. 153 “Statement of Facts and Editorial Comment Concerning Charges of Mr. William H. Allen as to Rockefeller Domination,” Box 1, Subseries C, General. IPA Series I, BNL. 154 Headlines in New York Evening Mail, Boston American, and Philadelphia Record, respectively.

85 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent” asked if Rockefeller or the Rockefeller Foundation had at all dictated Bureau operations,

Cleveland replied: “There is no truth in that.”155

The matter soon made its way to the Walsh Commission—its investigations into philanthropy still ongoing—where Allen’s ouster was examined as a case of philanthropic overreach. The issue was particularly concerning given the Bureau’s claims of independence and political neutrality as well as its demonstrated facility in shaping government activities. Cutting, as chair of the Bureau’s board of directors, was called to testify before the Commission. Asked what role philanthropists played in his organization, Cutting fumbled his response, both revealing the Rockefeller Foundation’s substantial power over the Bureau and denying that this power had ever shaped the

Bureau’s work or the way this work was done.156 Denial and equivocation proved sufficiently effective. The Bureau persisted unscathed.

The End of Publicity Under Cleveland’s tutelage, the Bureau grew increasingly distant from citizen engagement.157 It busied itself instead with directly advising government officials on administrative matters. The Bureau grew closer to the sources of power it was originally founded to independently investigate, an about-face Allen decried as an “apostasy.”158

155 “Directors Fall Out in Research Bureau,” New York Times (Jul. 18, 1914). Explaining where he differed from Allen, Cleveland was candid. Their “fundamental differences…centered…on the question of publicity.” 156 Commission on Industrial Relations, Final Report and Testimony, 7951–7954. 157 By 1915, Bruère had also left the Bureau, taking a post as Chamberlain of the City of New York, working for Mayor John Purroy Mitchell. 158 William H. Allen to Andrew Carnegie, Dec. 29, 1916, Gifts and Grants to Bureau of Municipal Research, New York, N.Y., Reel 79, 5, General Donations, Subseries A, Gifts and Grants, Series II, Files on Microfilm, CCNY, RBML. Fair to Allen’s claim, many who remained with the Bureau had previously declared that the organization’s objectivity could only be maintained if it remained independent from government. In this sense, the familiar ironies of

86 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent”

Along these lines, the Bureau abandoned the publicity activities that Allen had long championed. It replaced Efficient Citizenship with the less-colorful Municipal

Research—a densely written monthly periodical intended for a specialized audience.

They raised the price to $1 per issue. Gone too were the budget exhibits. The last one was held in 1915.159

When the Bureau’s Training School came under the leadership of Charles Beard in 1915, Allen’s emphasis on hands-on, experiential education faded into the background.

The emphasis shifted instead to classroom-based education and lectures. Public administration was a universal science and, as such, it could be taught without reference to the specific nature of community or place. And when members of the Bureau helped to establish the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse in 1924, it was this abstract model of education that ultimately took hold.

The intellectual wedge between Cleveland and Allen had grown personal as well.

Cleveland argued that, under Allen’s leadership, the Bureau had not done enough to centralize executive authority over the budget.160 When criticized that the transformed

Bureau had “shipwrecked” publicity and civic education in municipal administration,

Cleveland retorted that, it was not shipwrecked at all. It had “merely jettisoned [its] spoiled cargo.”161 Allen, for his part, argued that people like Cleveland—who exhibited

government reform again reared its head: government only needs criticism when others—and not men “like ourselves”—are in power. 159 See “The Municipal Research Idea,” Municipal Research, no. 71 (Mar., 1916). 160 Frederick A. Cleveland, “Evolution of the Budget Idea in the United States,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 62, no. 1 (Nov., 1915): 15–35. 161 Frederick A. Cleveland, “What is Civic Education?” National Municipal Review 5, no. 4 (Oct., 1916): 653.

87 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent”

“contempt for the public’s ability and right to understand expert government”—posed a grave risk to the very political system they claimed to protect.162

But Allen’s was a losing battle. Although Allen would go on to create the Institute for Public Service in 1915, he would struggle to find financial support for his future endeavors and his organization would exist in relative obscurity until 1962. The Carnegie

Corporation Records on Allen’s Institute offer a painful study in philanthropic ostracism.

The foundation’s officers either denied or completely ignored every funding request

Allen submitted between 1918 and 1960.163 His ideas also failed to resonate with key supporters who were positioned to mobilize greater national interest in a more inclusive form of democratic administration. Worse, because Allen’s approach centered on empowering citizen participation in political and government affairs, it had posed a threat to philanthropic legitimacy. He was effectively erased from much of the Bureau’s accepted self-narrative and treated as a zany blip in an otherwise staid and rational history of the organization’s development. Although Allen’s own Institute carried forward the work of government investigation and publicity it was never once listed in the

Government Research Association’s official index of municipal research organizations.164 Allen would become a vocal opponent of administrative centralization as well as plutocratic influence in American politics, but his democratic vision of public administration represents a path not taken.

162 William H. Allen, “Interpreting Expert Government” in Edward A. Fitzpatrick, ed., Experts in City Government (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1919), 169. 163 Institute for Public Service, 1918–1960, Box 179, Series III.A: Grants, CCNY, RBML. 164 Mordecai Lee, “Glimpsing an Alternate Construction of American Public Administration: The Later Life of William Allen, Cofounder of the New York Bureau of Municipal Research,” Administration & Society 45, no. 5 (2012): 533.

88 “The City Invites You to See How Your Money is Spent”

The idea of mass democracy—briefly sustained by Allen’s efforts to couple publicity and participation with orderly financial management—was losing favor among administrative scholars and social elites.165 Cheering its demise, Nicholas Murray Butler, the president of Columbia University and supporter of an Allen-less municipal research movement, lectured:

The path of true political progress for our democracy leads…not to more direct popular interference with representative institutions, but…to a political practice in which a few important officers…are given much more power and responsibility166

In the coming years, this new understanding of democracy would move into the mainstream of American politics and become institutionalized at the core of its administrative machinery.

165 For further discussion, see Michael E. McGerr, The Decline of Popular Politics: The American North, 1865–1928 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986); see also Mary O. Furner, Advocacy & Objectivity: A Crisis in the Professionalization of American Social Science, 1865– 1905 (Louisville: The University Press of Kentucky, 1975. 166 Nicholas Murray Butler Why should we change our form of government? (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1912), 47.

89 A Mistaken Theory of Government

3

A Mistaken Theory of Government

William Howard Taft assumed the Presidency in 1909 amid mounting concerns over the national deficit and growing federal expenditures. The sizeable surpluses that characterized the first few years of the 20th century had since become equally sizeable deficits. Expenditures, which had never surpassed $450 million before 1899, were now consistently in excess of $500 million. By the time of Taft’s inauguration, they were nearing an unheard of $700 million.1 American financial confidence was further rattled when the Knickerbocker Trust collapsed in 1907, sending the US Treasury scrambling to contain the ensuing liquidity crisis.

To many in the government reform movement, the solution to federal woes was ready at hand: businesslike financial management. A series of lectures by Princeton political scientist Henry Jones Ford—replete with attacks on the House of

Representatives (“abject and supine”) and excoriations of an “American system”

1 U.S. Bureau of the Census, Historical Statistics of United States, 1789-1957 (Washington, D.C., GPO, 1949), 296.

90 A Mistaken Theory of Government characterized by waste, inefficiency, and “extreme irrationality”— raised the issue in its sharpest terms:

Fancy a railroad president trying to run his lines successfully while excluded from the director’s meetings at which allotments of funds and equipment are determined. No business man would expect anything else than that systematic jobbery would be the inevitable result. And yet, the management of public business in the United States is subject to just such conditions.2

Despite the obvious supremacy of corporate financial administration, Ford argued,

Americans were in a grip of a “political pathology” that wedded them to antiquated conceptions of American politics and impeded adaptation to the demands of modern statehood.3

Ford’s ideas resonated with some in government, especially with Senator Nelson

Aldrich—ally to big business, friend to John D. Rockefeller, and father-in-law to John D.

Rockefeller Jr. In 1909, Aldrich declared that “if he could run the federal government as he would a private business, he could save $300,000,000 a year.”4 That same year, the

Treasury Secretary concluded that the nation could no longer “afford to be wholly unscientific” in its financial administration, suggesting that it was becoming increasingly necessary to centralize administrative control in the executive.5 As Ford had put it, “the numerous pass-keys to the national treasury now held by congressional committees must

2 Henry Jones Ford, The Cost of Our National Government: A Study in Political Pathology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1910), 29, 60–61. 3 Ford, Cost of Our National Government, 73, 59. 4 Frederick A. Cleveland, “Evolution of the Budget Idea in the United States,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 62, 1 (Nov. 1915): 22. For more on Aldrich, his support of big business and administrative centralization as well as his relationship with the Rockefellers, see David Graham Phillips, “The Treason of the Senate,” Cosmopolitan Magazine 40, no. 6 (Apr. 1906). 5 U.S. Department of Treasury, Annual Report of the Secretary of the Treasury for the Fiscal Year Ended June 30 1909, Washington: GPO, 1909), 5.

91 A Mistaken Theory of Government be given up and…there shall be but one key which shall be in the custody of the

President.” It was a radical idea in a political system premised on decentralized power.

But to Ford, solving “the question of the cost of government involves the whole organization of public authority.”6

The remaining question was whether anyone outside a social and economic elite of government reformers would rally in support of such a transgressive reconfiguration.

Taft took the challenge and, in 1910, he proposed a commission to investigate and improve federal administration, thereby propelling the idea of a businesslike, executive- led budget to the fore of national political debate.

Building the President’s Commission on Economy and Efficiency Taft’s inquiry would not be the first of its kind. In 1905, Theodore Roosevelt had pursued a similar investigation after hearing a tale of egregious administrative inefficiency. In early fall 1904, a remotely located officer in the Bureau of Indian Affairs had requested a seven-dollar stove to provide warmth during the upcoming winter. The requisitioning process, however, was so riddled with delay that it was months before the stove arrived.

Confirming receipt of his new heater, the officer wrote, “The stove is here, and so is spring.”7

Stories like this prompted Roosevelt to establish a Committee on Department

Methods, the central aim of which would be to “inject” into government administration

“the virtues of private or corporate management.” But Roosevelt’s initiative was rebuked

6 Ford, Cost of Our National Government 115, 120. 7 Story recounted in Oscar Kraines, 1970. “The President versus Congress: The Keep Commission, 1905-1909,” Western Political Quarterly 23, no. 1 (1970): 7.

92 A Mistaken Theory of Government by a Congress that felt he had overstepped his bounds.8 Indeed, he had appointed a committee to investigate the federal administration without seeking legislative consent— effectively trespassing into Congressional territory. Worse, Roosevelt prohibited committee members from disclosing specific details as to the nature of their work. A covert presidential investigation was hardly the recipe to inspire congressional confidence. Congress roundly rejected the committee’s proposals as despotic attempts to control legislation, refused to publicly print the committee’s final reports, and passed a bill requiring that future executive inquiries into federal administration first receive

Congressional authorization.9 A “government by commissions,” they argued, was “not a republic;” it was a “misuse of the constitution.”10

Taft was undeterred by his predecessor’s experiences. Recognizing a congressional desire to eliminate financial waste, Taft proposed an independent study of administrative methods—a presidential endeavor in service of congressional ends.11

Congress reluctantly agreed, providing $100,000 for the President’s Commission on

Economy and Efficiency and granting Taft free rein in picking administrative experts to study federal departments and offer recommendations for improved efficiency.12

8 “Overhauling the Circumlocution Office,” The Nation 81, no. 2093 (Aug. 10, 1905): 113. 9 Kraines, “President versus Congress,”35. 10 Augustus O. Bacon, "The President and Congress", The Independent (March 8 1906): 546; Rep. William F. Willett, Congressional Record (Jan. 7, 1908), 529. 11 Peri E. Arnold, Making the Managerial Presidency: Comprehensive Reorganization Planning, 1905-1996 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998), 29. 12 36 Stat. L. 703. Technically, this is the “President’s Inquiry in re Economy and Efficiency” with Frederick Cleveland as the principal investigator. But as the work piled up, Cleveland and Norton saw need to expand. The fuller group was dubbed the President’s Commission on Economy and Efficiency (Gustavus Weber, Organized Efforts for the Improvement of Methods of Administration in the United States (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1922), 85–86).

93 A Mistaken Theory of Government

Beneath Taft’s conciliatory appeals to Congress, however, lay a deeper set of reform beliefs, redolent of those promoted by municipal reformers in earlier years. For one, he harbored a profound contempt for Congress, arguing that “the slavish subordination of the representative, against his better judgment, to…popular passion” was a “serious evil” and the chief obstacle to good government.13 Because the President was free from local prejudices and “popular clamor,” he was better positioned than

Congress to manage the complexities of federal administration and “act on his own judgment as to what is best for the country.”14 Taft had made a good show of deference to

Congressional authority in securing support for his Commission. But as he went about staffing his commission with people whose views accorded with his own, it became clear that this deference would be short-lived.

Working through his personal secretary, Charles D. Norton, Taft sought accountants and administrative scholars whose “tact and skill” would avoid arousing

“suspicions and doubts” among government officials and politicians.15 Norton reached out to the nation’s top accounting firms for nominations and culled the list in accordance with the President’s desires. One accountant responded with a proposal that Norton deemed “too visionary” to allow Taft to “keep the whole investigation within his own hands firmly.”16 Another proposal from the Bureau of Municipal Research, came from

William Allen who offered his own services, as well as those of Frederick Cleveland.

13 William H. Taft, Popular Government: Its Essence, Its Permanence and Its Perils (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1906), 62. See also Rene N. Ballard, “The Administrative Theory of William Howard Taft,” Western Political Quarterly 7, no. 1 (1954):65–74. 14 Taft, Popular Government, 61, 60. 15 Charles D. Norton to Charles Hine, Aug. 1, 1910, File 215, Reel 375, Series 6: Executive Office Correspondence, Presidential Series No. 2, 1909-1913, William H. Taft Papers, LOC. 16 Charles D. Norton, “Memorandum” Sep. 15, 1910, File 215, Reel 375, Series 6: Executive Office Correspondence, Presidential Series No. 2, 1909-1913, William H. Taft Papers, LOC.

94 A Mistaken Theory of Government

Allen’s letter recommended 12 principles along which the Commission ought to proceed.

One principle provided for an extensive publicity campaign intended to encourage government employees and citizens to “ask questions, criticize, etc.”17 In a private memo,

Norton dismissed Allen’s proposal out of hand: “we could not control it along the lines of publicity, etc.”18

Cleveland, however, was a promising prospect. Norton saw him as a “realist” who was technically experienced and supportive of concentrating power in the executive office, as was common practice among corporations. He also had the ability to work

“quietly” on a politically sensitive subject.19 In 1910, Allen and Cleveland met with Taft and Norton at the President’s Summer White House in Beverly, Massachusetts. Taft requested that only Cleveland serve on his Commission.

In September 1910, Cleveland was made a member of Taft’s executive staff, given an office in the White House, and provided with a small team of accountants and stenographers to assist with his work. But the task was monumental, and Cleveland soon found himself overwhelmed by the sheer difficulty of compiling documents and data from across the federal government. To assist with the work, Taft and Norton secured the services of two additional administrative experts, Frank J. Goodnow and William F.

Willoughby.

17 William H. Allen to Charles D. Norton, Aug. 12, 1910, File 215, Reel 375, Series 6: Executive Office Correspondence, Presidential Series No. 2, 1909-1913, William H. Taft Papers, LOC; William H. Allen and Frederick A. Cleveland to Charles D. Norton, Aug. 23, 1910, Box 20, Decimal Files, Records of the President’s Commission on Economy and Efficiency, 1910-1913, RG 51, Records of the Office of Management and Budget, NARA. 18 Charles D. Norton, “Memorandum.” 19 Donald Critchlow, The Brookings Institution, 1916-1952: Expertise and the Public Interest in a Democratic Society (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 29.

95 A Mistaken Theory of Government

Goodnow was a professor of administrative law at Columbia, member of the

National Municipal League, and the founding president of the American Political Science

Association. In his book Politics and Administration (1900), Goodnow channeled

Montesquieu for the modern era by divvying government into two distinct functions. The first pertained to the formation of a sovereign will, a question of “politics.” The second pertained to the practical execution of that will by the officers of government; this was

“administration.”20. Goodnow’s argument was, in effect, an attempt to carve out a philosophically defensible space for technically skilled administrators in American government. Although such administration would depend on politics to give it purpose and direction, its chief aim would be to identify the most economical and efficient means of bringing the political will to fruition. Accordingly, administration would depend on the application of universal principles of efficiency—tenets of a budding administrative science—in service of politically determined ends.

The implications of Goodnow’s division of labor were manifold. For one, it meant that administrative rationality did not present a threat to democracy as long as it was carried out by competent and politically disinterested men. Their competence would be ascertained through demonstrated qualifications and ability. Their neutrality would be assured through adherence to professional codes of conduct. Second, Goodnow’s argument served to justify the role of unelected public officials in a democratic society.

Appointment via election or via an elected official (as was common under the patronage system) would necessarily make the administrator’s position political; the claim of disinterestedness would suffer. In a paradoxical fashion, the less administrators and their

20 Frank Goodnow, Politics and Administration (New York: Macmillan Company, 1900).

96 A Mistaken Theory of Government methods were subject to the whims of public opinion, the better they could serve public interests.21 Lastly, by wresting the means of government from the determination of its ends, Goodnow’s argument served to yoke public administration to business administration under the rubric of administrative science. Regardless of the ends administrators pursued, the means by which they pursued those ends were subject to universal principles of efficiency.22 Administration was administration. One could learn the administrative lessons of Great Britain or Carnegie Steel without suffering the indignities of monarchy or avarice.

Whereas Goodnow’s career centered on government in theory, Willoughby’s career had centered on government in practice. After receiving his PhD in Political

Science at Johns Hopkins, Willoughby worked as a statistician at the Department of

Labor before serving as Roosevelt’s appointee as the treasurer and secretary of Puerto

Rico. And immediately prior to his appointment to Taft’s Commission, he had served two years as the Assistant Director of the Census. Over the course of these appointments,

Willoughby had been remarkably prolific. He produced numerous books, articles, and essays mingling administrative science, political philosophy, and practical experience in an effort to advance an administrative conception of the modern democratic state.

21 In Goodnow’s argument, one can find traces of government reform agenda centered on “good men” of noble character and high social standing. Through Goodnow, those good men went to school, as it were, learned administrative science, and received appointments in various government bureaus. The argument also prefigures the Weberian idea of sin ira et studio—that the ideal administrative official is a functionary operating without scorn or bias, fulfilling his role and following the rules just as any other functionary would do. It is an eloquent argument but depends on the dubious assumption that the criteria for training and selecting administrators are, in fact, apolitical. It also requires that individual biases not enter into or affect the various moments of discretion that appear in the course of regular administrative work. 22 See John A. Rohr, To Run a Constitution (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1986).

97 A Mistaken Theory of Government

Much like Cleveland, Willoughby was uncomfortable leaving the important decisions of the state to the uneducated, unthinking masses. He preferred instead that specialized administrators take the lead. Because laws “must be founded on facts and statistics,” Willoughby argued, it was a mistake to admit the speculations and prejudices of citizens and their representatives into the legislative process. The evidence was clear.

Relative to bills that traced their origins to popular movements, he argued, bills that had originated in administrative bureaus had more often “been followed by the best results.”23

Willoughby’s high regard for enlightened administrators was matched only by his contempt for mass democracy. Willoughby reserved his harshest judgment for the

Puerto Ricans who obstructed the colony’s unelected Executive Committee’s appropriation bill on the grounds that it failed to represent their political interests. To

Willoughby, this was evidence that Puerto Ricans did not possess the necessary temperament for self-government. They were too “excitable” and too impatient. They overemphasized personal and family interests “at the expense of public interests.”24 Such traits could not simply be educated out of a population or resolved through greater publicity. In his view, education was too often seen as the “cure of all evils” when, in fact, it had no bearing on political outcomes. Educating the “illiterate foreign voter” (on whom he blamed “municipal misrule”) had done little to facilitate the “enlightened public opinion” necessary for the “proper conduct of public affairs.”25 In lieu of civic education,

23 William F. Willoughby, “State Activities and Politics,” Papers of the American Historical Association 5 (1891): 122, 125. 24 William F. Willoughby, “The Reorganization of Municipal Government in Porto Rico: Political,” Political Science Quarterly 24, no. 3 (Sep., 1909): 162. 25 William F. Willoughby, “Problem of Political Education in Puerto Rico,” Report of the Twenty- Seventh Annual Meeting of the Lake Mohonk Conference of Friends of the Indian and Other Dependent Peoples (1909): 160–161. In this attitude, Willoughby revealed himself as the foil to Allen. For Cleveland, the shift from collaborating with Allen to collaborating with Willoughby

98 A Mistaken Theory of Government

Willoughby concluded that only by withholding opportunities for self-government would

Puerto Ricans learn the necessary “self-restraint…obedience…and acquiescence” to become a self-governing people.26

The idea applied stateside as well. The public, Willoughby later wrote, was

“incompetent to exercise [authority], except in the most general way.” Without the guiding hand of special administrators, citizens were bound to devolve into “mob rule.”27

Spared from the impassioned intrusions of politics, the administrative state could rationally secure “harmony, and the fullest prosperity” on the public’s behalf.28

In addition to the triumvirate of Cleveland, Goodnow, and Willoughby, Taft filled out the roster with three additional men: Judge Walter W. Warwick (a former auditor of the Isthmian Canal Commission), Harvey Chase (a certified public accountant and municipal reformer), and Merritt O. Chance (auditor for the Post Office Department).

What had begun as a small detachment of Cleveland and a handful of staff quickly grew into a battalion of nearly 60 staff and a team of on-call accountants from the nation’s most distinguished firms.

must have been radical. Although it would be speculative, one might attribute the evolution in Cleveland’s thought both during and after his time on the Taft Commission as due in part to Willoughby’s influence. 26 Willoughby, “Political Education in Puerto Rico,” 161. 27 William F. Willoughby, An Introduction to the Study of the Government of Modern States (New York: The Century Co., 1921), 82, 84–85. 28 Willoughby, “State Activities and Politics,” 114. A similar philosophy of the helpless citizen would soon find a broader audience via Walter Lippman who judged the fundamental problem of democracy as one of “drift and doubt.” Assessing the political scene he found “no guardian to think for us, no precedent to follow without question, no lawmaker from above.” Instead, there were “only ordinary men set to deal with heart-braking perplexity” (Walter Lippmann, Drift and Mastery: An Attempt to Diagnose Our Current Unrest (New York: Mitchell Kennerley, 1914), 221, 196, 197).

99 A Mistaken Theory of Government

Standardization, Classification, and the First Federal Org Chart Whereas past inquiries had typically ferreted out administrative improprieties on an ad hoc, department-by-department basis, Taft’s Commission sought to investigate administrative practice by treating government as a unitary whole. According to

Cleveland, it had to. The failure to see government as a coherent organization was a failure to recognize a fundamental tenet of administrative science. And such an oversight explained “why more notable results [had] not been obtained from previous investigations.”29 In accordance with Cleveland’s assessment, and with no shortage of grandiosity, Taft announced the Commission’s approach to Congress: “This vast organization has never been studied in detail as one piece of administrative mechanism.

Never have the foundations been laid for a thorough consideration of the relations of all its parts.”30

To see government as a coherent organizational entity required that, instead of expeditions into the bowels of a single administrative department, the Commission would look across departments, collecting data on structures and hierarchies, personnel, administrative procedures, and methods of accounting and reporting. Only by cataloguing the incoherence of these administrative parts would the Commission be able to synthesize the coherence of an administrative whole. The capstone of the endeavor was to be a national budget—an ambition shared by Cleveland and Taft. The budget, they believed, would make authority relationships explicit and, by cogently representing the

29 Frederick A. Cleveland, “Report on the Organization of Government,” Decimal Files, Records of the President’s Commission on Economy and Efficiency, 1910–1913, RG 51, Records of the Office of Management and Budget, NARA. 30 William H. Taft. “Message of the President on Economy and Efficiency in the Government Service, Vol. 1,” 62nd Congress, 2nd Session. Document No. 458 (Washington, D.C: GPO, Jan. 17, 1911): 4.

100 A Mistaken Theory of Government interconnectedness of units, would render government an autonomous and unified organizational entity. Once the government had been reconstituted as a proper organization, it could be run in accordance with the inviolable principles of administrative science.

In its early days, the Commission sent a volley of questionnaires to the federal departments, demanding information on everything from the powers and duties imposed on departmental officers, to the purchase and use of office equipment, to the use of classification systems and ledgers in maintaining financial accounts. One questionnaire,

“The Handling and Filing of Correspondence,” asked 136 questions on the sending, receiving, opening, and indexing of mail. Under Section J, Filing of Correspondence:

State specifically and in detail the system under which letters and other documents are filed.

Are the files arranged numerically, alphabetically, chronologically, geographically, by subjects, or otherwise?

Are letters and other papers filed folded or flat, vertically or horizontally?31

Such painstaking attention to the most minute administrative details evinced a sort of Taylorism-by-survey.32 It revealed the deep assumption, characteristic in Frederick

31 U.S. Presidential Commission on Economy and Efficiency, “Circular No. 5: The Handling and Filing of Correspondence.” Circulars and Pamphlets 1 (Washington, D.C: GPO, 1911. 32 Indeed, Taylor was enjoying a bit of late-career notoriety. When the Eastern Railroad Company had applied to the Interstate Commerce Commission for a rate hike on freight, Louis Brandeis marshaled Taylor’s ideas to challenge the proposal. Presenting before the ICC, he argued that the company, had it relied on the precepts of scientific management would have saved a million dollars a day. The railroad’s counsel indignantly replied: “Much weary toil and wearing anxiety could have been saved had they known what an easy and offhand process it is to save a million a day—on the railways—from the law library in Boston” (Interstate Commerce Commission, “Evidence Taken by the Interstate Commerce Commission in the Matter of Proposed Advances in Freight Rates by Carriers, Vol. 6,” 61st Cong., 3rd sess., Doc. no. 725 (Washington, DC: GPO, 1911): 3724). Although Taylor’s ideas and those of other scientific management had been in use

101 A Mistaken Theory of Government

Taylor’s scientific management, that organizational functions could be isolated, subjected to research, and adjusted in accordance with their desired contribution to the organizational whole. Sure enough, Frederick Taylor was deeply interested in the

Commission’s work and even offered himself as a resource to Cleveland. Eager to pick the brain of a machine shop mastermind, Cleveland made a fieldtrip to Philadelphia where he hoped to find common ground between Taylor’s stopwatch and his own account books. As they toured industrial worksites, Taylor expounded on his management theories “from 9:30 in the morning until 6 o’clock in the afternoon, almost continuously.” But Cleveland soon tired of his host. Not only had Taylor failed to grasp how his system might apply to the problems of public administration, but he had also completely overlooked accounting devices as the next frontier in scientific management.

Despite Taylor’s limited views, Cleveland returned to Washington convinced that accounting not only rivaled the stopwatch in terms of managerial control, it also was the only means of providing rational unity to disjointed organizational functions.33

Following Cleveland’s lead, the Commission’s prescriptions—detailed in more than 100 circulars and reports—bore the stamp of Taylorist exactitude but expressed through Cleveland’s obsession with uniformity. Hardly any administrative activity went untouched. Departments were to store their correspondence flat, ordered by subject. They would also institute a system of window envelopes and, to save ink, would strip letters of

for some time, they had yet to receive as broad of a public audience as they did through Brandeis’ argument. 33 Diary of Frederick A. Cleveland, Jan. 16, 1911, File 215, Reel 375, Series 6: Executive Office Correspondence, Presidential Series No. 2, 1909-1913, William H. Taft Papers, LOC. See also Frederick A. Cleveland, “An Application of Scientific Management to the Activities of the State,” speech delivered at Hanover Conference on Scientific Management, 1911, Box 20, Decimal Files, Records of the President’s Commission on Economy and Efficiency, 1910-1913. RG 51, Records of the Office of Management and Budget, NARA.

102 A Mistaken Theory of Government salutation and complimentary close (Circular No. 21). Employee efficiency ratings were to be given at fixed intervals, on a six-point scale, and in accordance with uniform criteria

(Circular No. 35). To make a purchase, a requisitioner must contact a purchasing agent who, upon approval from an accounting officer, disbursing officer, and administrative officer, may release the necessary funds (Circular No. 6). Expenditure reports must adhere to uniform classifications: glue, paste, and mucilage (D-1161); steam heating, time rate (B-8110); grenades (D-8360); linoleum flooring (E-5133); repayment to Indians of proceeds of sales of Indian lands (H-3400); burial expenses (J-8100).34 Summarizing the Commission’s underlying theory, Circular No. 33 reported:

While there is need for adaptation of technical details to each office where accounts are kept, the story to be told about the business of each department and establishment is only a part of the story to be told about the Government as a whole. This makes it necessary that the details of technique must be subordinate to certain controlling accounts that are designed to tell the story about the government as a whole.35

It was an idea that would increasingly come to characterize Cleveland and Willoughby’s work. Rather than adapt the system to fit the distinctive work of individual departments, departments would need to adapt their work to fit the demands of the overarching system.

The introduction of classifications, standards, and schemes for uniform record- keeping began to give shape to a previously formless congeries of administrative components. By establishing common terminologies, the Commission wrote, all

34 U.S. Presidential Commission on Economy and Efficiency, “Circular No. 19. Classification of Objects of Government Expenditure,” Circulars and Pamphlets 1 (Washington, D.C: GPO, 1911). 35 U.S. Presidential Commission on Economy and Efficiency, “Circular No. 33. “Conclusions Reached with Respect to Expenditure Accounting and Reporting,” Circulars and Pamphlets 2 (Washington, D.C: GPO, 1911), 11.

103 A Mistaken Theory of Government government information would “convey the same meaning to the one who reads as was in the mind of him who wrote.”36 By instituting common classifications, the government might avoid situations where, as one Congressman later recalled, there were as many different prices paid for typewriters as there were purchasers of typewriters.37 In effect, by eroding the localized, departmental fiefdoms over information and administrative procedure, the Commission sought to introduce a system through which individual units behaved as interdependent parts of an organizational whole.

Having introduced common methods of administrative procedure, the

Commission then set about mapping the hierarchical structure through which departments

(as well as their various agencies, offices, and field offices) would relate. Although this was a new concept in federal government, hierarchical integration had long been indispensable in private corporations, especially among railroads where organizational charts first appeared.38 When a railroad measured only 50 to 100 miles long (as many did before 1850), it was entirely practicable for a single superintendent to oversee its operations. But as railroads grew in length and complexity, superintendents hired assistants to oversee distant sections of track. Lines on the landscape soon became lines on the page, diagrams that illustrated not only the path of the trains, but also the flow of

36 U.S. Presidential Commission on Economy and Efficiency, “Circular No. 4. Interim Report on Plan of Inquiry and Progress of Work,” Circulars and Pamphlets 1 (Washington, D.C: GPO, 1911): 23. 37 Martin Madden, “The New System in Government,” Saturday Evening Post (Jun. 9, 1923): 138. 38 The novelty of organizational charts in government is evident the outlines and diagrams required extensive explanation in Committee. Some Representatives assumed that outlining government in its entirety required listing each government employee (and not the office or role in which they were stationed) by name like an employee directory (see Sundry Civil Appropriation Bill for 1913, Hearings before the Subcommittee of House Committee on Appropriations, 62nd Cong., 2nd sess. (18 May 1912), 133).

104 A Mistaken Theory of Government information, reports, and accountability between the system’s many stations. New business enterprises took note, and, by the end of the 19th century, organizational charts were ubiquitous in American industry.39 Reared in the shadow of America’s Second

Industrial Revolution, administrative experts like Cleveland traded empirical tendency for normative prescription: the more specialized the work of an organization’s parts, the more necessary it was to centralize control. If government was to become more efficient, it would need to embrace this fundamental law of administrative science.

Following this industrial inspiration, the Commission prepared a 731-page organizational chart which Taft introduced to Congress in early 1912. It was the first time the U.S. Federal government had ever been outlined in its entirety. Everything—from the departments, bureaus, divisions, and offices in Washington, to the numerous field stations, agencies, shops, and other subordinate divisions located around the country— was captured in one place. Before this information was available, Taft argued, administrative officials had been “called upon to discharge their duties without that full knowledge of the machinery under their direction.”40 With such an outline in hand, however, one could consider alternative arrangements and structures that would eliminate the duplication of work and promote connections between similar agencies operating in different departments. A total of eight departments dealt with providing transportation facilities, four departments were focused on regulating finance and commerce, three offices oversaw patents and copyrights, five departments worked on agriculture, forestry,

39 Alfred D. Chandler, Strategy and Structure: Chapters in the History of the American Industrial Enterprise (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1962), 22–23. 40 William H. Taft. “Message of the President on Economy and Efficiency in the Government Service, Vol. 1,” 62nd Congress, 2nd Session. Document No. 458 (Washington, D.C: GPO, Jan. 17, 1911): 5.

105 A Mistaken Theory of Government and similar domains, five departments were involved in promoting public health, and six departments did work on education and remediation.41 The Commission recommended that the Bureau of Lighthouses be consolidated with the Life-Saving Service and the

Revenue Cutter service because all three had vessels patrolling the coasts and engaged in maritime rescue.42 The Treasury’s six auditing offices, they argued, should be consolidated into a single office in order to avoid duplicating work.43

Most importantly, the organizational charts made intelligible the inter- departmental lines of communication and authority by which the unified government organism was to operate. With such a tool, Taft argued, “effective supervision and control is possible.”44 No longer would federal government be seen as an amorphous collection of departments with law and custom as their only connective tissue. It would now be seen as an organic whole with a shared vocabulary, clearly demarcated functional jurisdictions, and definite lines of authority.

The Need for a National Budget Building on the principles tacit in their organizational charts, the Commission proposed what would prove to be its most important and most controversial administrative reform: the executive budget. The proposal, outlined in The Need for a National Budget (1912), would put the President, as the government’s Chief Executive, in charge of formulating

41 Listed in Robert Fulton Cutting, “Public Opinion and the National Economy,” Municipal Research, Supplement (Oct. 1915): 5. 42 U.S. Presidential Commission on Economy and Efficiency, “Appendix No. 2,” Reports of the Commission on Economy and Efficiency (Washington, D.C: GPO, Apr 4, 1912). 43 U.S. Presidential Commission on Economy and Efficiency, “Appendix No. 4,” Reports of the Commission on Economy and Efficiency (Washington, D.C: GPO, Apr 4, 1912). 44 William H. Taft. “Message of the President,” 6.

106 A Mistaken Theory of Government the budget and submitting it to Congress for ratification. Incorporated in this system were all the elements of classification, standardization, and centralization that the Commission had so carefully outlined in its reports. Departments would prepare detailed statements of their workplans for the coming year, using unform classifications and stock reporting forms to do so. The President, with the aid of the Treasury, would then compile these estimates, consider administrative needs in terms of available resources, and efficiently prioritize the allocation of funds.

The proposed budgeting system had much in common with the one developed at the Bureau of Municipal Research. Indeed, both used industrial financial administration as their template and Cleveland was core to the creation of both schemes. Both the

Bureau and Commission’s budgets treated government as an organic whole—a single, autonomous entity that could set priorities and make tradeoffs between its parts in response to fluctuating resources and needs. Furthermore, in establishing this unity, both schemes depended on standardized classifications. Without these, systematic comparisons would be impossible and relative efficiencies would be difficult to ascertain.

The two systems, however, were different in one crucial regard: how they directed information and to whom they allocated control.

At the Bureau, the lines of authority flowed outward, a feat facilitated by publicity and civic education campaigns. Administrative detail, having been gathered and centralized by accountants and investigators, would be presented to citizens to whom it would serve as a common object of knowledge. Around these indisputable administrative facts, political agendas could be made explicit, given concrete referents, put into dollar terms, and debated. There is no escaping the fact that, even in the Bureau’s model,

107 A Mistaken Theory of Government administrative experts had enormous influence over how information was presented. And there is no denying that, whatever the outcomes of civic discourse, citizens would still rely on their representatives and officials to make sense of public demands and adjust appropriations accordingly. But the simple fact is, before a single dollar was spent, information would move outward to citizens who would then participate in determining the course of government action.

No such participation was present in the Commission’s proposal. An executive budget, by design, directed information inward and upward through the organizational chart.45 Such a system would guarantee efficiency by clearly defining official responsibility and making government work visible. Because every employee’s work would be carefully recorded in the accounts, they would “seek to gain credit for reducing the cost of producing specific results.”46 As Taft explained to his cabinet, “I ought to be able to receive daily, weekly, and monthly reports which will indicate clearly to me where the good administrators are [and] where the wasteful and inefficient ones are.”47

45 Interestingly, some organization charts, especially those produced in New York City and Philadelphia reserved the top spot not for the executive but rather for the “Citizens” or “Taxpayers.” Presently, data is unavailable to determine the correlation between these graphic depictions of the government organization and flow of authority in budgeting processes, but one might hypothesize that this simple conceptual distinction—who resides at the peak of the pyramid—makes all the difference in how budgetary power is allocated. For a phenomenal depiction of the citizen-topped organization chart, see Philadelphia Bureau of Municipal Research, “Governmental Organization of the City, County, and School District of Philadelphia including the County Courts,” Sept. 1, 1924, Box 1, WZ*.987, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA. Here, the “executive” position is reserved for “Registered Voters.” 46 The Need for a National Budget 62nd Cong., 2nd Sess., Doc. No. 854 (Washington, D.C: GPO, 1912), 218. 47 U.S. Presidential Commission on Economy and Efficiency, “Circular No. 4: “Interim Report on Plan of Inquiry and Progress of Work,” Circulars and Pamphlets 1 (Washington, D.C: GPO, 1911): 7–8. Building on the Budget recommendation, the Commission also proposed the Bureau of Central Administrative Control was essentially a proposal to institutionalize the Taft Commission. It would be organized under the Executive and manage the “correlated subjects” of accounting, reporting, and statistics for all federal departments. It would also manage the audit of

108 A Mistaken Theory of Government

To be sure, the public would not be erased from the picture altogether. But their role would be decidedly passive and retrospective. As opposed to having an opportunity to decide and prioritize government activities, citizens would be positioned to influence the fate of the representative who did (i.e., the President). But this influence would only be exercised after money had been spent—that is, after the President’s plans had already been executed. Structured this way, the budget would not be a list of possibilities and alternatives for future action but a grading rubric for work already done.

The executive budget (and its implied structure of administrative authority) represented a radical departure from the structure and operations of federal government.

But this fact hardly seemed to register for the Commission, especially for Cleveland who held the corporation as the paragon of modern democracy. For them, the proposals were merely the “correct” means of administration which, if followed, would guarantee increased efficiency. According to Cleveland, the Commission’s recommendations were based on “common experience and common sense” and rooted in the “experience which has been gained in organization and management of corporate bodies.”48 “It would be little less than insane,” for a division head to report workplans and cost estimates directly to the board of trustees “without having these matters first passed upon by his executive superior.”49

departmental accounts—a relatively simple task once accounting forms were standardized and expenditures uniformly reported (Message of the President of the United States Submitting for the Consideration of the Congress A Budget with Supporting Memoranda and Reports, 62nd Cong., 3rd sess., Senate Document No. 1113 (26 February 1913), Appendix 2, “The Need for the Organization of a Bureau of Central Administrative Control,” 191-199). 48 Frederick A. Cleveland, “The Federal Budget: What the President Is Trying to Do by Way of Budget Making for the National Government,” Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science in the City of New York 3, no. 2 Efficient Government (Jan., 1913): 128. 49 Frederick A. Cleveland, “The Federal Budget,” 129.

109 A Mistaken Theory of Government

Likewise, Willoughby argued that to leave the budget in the hands of Congress would be to ignore a fundamental fact of administration: “The efficient conduct of affairs necessarily involves the exercise of discretion from day to day by those actually in charge.” 50 After all, administrative matters were “not peculiar to governmental affairs but [were] identical with those of all important industrial undertakings.” The executive budget and its attendant administrative reorganization were therefore “purely practical” matters of reforming government methods on “a business basis.”51

Administrative Practice as Democratic Transgression For Congress, however, the executive budget was no mere “practical” matter. It was an encroachment on their authority and objectionable to the entire system of American politics. In an impassioned denunciation of the budget proposal, one representative claimed that the Commission harbored a contempt for Congressional methods, seeing

Congress as “archaic” and “behind the times.” The Commission, he argued, had operated on the “mistaken theory that our Government…should be conducted in such a manner

[as] some business establishment.” Furthermore, the Commission had clearly “never comprehended the theory upon which our Government was founded.”52

When members of the Commission were called upon to testify on their work, they were berated for proposing executive control over appropriations. “This is a

50 William F. Willoughby, “Allotment of Funds by Executive Officials, an Essential Feature of any Correct Budgetary System”, Proceedings of the American Political Science Association 9, Ninth Annual Meeting (1912): 78. Emphasis mine. 51 William F. Willoughby, Review of Chapters on Municipal Administration and Accounting, by Frederick A. Cleveland, the American Political Science Review 4, no. 2 (May, 1910): 299. 52 Rep. Fitzgerald. Congressional Record, 62nd Cong., 2nd sess. (Aug. 7, 1912), 10399-10400.

110 A Mistaken Theory of Government representative system of government,” one Congressman declared. “The representative is sent here to represent the people and not to support and maintain an administration.”53

Newspapers cried foul as well. One piece in the New York Times argued that the executive budget was “wholly inapplicable to our system of government.” Another piece in the San Francisco Chronicle called the proposal an “encroachment of the executive upon the legislative domain.”54

When Taft requested another $250,000 to continue the Commission’s work,

Congress permitted no more than a cripplingly low $75,000.55 The Commission was starved out of existence, its staff cut, and only Cleveland remained through the end of

Taft’s presidency. Of the Commission’s 110 investigative reports, Taft had submitted 26 to Congress, 16 of which carried legislative implications. Of those, 15 were completely ignored. The one recommendation given any consideration was ultimately defeated.56

Furthermore, in a direct rebuke of the executive budget proposal, Congress included a rider on its 1913 appropriation bill, requiring that departments only provide budget estimates to Congress, in accordance with current methods, and not in accordance with any alternative system such as the one the Commission had proposed.57 According to one representative, “Congress knew best the character and extent of the information it

53 Sundry Civil Appropriation Bill for 1913, Hearings before the Subcommittee of House Committee on Appropriations, 62nd Cong., 2nd sess. (18 May 1912), 144-155. 54 “Congress Budget Breaks All Records,” New York Times (Mar. 15, 1913); “A National Budget,” San Francisco Chronicle (Mar. 23, 1913). 55 John D. Rockefeller, Jr. wrote directly to John Fitzgerald of the Appropriations Committee imploring him to extend the Taft Commission’s study indefinitely (John D. Rockefeller, Jr. to John F. Fitzgerald, June 5, 1912, Folder 6. Bureau of Municipal Research: Correspondence and Contributions, 1905-1911, Civic Interests, OMR, Rockefeller Family Archives, RAC) 56 Cutting, Public Opinion and the National Economy: 9. 57 Weber, Organized Efforts, 89.

111 A Mistaken Theory of Government desired” and “it would not be wise for Congress to abdicate, even by implication, its prerogative in this matter.”58

Seeking to further solidify its own role in budgeting, Congress considered alternative proposals for a national budget system that would better square with the traditions of American politics. One representative, argued that, because Congress was the “only logical representative of a free people,” it ought to have a more orderly and consistent means of making appropriations. For this reason, it should establish a legislative budget as a countermeasure to the proposed executive transgression.

With Woodrow Wilson’s presidency on the horizon, there was a glimmer of hope for a resurgence of support for the Commission’s work. After all, Wilson the political scientist was an advocate of a technically skilled and businesslike federal administration with powers centralized in the executive. But Wilson the President was reluctant.

Executive budgeting was political capital he was unwilling to spend, especially if he was going to successfully mobilize Congressional support for his New Freedom campaign promises. Without Wilson’s backing, the Commission’s work was at a dead end.59

Stymied by Congress, the Commission members doubled down on their ideas.

Goodnow, seeming to realize the frictions between his theoretical abstractions and practical realities, changed his tone on the matter altogether. An efficient, economically

58 Rep. Fitzgerald, Congressional Record, 62nd Cong., 2nd sess. (Aug. 26, 1912), 11898. Further undercutting the prospects of the executive budget was the growing unease that federal employees felt about tight executive control. In response to American Federation of Labor concerns, the Lloyd-LaFollette Act of 1911 provided government workers with the right to unionize and allowed Congress to limit executive power over the workforce (see Stephen Skowronek, Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities, 1877-1920 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 191–192). It was a politically inauspicious time to call for the extension of executive authority. 59 Arnold, Making the Managerial Presidency, 49.

112 A Mistaken Theory of Government run administration, he wrote, required that “we shall emancipate ourselves from the dictates of a theory which, whatever may have been the reasons for its adoption, has ceased to be applicable to modern conditions.”60 Administration could be distinct from politics, but only if politics were structured differently.

Cleveland also began to change his tone. Without an Allen-like influence on his work, Cleveland’s conception of the budget was no longer balanced by concerns for educating citizens or encouraging public participation in the political process. Influenced by Goodnow and Willoughby and tempered by his run-ins with Congress, Cleveland grew impatient with the idea of citizen and representative involvement in public administration. He regarded such participation as an officious encumbrance on efficient administrative work. The “average citizen,” Cleveland wrote, “assumes an air of superior wisdom” toward the expert civil servant. He even listed questions that citizens should answer before they considered raising their voices:

How much thought do we give to the problems with which officers of government are confronted? How many of us who are complaining about waste and inefficiency in public service know…What the government really is [or] what the government is doing?”

Because citizens did not know these things—and in Cleveland’s estimation, could not know these things—they would need to accept a “a dominant controlling agency more powerful than any combination of private interests.”61

60 Frank J. Goodnow, “The Limit of Budgetary Control,” American Political Science Review 7, no. 1 (1913):68–77. 61 Frederick A. Cleveland, “The Need for Coordinating Municipal, State and National Activities,” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 41, no. 1 (1912): 23.

113 A Mistaken Theory of Government

In 1913, Cleveland revised and republished his 1898 book, The Growth of

Democracy in the United States. There were several changes including a new title:

Organized Democracy. The essays contained within reflected Cleveland’s experiences attempting to revise the methods of municipal and federal financial management. One edit, however, revealed a telling change of heart. The original text had been dedicated to

“My Sovereign, the People of the United States.” In the revised edition, this dedication was conspicuously absent.

The Commission’s collapse forced a rare moment of introspection for men so confident in the intrinsic correctness of administrative science and its application to

American government. They had hoped, because their recommendations were grounded in practical experience and scientific knowledge, that the application of these ideas to federal government would be self-evident. They had also hoped, by touting the budget’s intended benefit of saving money through administrative efficiency, that they would successfully disarm any opponents and win public support. But Congress saw through the subterfuge, recognizing well that the Commission’s success would come at the cost of legislative authority.62 Indeed, Cleveland eventually realized that his Commission had been asking Congress, especially the members of its appropriations committees, to surrender power to the President and small staff of budget experts.

As unassailable as the Commission felt its recommendations had been, its members had ultimately fallen short in promoting their ideas and articulating the place of an executive budget within democratic government. “We have not been carrying on a campaign of publicity,” Cleveland wrote in 1913. And although this fact had been “of

62 Critchlow, Brookings Institution, 31.

114 A Mistaken Theory of Government very great advantage” in conducting the Commission’s operations, it had also come with numerous “disadvantages, namely that it [had] not aroused public opinion to such an extent as to force the demand” for an executive budget. Without such a public campaign to convince them otherwise, Congress would remain “ignorant about most of the things that are absolutely necessary to good judgment.” Accordingly, the only path forward for the executive budget was “through a campaign of education that will force public opinion upon those who assume responsibility for the management and control of public business.”63

In the coming years, under the self-assured maxims of objectivity and administrative science, the movement for government budgeting would repurpose the tactics of its early incarnation at the Bureau of Municipal Research. Except now, research would become control and publicity would become persuasion. The Commission’s work,

Cleveland concluded optimistically, still had the potential to pay dividends: “We are now in a position to do some very strong work if we have the right support.”64

63 Frederick A. Cleveland to Charles McCarthy, Mar. 17, 1913, Box 20, 080.08 General correspondence, Series 5.1 Records of the President’s Commission on Economy and Efficiency 1910-1913, RG 51, Records of the Office of Management and Budget, NARA. 64 “Considering all the handicaps that we have had, everybody who has had any contact seems to be of the opinion that we have been able to get some very good results and that we are now in a position to do some very strong work if we have the right support.” (FAC to Harvey Chase, Feb 25, 1913, Box 20, 080.08 general correspondence, folders c - g, Series 5.1, Records of the President's Commission on Economy and Efficiency, 1910-1913, Record Group 51, National Archives, College Park, MD.); Frederick A. Cleveland to Harvey Chase, Feb. 25, 1913, Box 20, 080.08 General correspondence, Series 5.1 Records of the President’s Commission on Economy and Efficiency 1910-1913, RG 51, Records of the Office of Management and Budget, NARA.

115 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump

4

College Boy versus Jasper Gerflump, or, Budgeting and Responsible Citizenship

In October 1915, speaking before the Chamber of Commerce in Cleveland, Ohio, R.

Fulton Cutting—Chairman of the New York Bureau of Municipal Research—described a litany of federal failures. The ratio of national expenditures to national population was on the rise. Government employment was rapidly expanding. And Congress was routinely making annual appropriations in excess of $1 billion. Yet, when a solution was offered— as it had been with the Taft Commission’s proposal for a national executive budget—

Congress proved itself to be the “arch offender against public welfare.” It had opted instead to perpetuate “the senile business organization” of federal government. Change,

Cutting argued, could no longer be expected to come from within. Instead, public demand

“must be created [from] without before we may expect a congressional conversion.” But, he added, one should not expect public support to be readily forthcoming. It would be

116 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump

“hard to clothe with inspiration the proposition to economize.” It would be hard “to kindle enthusiasm for a budget.”1

What was needed, Cutting continued, was “[t]he initiation of a movement to modernize the business methods of national administration.” Such a movement must be led by an “independent, non-partisan organization” that could “organize public support” for political representatives who favored reform and wield public opinion against representatives given to “recalcitration.”2

The crowd to which Cutting spoke needed little encouragement. Although

Congress had rejected the Commission’s proposals, the Chamber of Commerce of the

United States—an umbrella association founded in 1912 to represent hundreds of local business associations around the country—was vocal in advocating federal administrative reform.3 Early issues of the Chamber’s periodical, the Nation’s Business, were flush with support for a national budget. One article, for example, drew connections between federal government and the management of one’s own business:

[E]very business man, no matter how small his affairs…will at once perceive a national budget must be desired by all citizens who wish businesslike methods be applied to the one big business of the nation—the government…If a little business needs a system, then a big business, involving $1,000,000,000 expenditures a year, needs it still more.4

1 Cutting’s speech is reprinted in Robert Fulton Cutting, “Public Opinion and the National Economy,” Municipal Research, Supplement (Oct. 1915): 7, 11. 2 Cutting, “Public Opinion and the National Economy,” 12. 3 Indeed, President Taft, who thought business owners should have organized representation in Washington, had supported the creation of a national Chamber. 4 “Statement of Arguments Favoring a National Budget,” Nation’s Business 1, no. 6 (Nov 18 1912).

117 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump

Another issue of the Nation’s Business included notice of the Chamber’s first- ever referendum, an effort to poll 2,500 member organizations on their opinions for or against the executive budget proposal. The survey was hardly scientific. In case readers were unfamiliar with the proposed reform, the Chamber provided five “exhibits” on the matter—four in support and one in opposition.5 It also offered its own analyses including a statement that the budget was “Not an Attack on Congress,” and a list of other nations using an executive budget system. And if the association’s stance was not sufficiently clear, readers could peruse the opinions of preeminent scholars. David Starr Jordan of

Stanford, Arthur Hadley of Yale, Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia, and Charles

Merriam of Chicago were all quoted in favor of the executive budget. Readers could also study a list of 164 newspapers from around the country that had written favorably about budget reform. Perhaps exaggerating its claim to widespread support, the article lists only one paper in opposition, the Petaluma Daily Courier.6 Unsurprisingly, the Chamber’s referendum returned unanimous support for national executive budget.7

The executive budget garnered support from academic elites as well. Indeed, to economists, sociologists, and especially political scientists—each in the midst of their own professionalization projects—the budget represented the dual impulses of

5 “Commission on Economy and Efficiency,” Nation’s Business 1, no. 5 (Dec. 16 1912): 12. 6 See “The First Referendum,” “Statement of Arguments Favoring a National Budget,” “Opinions of Leaders in Business World and in Education” in Nation’s Business 1, no. 4 (Nov. 18 1912): 1– 2. 7 Charles Wallace Collins, The National Budget System (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1917), 136. Others in the national business community including Arch Shaw—pioneer of the case method at Harvard Business School and editor of System magazine—wrote favorably of the executive budget efforts, drawing a connection between their proposed budgetary methods and those familiar to business executives around the country. He also noted that any improvement in governmental economy would benefit the businessman through reduced tax burdens. Although reformers were less interested in reducing government expenditures than they were in maximizing the value of service for each dollar spent (Arch W. Shaw, “The Nation’s Business” System 23 (Mar., 1913): 247-249).

118 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump

Progressive Era social science. It was both the embodiment of social reform and, because it was premised on universal laws, the product of scientific objectivity.8 The academic popularity of the executive budget also had something to do with its proponents, each of whom carried high status in the scholarly community. Frederick Cleveland, who had been a Professor at the New York University School of Commerce, also held chairmanships on various American Economic Association committees. Frank Goodnow was the founding president of the American Political Science Association, had been a professor of administrative law at Columbia, and after his service on Taft’s Commission, was selected to be the President of Johns Hopkins University. William Willoughby, who long worked in government positions before his time on the Commission had since replaced President- elect Woodrow Wilson as the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence at Princeton.

Willoughby’s brother (and collaborator) Westel Willoughby was elected to preside over the American Political Science Association. Certainly, leading proponents of budget reform were well connected within the scholarly community.

In 1912, as the Taft Commission’s work was being rebuked in Washington,

Goodnow wrote a collaborator that, “We ought to put the American Political Science

Association behind the movement for a national budget.”9 Sure enough, Goodnow organized a special session on the budget at the Association’s annual meetings, having its papers reprinted for wide circulation. Paper topics included, “How we have been getting along without a budget,” systems of “budgetary control,” and the role of the executive as

8 Mary O. Furner, Advocacy and Objectivity: A Crisis in the Professionalization of American Social Science, 1865-1905 (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1975). 9 Quoted in Donald Critchlow, The Brookings Institution, 1916-1952: Expertise and the Public Interest in a Democratic Society (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), 186.

119 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump

“essential” in “any correct budgetary system.”10 Budgeting was focal in the Association’s publication of annual proceedings. Discussions on jurisprudence, the extension of suffrage, and the role of the press in shaping public opinion were accorded substantially less space.

The union of business and academic support for budget reform presented a formidable political force. But as Cutting had observed, this force alone was insufficient for “congressional conversion” at the federal level. For that, the masses would need to be enrolled. And before change could occur in federal administration, the budget agenda must first succeed among the states.

Executive budgeting for state governments Having encountered roadblocks in Congress, supporters of the executive budget turned their attention to the states. New York’s Constitutional Convention in 1915 afforded a major opportunity for reform. With the Convention approaching, conveners asked the

New York Bureau of Municipal Research—now under Cleveland’s leadership—to appraise the state’s administrative structures and recommend changes to be discussed at the Convention. The Bureau’s report, modeled on the Taft Commission’s proposals, advocated for a new conception of politics rooted in administrative science. Government could no longer rely on “theories evolved in the closet of the political philosopher,” the

Bureau argued. It must depend instead on scientific principles identified through

10 See Proceedings of the American Political Science Association 9, Ninth Annual Meeting (1912). Topics mentioned come from papers prepared by Cleveland, Goodnow, and Willoughby respectively.

120 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump

“experience in the successful conduct of affairs.”11 Along these lines, the report recommended that 169 New York state agencies be consolidated, a short ballot be instituted, and executive budgeting be set into motion.

The report—what Dwight Waldo later described as one of the most important documents in the history of American political thought—was a sort of Federalist papers for the modern age. It substituted the separation of powers with the division of labor and voter participation with concentrated executive authority.12 With the Bureau’s work serving as inspiration, the New York Convention adopted Bill 470, an amendment to

“Provide a Scientific Budget System for the State.” The amendment advanced a familiar pattern: the Governor, as the state’s chief executive, would develop and propose an annual budget and state legislators would either accept or reject the proposal—legislative modifications were limited to reducing the dollar amount allocated for specific items.

But the revised constitution with its budgeting reform amendment was “bitterly opposed by persons who combined to preserve the old legislative practices.” 13 As one editorial remarked, the new system would “make legislators servile dependents of the

Executive will” and therefore become “a menace to the rights and liberties of a self- governing people.”14 The public agreed. When the constitutional revisions were put before the electorate, only 30 percent of voters approved. The executive budget measure failed to pass.

11 The Constitution and Government of the State of New York: An Appraisal (New York: New York Bureau of Municipal Research, 1915), 31. 12 Dwight Waldo, The Administrative State: A Study of the Political Theory of American Public Administration (New York: The Ronald Press Co., 1948), 37. 13 Frederick A. Cleveland and Arthur E. Buck, The Budget and Responsible Government (New York: Macmillan Company, 1920), 109. 14 “Against Centralization,” New York Tribune (Oct. 11, 1915).

121 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump

After the failure in New York, Maryland was the next major target. The debate over Maryland budgetary procedure reignited tensions between Cleveland and his erstwhile collaborator William Allen. Allen, in typical fashion, published an educational pamphlet titled “Serious Defects of Maryland’s Budget Law” in which he decried the law’s lack of opportunities for citizen participation, such as budget hearings or publicity campaigns. The Maryland proposal, in his view, was subversive to democracy. Harvey

Chase, who had served on the Taft Commission, dismissed Allen’s pamphlet as “merely an advertising scheme” for Allen’s work, and countered the concerns regarding public involvement by arguing that public budget hearings had never been effective. Quoting

Cleveland, Chase wrote: “public hearings were fruitless.”15 Allen, in his response, doubled down:

Frankly, I am among those who believe that the right of the taxpayer to be shown legislative proposals and to be heard regarding them is among the bedrocks of democracy’s fundamentals. Taxpayers have a right to stay away from taxpayer’s hearings. They have a right to be foolish and unreasonable at hearings. They also have the right to come before city and state and national appropriators of public money…and to be heard before their money is spent.16

To Allen’s chagrin, the Maryland amendment, notable for prohibiting legislators from adding or increasing appropriations, passed in 1916.

The Maryland budget precipitated a cascade of other states adopting the executive approach. In 1917, New Mexico and Utah adopted systems modeled on Maryland’s.

Others states such as Delaware, Illinois, Kansas, and Virginia enacted similar systems but

15 See Harvey Chase, “The Budget Amendment of the Maryland Constitution,” National Municipal Review 6, iss. 2 (Mar., 1917):396. 16 William H. Allen, “The Budget Amendment of the Maryland Constitution,” National Municipal Review 6, no. 4 (Jul., 1917), 488.

122 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump with fewer restrictions on legislative powers.17 By the end of 1918, 15 states— representing approximately one-third of the US population—would adopt executive budgeting either through legislation or constitutional amendment.18

Although the executive budget had yet to garner widespread public support throughout the US, it had come to feature prominently in American political discourse. In

1916, the Bureau of Municipal Research observed that the word “budget” was now “one of the staple commodities of American politics”, on par with “social justice” and

“Americanism.”19

The Institute for Government Research As interest in government budgeting grew around the country, the Bureau of Municipal

Research became inundated with requests from city governments and citizens associations. But the movement for a national budget—at least in the minds of Cleveland,

Charles Norton (Taft’s former secretary), and Jerome Greene (Secretary of the

Rockefeller Foundation)—required a dedicated agency.20 In 1914, they undertook two efforts toward this end. The first was to create a Special Committee on Scientific

Research in Governmental Problems, a temporary effort to be led by Cleveland and

17 Henry L. Stimson, “A National Budget System II,” The World’s Work (Aug., 1919): 536. 18 Based on an analysis using data from Cleveland and Buck The Budget and Responsible Government, page 124, and U.S. Census Bureau. Fourteenth Census of the United States Taken in the Year 1920 Population 1920-Number and Distribution of Inhabitants Volume I (Washington, DC: GPO, 1922), 216. See also Henry C. Adams, “Problems of Budgetary Reform,” Journal of Political Economy 27, no. 8 (Oct., 1919): 632–634. 19 “Introduction,” Municipal Research, no. 80 (Dec., 1916): 1. 20 As historian Barry Karl notes, philanthropy was a driving force of the realization of national politics, perhaps as a result of philanthropists’ success in conducting national business (Karl, “Philanthropy, Policy Planning, and the Bureaucratization of the Democratic Ideal,” Daedalus 105, no. 4 (Fall, 1976): 146).

123 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump placed under the auspices of the Bureau. With $100,000 of Rockefeller support, the

Committee picked up where the Taft Commission had left off, preparing monographs on budget-making, accounting, and classification—i.e., the nuts and bolts of successful administrative reform.21 The second effort was to conceive of a dedicated national agency modeled on the Bureau’s work and established to promote efficiency and administrative science in federal government.22 In March 1916, the two efforts were merged and a new organization, the Institute for Government Research, was incorporated in Washington,

DC.

Much in the spirit of Cutting’s address to the Chamber of Commerce, the Institute was designed to be independent and non-partisan. It would exist “merely to obtain the facts” and would therefore avoid entering into “any political propaganda.”23 Despite the

Institute’s scientific orientation, founding committee members agreed, “extensive publicity would doubtless be necessary for budgetary reform.”24 But with the politically beleaguered Rockefeller Foundation holding the purse strings, any designs on campaigning or advocacy would need to be abandoned. As Greene put it, “less of hostile criticism would be evoked by scientific studies of general application than by efforts made directly by the Rockefeller Foundation in the way of criticizing and improving.”25

21 “Relation of the Rockefeller Foundation to the Bureau of Municipal Research” (n.d.). Folder 315, Box 40, Civic Interests, Research, OMR, Rockefeller Family Records, RAC; “Meeting Minutes of the Board of Trustees,” Nov. 14, 1914, Preliminary Meetings and Articles, BIA, 3. 22 “Suggested draft of prospectus of the Institute for Government Research and Training in Public Service,” Dec. 15, 1915, Box 1, Documents of Record of Bureau of Municipal Research, Vol. 1, Oct. 1914 to Dec. 31, 1916, Series 1, Subseries C., Institute of Public Administration, Baruch, 2. 23 “Meeting Minutes of the Board of Trustees,” Nov. 14, 1914, Preliminary Meetings and Articles, BIA, 3. 24 “Meeting Minutes of the Board of Trustees,” 3. 25 Jerome Greene to Trustees of the Rockefeller Foundation, Nov. 24, 1914. Folder 315, Box 40, Civic Interests, Research, Series D, RG 3, OMR, Rockefeller Family Archives, RAC.

124 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump

Nearly every aspect of the Institute was considered with the optics of objectivity in mind. For one, incorporating as “an association of citizens” dependent on voluntary donations, free from market pressures, and independent from government affiliation was key to the Institute’s claim to impartiality.26 So too was the centering of well-known

“impersonal experts” in the Institute’s work. Scholarly staff like Willoughby, appointed in June 1916 as the Institute’s first director, were “beyond suspicion of having a partisan or personal aspect.”27 Even proposals for the Institute’s official seal—a budget, a piece of paper, a book—were intended to convey disinterestedness, even at the risk of being dull.28

Central in the Institute’s efforts to communicate its scientific orientation was its strategy for picking Trustees whose “chief function” would be “to vouch before the public for the integrity of the enterprise and its freedom from the slightest political bias.”29 Adhering to this philosophy, the Institute’s board counted eight university presidents (or university board chairs) among its membership including Charles Eliot and

A. Lawrence Lowell of Harvard, Arthur Hadley of Yale, and Charles Van Hise of

Wisconsin. The board also contained leading representatives of American industry and

26 At the same time, incorporating in Washington, DC (as opposed to New York) was deemed necessary to give the corporation a “national, rather than local, status” (“Brief Suggesting Advantages of Plan Proposed for the Incorporation of a Broad National Program of Government Research Under One Management,” Dec. 15, 1915, Documents of Record of Bureau of Municipal Research (Vol 1) Oct. 1 1914–Dec. 31,1916, Box 1, Box 1, Subseries C, General. IPA Series I, BNL). 27 “An Institute for Government Research,” May 1, 1915, Minutes of the Board of Trustees, Preliminary Meetings and Articles, Institute for Government Research, BIA, 4. 28 James F. Curtis to Raymond B. Fosdick, Jan. 19, 1917, Correspondence of the Board of Trustees 1915-1930. Chairman’s Correspondence, Institute for Government Research, BIA. The claims to objectivity seem to have worked. In 1923, after orchestrating a multi-year propaganda campaign, the Institute was described, the Baltimore Evening Sun described the institute: “seek no publicity; disdain propaganda” (Jun. 19, 1923). 29 Jerome Greene to Robert D. Calkins, Apr. 29, 1954, Memoranda and Documents of the History of the Brookings Institution, BIA.

125 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump finance including James Hill of the Great Northern Railway and Theodore Vail of

American Telephone & Telegraph. Additionally, four board members were active philanthropists including Mary Harriman (the board’s only woman trustee) and Robert

Woodward from the Carnegie Institution of Washington. Several trustees, like Robert

Brookings, checked multiple boxes at once. Brookings had built his fortune on clothespins and twine at the Cupples woodenwares company in St. Louis, resuscitated the foundering Washington University, and through philanthropic work had become close friends with Andrew Carnegie. Others, like Van Hise and Harvard Law Professor Felix

Frankfurter, were picked especially to “win the confidence and disarm any possible hostility on the part of liberals.”30

For some, the Institute projected a convincing image. Newspapers praised the

“independent, disinterested” new Institute as a declaration that government administration could be “entirely detached from politics.”31 Treated objectively, government could be poked, prodded, and improved in accordance with the universal laws of science.32 For others, however, the Institute’s announcement aroused concern.

Despite efforts to obscure its Rockefeller roots, some newspapers dubbed it

“Rockefeller’s Probe,” the “Rockefeller Inquiry,” and the “Rockefeller Institute.”33

Greene effusively denied such affiliations, telling reporters that “John D. Rockefeller and

30 Greene to Calkins. 31 “Investigate the Government,” Saturday Evening Post (Aug. 26, 1916). 32 See headlines in the Boston Transcript (Oct 19, 1916) reported that “Government A Science” in the New York Times (Aug. 12, 1916) that “Government Placed Under Microscope” and that the Institute would employ “strictly scientific methods” in reforming government. 33 “Rockefeller’s Probe Aimed at Efficiency,” Washington Herald, July 24, 1916; Washington Times, July 25 1916; “Probe of U.S. Offices,” Washington Post, July 23, 1916. The Washington Post (July 23 1916) announced Senatorial opposition as well, quoting Senator Ashurs of Arizona as saying, “I am opposed to accepting for government use one cent of Rockefeller money” unless it came from “taxes on all the property he owns.” .

126 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump the Rockefeller Foundation are not contributing a cent of money to the newly organized

Institute for Government Research.” It was a claim that the Institute’s bookkeeping and internal records readily contradicted.34 Indeed, as Greene later reminded John D.

Rockefeller Jr., “the members of the Rockefeller Foundation are entitled to feel that they have had a vital share” in the Institute’s accomplishments.35

When the Institute opened for business in October 1916, it planned to continue the work initiated under the Cleveland-led Special Committee: conducting basic research on financial administration, public accountancy, and budget making. Willoughby even floated the idea of launching a “Journal of Public Administration.”36

But the American entry into the First World War proved pivotal. Sensing an opportunity to accelerate its agenda of promoting efficiency in government, the Institute offered its services to the Council of National Defense, the American Red Cross, the

Surgeon General’s Office of the Army, and numerous other government and quasi- governmental agencies. Willoughby and his staff quickly moved from the periphery of federal administration to its very core, conducting administrative surveys, helping to organize work, and standardizing financial classifications in order to facilitate cross- agency comparability.37

In 1918, struggling under the burden of the war effort, President Wilson requested legislation to temporarily grant him special war powers including discretion to reorganize

34 “Rockefeller Not in National Research,” New York Times (Jul. 25, 1916). 35 Jerome Greene to John D. Rockefeller Jr., Jun. 17, 1920, Correspondence of Board of Trustees 1915-1930, Institute for Government Research, BIA. 36 William F. Willoughby, “Memorandum Regarding the Policy and Program of the Institute,” Jun., 1916, Official Papers 1916-1919, Institute for Government Research, BIA, 12–13. 37 Brookings Institution, “Institute for Government Research: An Account of Research Achievements,” 1956, Official Papers, Institute for Government Research, Brookings Institution Archives; Critchlow, Brookings Institution, 32–33.

127 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump administrative departments in response to emergency needs. When the bill—referred to as the Overman Act—passed after four months of Congressional deadlock, Wilson found himself at the helm of a disjointed and undisciplined administration.38 To people affiliated with the Institute, the situation presented a “wonderful opportunity” for rearranging executive departments and pruning the “archaic growths” that had, in their view, impeded administrative progress.39

The opportunity would prove fortuitous. To wrest control of his administration,

Wilson appointed a handful of dollar-a-year men—a group of wealthy and reputable business leaders including Brookings—to oversee the War Industries Board and control economic production.40 Although the Federal dalliance with central planning was short- lived (hostilities ended in November 1918), it had afforded Brookings a perch from which to promote the work and ideas of the Institute.

Also aiding the Institute’s cause was the sheer cost of the war effort. Federal annual expenditures, which totaled approximately $713 million in 1916 had grown to over $18 billion by 1919 leaving a deficit in excess of $13 billion.41 The expenditures far outpaced anything the administration had foreseen. Speaking before Congress in 1916,

Treasury Secretary William McAdoo anticipated that, should Congress fail to expand its

38 Stephen Skowronek, Building a New American State: The Expansion of National Administrative Capacities (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 199. The Overman Act, because it literally put a man—the President—over and in charge of the federal administration, may be one of the better aptronyms in American legislative history. 39 Charles D. Norton to William F. Willoughby, Apr. 15, 1918, Correspondence of the Board of Trustees 1915–1930, Institute for Government Research, BIA. 40 Brookings Institution, “An Account of Research Achievements,” 32–33. 41 Office of Management and Budget, Historical Tables: Budget of the U.S. Government (Washington, DC: GPO, 2015), 26.

128 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump revenue measures, the government would face a nearly $200 million shortfall by the end of 1918. The estimate would prove too low by a factor of 65.42

Financing the war had required a significant departure from past revenue generation efforts. With the passage of the 1917 War Revenue Act, the US shifted from a base of customs and excise taxes to one based on income taxes and, more controversially, excess profits taxes. As Federal revenue increased from $840 million in 1916 to $33.7 billion in 1919, the percentage derived from income and excess profits taxes increased from 16 percent to 55.9 percent, peaking at 67.8 percent in 1918.43 Struggling to balance expenditures, the Treasury instituted a program of borrowing, issuing a series of Liberty

Bonds that were targeted, via an aggressive advertising campaign (“If you can’t enlist, invest!”), to Americans whose incomes were too low to be taxed. Although the bond campaigns are credited with exposing many Americans to financial securities, it was the well-to-do citizens and private corporations that purchased the bulk of the bonds. U.S.

Steel alone subscribed for $128 million.44 Income taxes operated along similar lines with less than one percent of taxpayers accounting for 70 percent of income tax revenue.45 By

1919, the US Government was in debt to its wealthy, business-owning minority.

Again, the opportunity was not lost on members of the Institute. As Greene reported to John D. Rockefeller Jr., the War had presented a “psychological moment” in which the “education of leaders in both Houses of Congress” was suddenly possible.46

42 John Witte, The Politics and Development of the Federal Income Tax (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985). 43 Charles Gilbert, American Financing of World War I (Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing, 1970). 44 Gilbert, Financing of World War I, 141. 45 Witte, The Federal Income Tax, 86. 46 Jerome Green to John D. Rockefeller Jr., Jun. 17, 1920, Correspondence of Board of Trustees 1915-1930. Institute for Government Research, BIA.

129 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump

Before the War had drawn to a close, Willoughby giddily reported to the Institute’s trustees that “no more opportune time could be had for the introduction of a budgetary system.” The Institute, he argued, armed with the studies it had managed to publish during the War, “will be in a position to actually assist in the taking of the action that will be required.”47

Despite moderate success in the states, the temporary infusion of central planning in Federal government during the war, and the administrative challenges the war helped to expose, much of the country was yet to be convinced of the executive budget. To be sure, support for national budgeting had gained some steam, but it remained unclear what form such budgeting should take and if the President should be allowed to assume a role that had long been fulfilled by Congress. Both Democrats and Republicans included vague calls for budget reform in their 1916 campaign platforms, a departure from the

1912 election where no such appeals were made.

In 1917, Wilson—who privately supported the executive budget—encouraged

Congress to embrace a legislative budget approach which would place budget-making within a consolidated appropriations committee.48 Indeed, Wilson was pessimistic about the prospects of installing an executive budget within the American political system.49

And rightly so. Since the collapse of the Taft commission, executive budget

47 William F. Willoughby, “Annual Report of the Director, 1917,” Mar. 1, 1918, Annual Report of the Director 1916-1926, Institute for Government Research, BIA. 48 Woodrow Wilson, Fifth Annual Message to Congress, Dec. 4, 1917, Woodrow Wilson Presidency, Presidential Speeches, Miller Center, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA. Although there had been some sympathizers in Congress with regard to executive budget or national budget reform more generally, these efforts received little support or attention.” (p37, Collins, 1922, “Historical Sketch of the Budget Bill in Congress” The Congressional Digest 2(2):37-38.) 49 William F. Willoughby to Raymond B. Fosdick, Jan. 26, 1917, Correspondence of Board of Trustees 1916-1930, Institute for Government Research, BIA.

130 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump sympathizers’ sporadic attempts to push legislation had failed to find much traction and, if anything, had led to a further elaboration of Congress’s role in administrative management.50 But Wilson believed this resistance could be overcome. In a short meeting with Willoughby in early 1917, Wilson stressed the “necessity for pressure of public opinion being brought to bear upon Congress to induce or force it to take action.”51 It would not be until 1919, when a nationwide campaign for a national executive budget was underway, that Wilson would publicly change his tune.

Such a campaign would seem anathema to the Institute’s avowed scientific stance.

Yet, despite proclamations to the contrary, advocacy was core to the Institute’s work.

Even the organization’s name, the Institute for Government Research (as opposed to the more anodyne Institute of Government Research or Institute on Government Research) belied a tendentious orientation. The ever-critical Abraham Flexner of the Rockefeller

Foundation later assessed the Institute as a place where “research and propaganda are inextricably mingled.”52

50 Congress, for example, created a Central Bureau of Efficiency to be led by Herbert Brown, a man who, despite having been a member of the Taft Commission, was hardly loyal to its ideas (namely that government should be treated as an organic whole) and felt Congress was in the right to cut its funding. Charles Wallace Collins, “Historical Sketch of the Budget Bill in Congress,” The Congressional Digest 2, no. 2 (1922): 37–38. 51 William F. Willoughby to Raymond B. Fosdick, Jan. 26, 1917, Correspondence of Board of Trustees 1916-1930, Institute for Government Research, BIA. 52 Abraham Flexner to Beardsley Ruml, Jan. 26, 1924, Folder 517, Brookings Institution 1923- 1924, Box 49, Series 3, Appropriations, Social Studies, Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Records, RAC. Other philanthropic institutions at the time were experiencing a similar set of tensions. between “propaganda” and “research.” The Carnegie Corporation, interested in forming an institute on economics to inform the “lower stratum” about basic economic facts (and thereby produce political stability), contemplated purchasing the Washington Post to make it a mouthpiece through which the foundation could “convey correct information” (Ellen Condiffe Lagemann, The Politics of Knowledge: The Carnegie Corporation, Philanthropy, and Public Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 56–57).

131 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump

Not that the Institute’s staff would have seen it that way. Although their early publications—The System of Financial Administration of Great Britain, The Problem of the National Budget, Organized Efforts for the Improvement of Public Administration, and The Movement for Budgetary Reform in the United States—are peppered with normative language. But the normativity is counterbalanced by the self-assured terminology of early-20th century positivism. Terms like “proper,” “correct,” and “right” appear alongside words like “natural,” “general,” and “universal.” To the Institute’s staff, the way things are was the way things should be. Opining on “proper” citizen conduct and “correct” government procedure was not the stuff of ideology, but the stuff of

“general principles” and “universal laws” encountered through empirical observation. As such, their work was not lowly advocacy; it was an effort to conform reality to the universal precepts of administrative theory. Convincing Congress to “surrender a certain amount of power,” Willoughby would later explain, was a “purely practical” matter.53

Tensions between advocacy and objectivity would animate many of the Institute’s early decisions. Just as Greene had recruited trustees to lend the Institute credibility, the

Board selected Willoughby—not Cleveland—to be its first director. By all accounts,

Cleveland had conceived of the Institute and goaded it into existence. But the trustees felt his way of communicating was “rather involved” and that he failed to recognize that “a report can be interesting, indeed popular, without destroying its scientific value.”54 It is, perhaps, ironic that Cleveland’s bookish indifference toward publicity—the characteristic

53 U.S. Congress, House, Select Committee on the Budget, National Budget System: Hearings on the Establishment of a National Budget System, 66th Cong., 1st sess. (1919), 77. 54 Raymond B. Fosdick to John D. Rockefeller Jr., Aug. 25, 1915, Folder 6, Bureau of Municipal Research Correspondence, Contributions 1911–1917, Box 2, Civic Interests, OMR, Rockefeller Family Archives, RAC.

132 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump that saw him replace Allen at the Bureau—was the very thing that saw him passed over for leadership of the Institute.

Willoughby, on the other hand, was adept at balancing the Institute’s dual imperatives of “bringing public pressure to bear upon officials” while maintaining a scientific stance. Any attempt to mobilize public opinion, Willoughby told the Board, must depend on “getting the active support of other organizations rather than [the

Institute] itself entering upon a campaign of propaganda.”55 If there were to be a propaganda campaign, the Institute would need to operate in the background.

Administrative Propagandists Willoughby himself was the master of the background, often introducing his ideas to other, more vocal organizations that, in turn, propelled them to wide audiences. He was invited to join the Chamber of Commerce’s Committee on Budget and Efficiency, the

American Council on Education’s Committee on Federal Legislation, the American

Statistics Association’s Committee on Federal Statistics, various committees with the

American Historical, Economic, and Political Science associations, and the American

Association for Labor Legislation—one of the leading social reform organizations of the era.56 As Brookings explained to the Institute’s board, “it is difficult to exaggerate the value of connections of this kind.” Through Willoughby’s many affiliations, “the Institute

55 Willoughby, “Memorandum Regarding the Policy of the Institute.” 56 Ann Shola Orloff and Theda Skocpol, “Why Not Equal Protection? Explaining the Politics of Public Social Spending in Britain, 1900-1911, and the United States, 1880s-1920,” American Sociological Review 49, no. 6 (Dec., 1984): 726.

133 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump is able to influence, and largely to determine, the direction…these organizations shall take.”57

Willoughby also ingratiated himself with editors at many papers and periodicals including the Saturday Evening Post, the New York Evening Post, the New York Times, and the Washington Star. Several papers had been in the Institute’s corner since its founding, helping to project its image of scientific disinterestedness. When reporters called upon Willoughby, he would request to remain anonymous, feeling that it was

“more effective to have the paper state the conclusions reached as ones representing the position of the papers containing them.” Working through authors with no affiliation to the Institute, Willoughby placed countless editorials in papers around the country, each

“attacking vigorously” any attempt to maintain the “old and discredited system.” This, in

Willoughby’s view, was “superior to that of direct action through the distribution of leaflets or circulars.”58

The Institute even rented office space at its 818 Connecticut Avenue NW headquarters to the fledgling New Republic—a magazine founded by Herbert Croly,

Walter Lippmann, and Walter Weyl (with the help of Institute board member Felix

Frankfurter) and that would become a mouthpiece for a strong, expert-led, central government.59 Cleveland, later remarking on Willoughby’s behind-the-scenes

57 Robert S. Brookings to Board of Trustees, Feb. 12, 1920, Official Papers, 1915–1924, IGR, BIA, 9. 58 William F. Willoughby, “Annual Report of the Director for 1920,” Apr. 1, 1921, Box 1, Annual Reports of the Director, 1916-1926, IGR, BIA, 10. 59 William F. Willoughby to Jerome Greene, Nov 28, 1917, Correspondence of Board of Trustees 1915–1930, IGR, BIA; Brad Snyder, The House of Truth (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 90–94.

134 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump effectiveness, wrote, “We can scarcely pick up a magazine without seeing something about…the national budget.”60

Percent of Newspaper Pages Mentioning “National Budget,” 1905–192261

Another organization to which the Institute rented space—the entire ground floor, in fact—was the National Budget Committee. The group, founded in 1919 and led by

John T. Pratt (a scion of Standard Oil wealth) had the single-minded ambition of using propaganda to mobilize public support for the executive budget. “You do not want any interference on the part of the people”, Pratt brazenly explained when questioned about the Committee’s work. “We are simply trying to inform people as to what their individual responsibility toward government is.”62

60 Cleveland and Buck, The Budget and Responsible Government, 72. 61 Data collected using the National Endowment for the Humanities’ “Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers” database (Available from the Library of Congress at chroniclingamerica.loc.gov). 62 Congress, Hearings, 103.

135 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump

Like the Institute, the Committee’s board was brimming with heavy hitters including Benjamin Strong (Chair of the Liberty Loan Committee and Governor of the

Federal Reserve Bank of New York), Paul Warburg (banker and exponent of the Federal

Reserve System), and Henry Stimson (Taft’s Secretary of War and Chair at the 1915

New York Constitutional Convention). Committee operations were largely in the hands of Samuel McCune Lindsay, Professor of Social Legislation at Columbia and President of the American Academy of Political and Social Science as well as Frederick

Cleveland’s brother-in-law and Willoughby’s collaborator. The Committee was an ideal ally in the Institute’s cause. “The two organizations could work together most effectively,” Willoughby wrote Brookings. “The National Budget Committee to devote itself primarily to propaganda work, and the Institute for Government Research to scientific investigations and the preparation of material.”63

In September 1919, the Committee published its inaugural issue of the National

Budget, a twice-monthly bulletin that was to be the center of its propaganda campaign.

Developed with the help of John Price Jones—a renowned corporate publicist who had directed the marketing for the Liberty Loans campaign—the bulletin used news columns, cartoons, songs, and charts to present a stark case for the executive budget.64 Articles characterized executive budgeting as essential for the functional administration of democratic government and ridiculed Congress for delay and inaction in administrative reform.

63 William F. Willoughby to Robert S. Brookings, July 14, 1919. Correspondence of Board of Trustees. Institute for Government Research. BIA. 64 John Price Jones’s role discussed in Jesse Tarbert, “Corporate Lessons for Public Governance: The Origins and Activities of the National Budget Committee, 1919-1923,” Seattle University Law Review 42, no. 2 (Winter, 2019): 573. After several months, the bulletin was inexplicably renamed The Budget even though the subject matter continued to focus on national budgeting.

136 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump

Targeting some of its appeals toward soon-to-be enfranchised women, National

Budget features often drew connections between household and nation (“both should be managed by an efficiency system of costs”) and encouraged women to be less “kitchen- minded.” That is, they should join the campaign for a national budget. Targeting the whole family, several bulletins included illustrated stories, typeset with multi-syllabic words broken into parts and intended for parents to read along with young children: “You mean a great Coun-try Like the U-ni-ted States of A-mer-i-ca hasn’t got as much Sense as an Or-di-nar-y Bus-i-ness Man?”65

In addition to the propaganda distributed through the National Budget, the

Committee maintained extensive lists, organized by Congressional district, of potential members “likely to be interested in the budget problem.” Alongside names and addresses, the compilers of these lists remarked on the value each individual might add to the campaign: “well liked and public spirited,” “energetic, dependable,” “Chairman, county

Liberty Loan Committee,” and “best liked man in county.”66 Local papers announced when reputable community members were appointed to lead various National Budget

Committee chapters: “St. Albans Man State Chairman of National Budget Committee;”

“Lemmers Chosen State President of Budget Board.”67 Cutting was appointed as the

Committee’s chair for New York.68 The Committee targeted the academic elite too, recruiting, for example, Benjamin Ide Wheeler of the University of California and

65 Porter Emerson Browne, “A Budget Primer,” The Budget 1, no. 7 (Dec. 1, 1919). 66 Benjamin Strong to Samuel McCune Lindsay, Dec. 9, 1919 [and surrounding tables], Box 90, Samuel McCune Lindsay Papers, RBML. 67 Headlines from The St. Albans Daily Messenger and Colorado Springs Gazette, respectively. 68 “R. Fulton Cutting Chosen; Appointed State Chairman of National Budget Committee,” New York Times (Oct. 21, 1919).

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Nicholas Murray Butler of Columbia to chair state’s membership committees and speak on behalf of executive budgeting.69

Although the Committee targeted influential members, it did so in an effort to secure widespread participation and enroll “every citizen who thinks enough of his country to own a Liberty Bond.”70 Putting their nationwide network of “leading men and women” into action, the Committee began to organize “Budget Clubs” through which it sought to “impress upon citizens a full sense of individual responsibility in the consideration of civic affairs.”71 To aid this goal, the National Budget began publishing didactic discussion topics and questions intended to “arouse our people to a realization of their individual responsibilities as citizens” and to “think clearly and sanely on every public and national question.”72 Following each discussion, clubs were asked to poll their members and submit the results to 818 Connecticut Ave, NW where the Committee shared offices with the Institute for Government Research.

Having set an audacious goal of enrolling thousands of budget clubs by the end of

1919, the Committee began to push its agenda through existing civic infrastructure and associational life. In Pittsburgh alone, they managed to host “more than a score of

Fortnightly Budget Club meetings” in one month, organizing events at the Hungry Club,

Women’s Monday Club, 12 branches of the Y.M.C.A, and at a several settlement houses.73 And on a single day in New York, the Committee hosted meetings at twenty-

69 “Interest in Membership Campaign Widens,” The Budget 1, no. 14 (Mar. 15, 1920). 70 “Budget Committee Advocates Reform.” The National Budget 1, no. 1 (Sept. 1, 1919). 71 “To Seek 10,000 New Committee Members,” The National Budget 1, no. 1 (Sept. 1, 1919); “Form Budget Clubs to Educate Public,” The National Budget 1, no. 3 (Oct. 1, 1919). 72 “Our New Section” The National Budget 1, no. 4 (Oct. 15, 1919). 73 “Open Budget Club Campaign,” The National Budget 1, no. 4 (Oct. 15, 1919); “Pittsburgh to Open Campaign on Nov. 24,” The National Budget 1, no. 5 (Nov. 1, 1919).

138 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump one clubs including the City Club, the Young Republicans Club, the West Side Y.M.C.A, the 11th Street Baptist Church, the Young Democrats Club, the League of Foreign Born

Citizens, and a slew of settlement houses, churches, clubs, fraternities, and literary societies. Over 2,000 people were in attendance.74 In December, the Committee orchestrated a debate between “three boys from the Chrystie Street Settlement House and two boys and one girl from the College Settlement House.” The topic: “Resolved, That the Finances of the United States Should be Administered Through a Budget System.” A city commissioner and a representative of the Bureau of Municipal Research volunteered to coach the teams.75

As momentum grew, 14 state governors accepted honorary chairmanships on their respective state budget committees and 40 of 48 state governors endorsed the national budget agenda.76 By January 1920, President Wilson, accepted an honorary chairmanship on the national committee.77 Clubs hosted “Budget Dinners” and fêted their political representatives at black-tie galas.78

Taking a similar approach, the National Chamber of Commerce, an early supporter of the executive budget, enjoined its member chapters nationwide to establish

74 The National Budget 1, no. 5, (Nov. 1, 1919). 75 “Clubs to Debate Budget,” The National Budget 1, no. 7 (Dec. 1, 1919). 76 “National Budget Committee Growing Throughout Country,” The Budget 1, no. 11 (Feb. 1, 1920). The actual number of endorsements vary from source to source. The Albuquerque Morning Journal reported 40 governors as of October 27, 1919, as did the Colorado Springs Gazette on November 19, 1919. But the Twin Falls Daily News reported 22 governors on November 18, 1919. The different counts might be explained by the specific nature of governors’ endorsements and variations in their support for specific parts of the general national budget agenda. 77 “Wilson Chairman of Budget Committee,” The Budget 1, no. 10 (Jan. 15, 1920). 78 “Budget Dinner” to Senator McCormick,” The Budget 1, no. 12 (Feb. 15, 1920); “Budget Committee Dinner; Herbert Hoover and Sir John Fraser Speak in Commodore,” New York Times (May 19, 1920).

139 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump local budget committees for the purpose of “carrying on in each community in which they are located an educational propaganda upon the subject of a national budget.”

If all these agencies can be brought to work with a common purpose for the same end, it is to be expected that Congress…will give heed to this expression of popular opinion and demand for financial methods which have long since been approved in every other enlightened country on the globe.79

Part of the Chamber’s campaign, Willoughby explained in a letter to Norton, was for local Chambers to “induce one or more of its local newspapers to run an editorial in favor of national budgetary reform.” Several hundred chambers had taken up the cause by June

1919 with many more soon to follow.80

While the National and local Chambers of Commerce, the National Budget

Committee and its local budget clubs, sympathetic newspaper editors, and various professional societies worked to mobilize their membership and the segments of the broader public in favor of the executive budget, the Institute tried its hand at a more direct (and avowedly scientific) approach. In early 1919, Willoughby prepared a pamphlet—A National Budget System: The Most Important of All Government

Reconstruction Measures—to be sent to each member of congress along with a personal letter from Brookings.81 The pamphlet asserts that the Federal government had failed to exhibit any “appreciation of the fundamental principles” upon which sound administration must rest. There was no “definite obligation” placed on the Executive.

There was no “carefully thought out financial and work program” representing the

79 “A Business-Like Government,” Nation’s Business 7, no. 6 (Jun., 1919): 61, 56. 80 William F. Willoughby to Charles D. Norton, Jun. 21, 1919, Correspondence of Board of Trustees 1915-1930, Institute for Government Research, BIA. 81 Robert S. Brookings to Board of Trustees, Feb. 16, 1920, Correspondence of Board of Trustees 1915-1930, Institute for Government Research, BIA.

140 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump

Executive’s judgment. There was no “standard classification of units of organization” through which comparisons could be made. And there was no “uniform scheme of expenditure documents” through which work could be assessed.82 The trouble, in other words, was that the US Government had failed to recognize that it was an organization— just like any other organization—and therefore was subject to the same inviolable principles to which all efficient organizations, regardless of purpose, must adhere.

The pamphlet, bold as its claims may have been, piqued the interest of James

Good, a Republican Representative from Iowa.83 Willoughby was delighted to learn

Good had not only read the pamphlet, but had proceeded to read the remainder of the

Institute’s literature as well. Good was so “convinced by the soundness of the position taken in those works” that he asked Willoughby to draft a bill for the executive budget.

According to Willoughby, “I put in the finishing touches on the bill late Monday night, and [Good] introduced it the next morning.” In preparing the text, Willoughby heeded

Good’s advice to rein in some of the more “radical” provisions lest the bill never make it out of committee.84 Good also insisted that Willoughby testify before his committee—the

House Select Committee on the Budget. Willoughby, ever with a talent for behind-the- scenes orchestration, promptly furnished a list of persons who ought to testify at the public hearings.85

82 The National Budget System (Washington, D.C: Institute for Government Research, 1919), 5. 83 Owing to his service on the War Industries Board, Brookings’ name carried weight and the Institute received nearly 100 replies indicating the pamphlet had been read (Brookings to JDR Jr. Oct 20, 1919. Institute for Government Research. Box 40. RG III-2-D, OMR Civic Interests. RAC). 84 William F. Willoughby to Charles D. Norton, May 21, 1919, Correspondence of the Board of Trustees 1915-1930, Institute for Government Research BIA. 85 At least 30 of the 37 witnesses were connected in some way with the work of the Institute for Government Research, the National Budget Committee, the National Chamber of Commerce, or one of the several engineering societies that came out in support for the bill. Allen provided a

141 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump

Willoughby’s orchestrations were paired with inter-organizational coordination.

The National Budget Committee slated articles and editorials to appear in time for the

Hearings.86 The National Chamber of Commerce urged each of its local chambers to

“write a letter to its congressmen urging the passage of a budget bill and enclosing a copy of the editorial or editorials” they had “induced” local papers to publish.87 And creating a united front, several pro-budget associations—National Budget Committee, the National

Committee for Government Efficiency, the National League of Women Voters, the

National Public Works Department Association, and numerous others—banded together to form the Federal Reorganization Council, an umbrella association for the cause.

According to the New York State Chamber of Commerce, “All organizations which have their individual theories [regarding government efficiency] may come together in conference, and when they appear before the committees of Congress, they will have definite proposals and suggestions to which all have agreed.”88

“So that business methods can be introduced” As the Budget Hearings began in late 1919, the case for the executive budget—refined over the years since the failure of Taft Commission through publications, speeches, and debates in the meeting halls of various civic associations—came into full view. At its core, the argument asserted that the government had failed to embrace the “fundamental

spirited critique of the executive budget but, as he later recalled, “I had no status” (Reminiscences of William Harvey Allen, 1950,” Columbia University Oral History Collection, RBML, 400); Robert S. Brookings to John D. Rockefeller Jr, Oct. 20, 1919, Folder 315, Box 40, Civic Interests, OMR, RAC. 86 For example, in the lead up to the hearings, Stimson published a two-part article, “A National Budget System” in the popular, pro-business publication, World’s Work. 87 William F. Willoughby to Charles D. Norton, Jun. 21, 1919, Correspondence of Board of Trustees 1915-1930, Institute for Government Research, BIA. 88 Bulletin of the Chamber of commerce of the State of New York, (Nov., 1920): 17–18.

142 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump principles” of efficient organization, principles that “must find expression in any system of financial administration.”89 Activities must be grouped into departments. Departments must be integrated into a cohesive whole via clear lines of authority. And because

“authority has got to come to a head some place,” these lines must converge in the executive.90 The executive budget, because it both depended on and reinforced these fundamental principles, was a sort of administrative glue, the “one thing which binds detached operations into a logical and harmonious system.”91 For it to work, it must be

“formulated by the executive and the executive alone.”92

To measure American government against the yardstick of administrative science was to reveal a litany of shortcomings. “Scarcely one of these fundamental principles of financial procedure finds expression in our own system,” Willoughby and his coauthors concluded in 1917.93 There were no standard classifications of functions or activities, no uniform documentation of expenditures, no consistent plans, no means of appraising the government as a whole, and no definite concentration of authority.94 American government could “scarcely…be said to have a financial system,” it was operating

“defective” machinery, and—most damningly—was evidently “based on no principles.”95

By recasting government as an organization and insisting that all organizations are beholden to certain universal principles, budget reformers invited comparisons

89 William F. Willoughby, The Problem of a National Budget (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1918), viii. 90 Congress, Hearings, 89. 91 William F. Willoughby, Westel W. Willoughby, Samuel McCune Lindsay, The System of Financial Administration in Great Britain (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1917), 8. 92 Willoughby, Problem of a National Budget, 29. 93 Willoughby, Willoughby, and Lindsay, Financial Administration in Great Britain, 276. 94 Willoughby, Problem of a National Budget, 56–57. 95 Willoughby, Willoughby, and Lindsay, Financial Administration in Great Britain, 54.

143 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump between “one of the most complicated business undertakings in the world” (that is, the

US Government) and private businesses of all sorts.96 To structure the comparison, reformers forged linguistic links. The President became the “General Manager.”

Congress became the “Board of Directors.” Citizens became the “stockholders.” And government itself became the “great joint enterprise” being run in Washington on behalf of those who owned a share.97 Writing in the Nation’s Business, Willoughby asked readers to compare government administration with that of successful business corporations. Does the head of US Steel leave it to his Board to formulate a detailed plan for the coming year? “God forbid!” And yet this was exactly what Congress—as the nation’s Board—was annually asked to do.98

So went what some referred to as the movement’s “battle cry.”99 A single

National Budget article described government administration as the “most poorly managed business in the world,” “stupid and decidedly unbusinesslike,” and a system under which “no business could hope to exist.”100 Elsewhere, authors exclaimed that, a business administered like the government would “go into bankruptcy, very promptly,”

“would go smash within a year’s time,” would prove “easy prey,” and “would find itself

96 “An Institute for Government Research” May 1, 1915, Minutes of the Trustees, Preliminary Meetings and Articles, Institute for Government Research, BIA. 97 See, for example: Congress, Hearings, 69, 285; “Fortnightly Budget Club Section” National Budget October 15, 1919. Some imagined a future where the process of becoming an American citizen was reconceptualized as “familiarizing oneself with this great business in which they are partners” and learning about “the men they employ to run it.” See “After a Budget Bill, What?” The National Budget 1, no. 10 (Feb. 1, 1920). 98 William F. Willoughby, “Unified Command of the Nation's Money,” Nation’s Business 6, no. 12 (Dec., 1918): 18–19, 31. 99 Edward A. Fitzpatrick, Budget Making in a Democracy: A New View of the Budget (New York: Macmillan Company, 1918), 52. 100 “Business Men for Efficiency System,” The National Budget 1, no. 2 (Sep. 15, 1919).

144 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump very handicapped.”101 Any businessman charged with overseeing such a system would surely lose his job.102 By 1920, the cognitive link between government and private business was sufficiently strong that Ernst & Ernst used it to advertise its accountancy services and the National Bank Book Company used it to sell ledgers for personal use.103

But not everyone bought the connection, let alone saw its relevance. While testifying at the Budget Hearings, Norton struggled to convince committee members that the concentration of authority at the head of a commercial enterprise was applicable to the structure of government. “Do you know of any business organization that has three heads?” one representative teased.104 When Pratt made a business-based case for the adoption of executive budgeting, one representative interjected, “Can you think of anything that would more clearly centralize the whole power of this Government in the

Executive than that?”105 Willoughby dodged a similar provocation with an uncharacteristic gibe: “You require, for railroad corporations, administrative practices that you will not apply to yourselves.”106

Beyond the business metaphor, reformers drew connections to foreign governments, using everything from Ontario to the Weimar Republic for argumentative grist. “We are the only important country in the world that has no budget system” Pratt

101 Respectively: Congress, Hearings, 405; Medill McCormick, “A Budget System Or—” Nation’s Business 7, no. 7 (Jul. 1919): 26; (Stimson, “National Budget System II,” 403). 102 Stimson, “National Budget System II,” 528–536; Victor Morawetz, “Discussion of the New Era in Budgets” Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science in the City of New York 8, no. 1 (1918), 75–76. 103 Nation’s Business 8, no. 9 (Sept., 1920): 23; Nation’s Business 8, no. 10 (Oct., 1920): 84. 104 Congress, Hearings, 285. 105 Congress, Hearings, 165. 106 Congress, Hearings, 102.

145 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump lamented on the eve of the Budget Hearings.107 Compared to the British system— depicted in painstaking detail in the System of Financial Administration of Great Britain

(1917)—the US looked wholly uncivilized. “How radically this system differs from

American practice,” the authors observed.108 Because the British budgetary system was simply the product of general administrative principles, the authors concluded, it could

“equally well be adopted by our national government.”109

Some questioned whether this thinking was wise. Without the Reichstag’s absolute control over the budget, one critic observed, “Germany could never have attained her present position as an outlaw among civilized nations.”110 Such challenges, however, only helped to underscore the reformers’ core point. If the executive budget could exist in both Germany and Great Britain, it must certainly be a matter of practical applicability irrespective of ideology. Politics, they argued, was no impediment.111

By this logic, adopting the executive budget was the pinnacle of apolitical reform.

Good administration was merely a question of “orderly procedure” and “common sense,”

“simply a redistribution of work.”112 After all, finance was the rare branch of human activity “which follows scientific law,” and executive aggrandizement was simply a

107 John T. Pratt, speaking at the Sept. 18, 1919 Chautauqua Conference on Democracy and Reconstruction, quoted in National Budget 1, no. 3 (Oct. 1, 1919). 108 Willoughby, Willoughby, and Lindsay, Financial Administration in Great Britain, 276–278. 109 Willoughby, The Problem of a National Budget, 59. 110 Fitzpatrick, Budget Making in a Democracy, ix. 111 In a retort to critiques on this point, reformers argued that “the difference between autocracy and democracy lies not in its administrative organization.” Both forms of government had “the same need of a directing executive” Furthermore, reformers complained that, because the US had been more worried about autocracy than efficient government service, it had routinely impaired its own administrative capacities (Cleveland Buck, The Budget and Responsible Government, 15, 121–122). 112 Walter Warwick, “The Budget, Just Common Sense” Nation’s Business 10, no. 5 (May, 1921): 21; Congress, Hearings, 173.

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“canon of administrative science.” 113 Such claims were at once the self-confident maxims of a budding scholarly discipline and the idée fixe of successful business magnates convinced they had achieved administrative perfection. But it was also a matter of political cover. By framing arguments as universal truths, reformers were able foreground procedure and technique while skirting the thornier questions of politics and the distribution of power in a democracy.

Attempting to pull back the curtain, Edward Fitzpatrick—who, along with Allen, was one of the movement’s most vocal opponents—argued that executive budgeting was

“not merely the substitution of orderly systematic ways of doing things” as the proponents had claimed. In actuality, it was a matter of shifting the “center of gravity of our government…toward autocratic executive power.” “One is amazed” Fitzpatrick wrote, “at the character of changes in our government necessary to fit the theory of the executive budget.”114

Likewise, John Fairlie—a scholar of administrative law—challenged the executive budget proposal as one that “involves much more radical and revolutionary changes in American political organization than may appear on the surface.”115 Retired congressman “Uncle Joe” Cannon, wrote in Harper’s that executive budgeting was entirely incompatible with American political ideals: “The Pharaohs had that kind of a budget system, and so had the Czars of Russia.”116 At the Hearings, Allen built on

113 Stimson, “National Budget System II,” 529; William F. Willoughby, “The Budget as an Instrument of Political Reform,” Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science in the City of New York 8, no. 1 (1918): 61. 114 Fitzpatrick, Budget Making in a Democracy, 55, 292, 56. 115 John A. Fairlie, S. Gale Lowrie and Frederick A. Cleveland, “Budget Making—Discussion,” American Economic Review 6, no. 1, Supplement, Papers and Proceedings of the 28th Annual Meeting (Mar., 1916): 71. 116 Joseph G. Cannon, “The National Budget,” Harper’s Magazine 139 (Oct. 1919): 628.

147 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump

Cannon’s point, arguing that not only was the executive budget “wholly un-American,” it was “not even good soviet practice.” Taking a dig at the National Budget Committee, he added: ”If we are to have a soviet government, it should not be merely representative of the banking and business interests.”117

At various points throughout the Hearings, critics worried that the executive budget hinged on “the elimination of Congress” or, at best, placing Congress “under the domination of the Executive.” Either way, it seemed that the proposed budget would diminish the rights of the people’s representatives and therefore diminish the rights of the people themselves. Attempts to mollify concerns by pointing to the dispassionate experts who would shepherd the budget process only served to raise more questions.

Representatives asked if such experts—working at the beck and call of the executive— would ever be able to separate themselves from political matters. In response, Pratt testified that bookkeeping activities were “quite distinct from the interpretation of law.”

But Rep. John Garner was incredulous: “Whether you will use $600,000 or $400,000 for the eradication of hog cholera is a question of policy,” he challenged to the National

Budget Committee Chair. “Tell me of a single appropriation that does not involve a question of public policy.”118 Pratt had no reply.

Budget proponents’ emphasis on expertise raised other concerns as well. To some, the budget scheme’s core threat to democracy was its tendency to obscure political questions behind the “technical vocabulary of the accountant.” This, Fitzpatrick argued, was unsurprising. To him, the executive budget was the contrivance of efficiency experts who had grown so “impatient” with the halting progress of democracy, that they had

117 Congress, Hearings, 573. 118 Congress, Hearings, 144, 711, 141, 109.

148 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump given up on democracy altogether. They opted instead to design a “one-man government” that was as orderly as it was “uninteresting to an ordinary citizen.”119 Allen felt similarly, noting that this new class of experts saw their inability to “keep in touch with unscientific minds” as a virtue—evidence of their very claims to expertise. To him, the elision of citizen participation in budget making was the product of a movement that

“unequivocally disregards, where it does not unequivocally disrespect, public ability and right to understand and discuss budgetary questions.”120

Executive budget proponents had done little to hide this attitude. As Willoughby and his co-authors wrote, because budgets involved “technical subjects,” public participation was “of small importance.” Even if these things could be “perfectly understood by each of ten, fifty, or one hundred million people,” they reasoned, “it would still be necessary to provide some practical way for having issues formulated, discussed and decided.”121 The question, then, was how such an administrative practice could ever be reconciled with democracy.

Indeed, Willoughby, Cleveland, Goodnow, and their supporters had been chastened by the experiences of the Taft Commission. Although these men were unwilling to consider alternative forms of budgetary practice—administrative science ordained executive control—they also knew that failing to reconcile between administrative practices and democratic principles had doomed their prior efforts.122

119 Fitzpatrick, Budget Making in a Democracy, 28, 26, 55, 28. 120 Allen, “Budget Amendment of the Maryland Constitution,” 488. 121 Willoughby, Willoughby, and Lindsay, Financial Administration in Great Britain, 16. 122 As A. Lawrence Lowell had written in the foreword to one of the Institute’s publications, the “attempt to engraft any foreign institution…is usually disappointing” (A. Lawrence Lowell, “Introduction,” in Willoughby, Willoughby, and Lindsay, System of Financial Administration, xi).

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According to historian and then-director of the Bureau of Municipal Research, Charles

Beard, the challenge was this: proper budgetary procedure could not simply be “injected” into the American political system. Instead, that political system would require a

“thoroughgoing reconstruction,” one that reconsidered its most “elemental parts.”123 And

Pratt, in his characteristically direct manner, told an audience at the 1919 Chautauqua

Conference on Democracy, that “We must modify the conceptions and operations of democracy, so that business methods can be introduced.”124

A Unified Budget for a Unified National Interest According to Willoughby, popular control and the separation of powers were the foremost democratic concepts that would need to be modified. It was no longer tenable, he argued, to maintain a “simple faith that there were intrinsic merits in democratic government.” In a technically advanced, modern society, emphasis must be placed on the

“execution of the popular will,” and not opportunities for popular control. After all, popularly controlled government was “peculiarly prone to financial extravagance and administrative inefficiency.” Furthermore, superstitious deference to the separation of powers “must be radically revised.” The principle was “no longer needed as a protection

123 Charles Beard, “The Budgetary Provisions of the New York Constitution” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 62 (Nov., 1915): 65. 124 Reprinted in “Asks Voters to Solve Problems of the Day,” The National Budget 1, no. 3 (Oct. 1, 1919). Reformers’ efforts to articulate the budget’s positive contributions to American democracy signaled an important rhetorical shift. In a peculiar contradiction, reformers began to present the budget not only as procedures without politics, but also as a necessary instrument for the practice of democracy. Indeed, reformers often argued the two points simultaneously, not seeming to recognize that, by claiming the budget was essential to a functioning democracy, they were undermining their own claim that the budget was politically neutral and therefore universally applicable. Critics of the executive budget never seemed to call attention to this self- refuting twist in the campaign’s rhetoric.

150 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump against a possible autocratic and oppressive exercise of power.” A modern and efficient democracy, Willoughby argued, required that “administrative branch responsibility and power must be more strongly centralized,” and the executive—that is, the President—be tasked with initiating national plans and formulating the national budget.125

The political theory Willoughby was articulating was one of Presidential representation—the idea that the President, as the only government officer elected by a nationwide constituency, is therefore the truest representative of the national interest.126 It was an idea that had been building for years. Cleveland’s understanding of the corporation as “the prototype of modern democratic government” relied on the idea that the executive, because his actions were plainly visible for all to see, was effectively impelled to act in the shareholders’ best interests.127 The idea also made an appearance in

Henry Jones Ford’s argument for federal financial reform where he argued that, insofar as the President’s “power of initiative is abridged, the sovereignty of the people is impaired.”128 For the Institute for Government Research and the National Budget

Committee, such arguments offered a bridge between administrative science and democratic theory. Through presidential representation, the most transgressive aspects of

125 William F. Willoughby, “Organized Efforts for the Improvement of Methods of Administration,” introductory chapter in Gustavus A. Weber, Organized Efforts for the Improvement of Methods of Administration in the United States (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1919), 4. 126 John A. Dearborn, “The ‘Proper Organs’ for Presidential Representation: A Fresh Look at the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921,” Journal of Policy History 31, no. 1 (Jan., 2019): 1–41. 127 Frederick A. Cleveland, “The Relation of Auditing to Public Control” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 26, Issue on Federal Regulation of Corporations (Nov., 1905): 55. 128 Henry Jones Ford, The Cost of Our National Government: A Study in Political Pathology (New York: Columbia University Press, 1910), 63. Jones’s argument bore resemblance to Herbert Croly’s contention that “anything which undermines executive authority in this country seriously threatens our national integrity and balance (Herbert Croly, The Promise of American Life (New York: Macmillan Company, 1909), 69). One might also see similarities between these ideas and the strong mayor and short-ballot reforms proposed by early municipal reformers.

151 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump the national budget—centralization and executive control—were no longer repudiations of democracy; they were the realization of democracy in its highest form.129

The democratic case for the executive budget was most clearly laid out in

Cleveland and Arthur Buck’s The Budget and Responsible Government (1920), a book funded by the National Budget Committee. In it, the authors cite a Roosevelt-inspired and war-hardened “national democratic awakening,” as the origin of a new, “positive philosophy of citizenship” and “constructive purpose for a nationwide electorate.” The challenge facing this emergent democratic ideal, they argued, was one of making the national will effective—a matter of finding an administrative “mechanism by which popular will can function.” “The atmosphere of democracy must be filtered and made to flow into useful channels by the power of leadership,” they wrote. Only the President could represent the national interest. Only the President could be made accountable to the national electorate. Accordingly, only the President could be tasked with formulating the national budget.130

Correlating the nation’s political unity with a need for government’s organizational unity allowed reformers to cast the absence of the executive budget as an administrative failure with democratic consequences. Without an executive budget and its

129 According to one enthusiastic supporter, “No single change would add so largely to both democracy and efficiency as the introduction of proper budget methods” (Augustus Raymond Hatton “Foreword,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 62 (Nov., 1915): viii). 130 Cleveland and Buck, The Budget and Responsible Government, 74, 102, 37, 102. Without citing Croly directly, the book imitates many of Croly’s core arguments. Cleveland and Buck echo Croly’s view that Hamiltonian means should be used to achieve Jeffersonian ends, by lamenting that Jefferson, however adept his “instincts in things democratic” had demonstrated no “faculty for institutionalizing ideals” in administrative practice (Cleveland and Buck, 44). As an occasional contributor to the New Republic, Cleveland was certainly familiar with Croly’s work and the New Nationalist line of thinking.

152 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump attendant administrative reorganization, the government had no means of “determining, expressing, and making effective the will of a majority,” or meeting “the needs of the country as a whole.”131 The government’s “lack of coherence and continuity in public policy” one reformer told an audience in St. Louis, could only be resolved by a budget that definitely located responsibility in the hands of the executive.132 The executive budget, Willoughby wrote, was the only “instrument through which real democracy may be achieved.”133

The idea that “real democracy” equated to Presidential domination demanded further support134. Was this not an endorsement of autocracy? Were the people’s rights not being diminished? To these questions, the campaign responded with an emphatic no.

The President, because he is selected via nationwide election, is a “truer representative” than Congress. While the President “represents the interests of the whole people,”

Congressmen represented “but a relatively small constituency.”135 Cleveland and Buck went so far as to consider the legislative budget to be a product of “oligarchy,” reasoning that Congressmen were determining what was best for the nation without ever being subjected to a national election.136 In other words, the national budget represented a

131 Willoughby, Willoughby, and Lindsay, Financial Administration in Great Britain, 15; Willoughby, Problem of a National Budget, 41. 132 Speech reprinted in Nicholas Murray Butler, “Executive Responsibility and a national budget” Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science in the City of New York 8, no. 1 (Jul., 1918): 46. 133 William F. Willoughby, “The Budget as an Instrument of Political Reform,” Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science in the City of New York 8, no. 1 (1918): 57. 134 Anticipating this, the National Budget warned its readers that reform opponents would erect a “bogey of executive domination” that the movement would need to overcome (“Still far From Goal” The National Budget, November 15, 1919). 135 Westel W. Willoughby, “Budgetary Procedure in Its Relation to Representative Government” Yale Law Journal 27, no. 6 (1918): 752. 136 Cleveland and Buck, Budget and Responsible Government, 58.

153 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump national interest and the only person who could represent that interest was the national executive.

The obverse was also true. Permitting local matters into the formulation of a national budget—as would occur if Congress initiated the budget—would necessarily pervert the national interest. The idea channeled Socrates in Plato’s Republic where the aim of the city’s guardians was “not the disproportionate happiness of any one class, but the greatest happiness of the whole.”137 As Cleveland argued, a budget proposal “should not reflect the interests of a single individual or a single district but the interests of the whole community of associated interests which are composed in the state or nation.”138

On this point, a piece printed in the National Budget—titled the “Fable of the

Favorite Son” is particularly illustrative. The tale follows a fictional Jasper Gerflump, an oafish “stone-age pol” as he fights in D.C. on behalf of the people in Squeedonk. The townspeople need a new post office and Squeedonk’s economy will suffer unless the town receives funds to build a canal connecting it to the nearest city. As the “people’s choice,” Jasper is committed to representing his constituency. He “never ceased battling with his colleagues” until the townspeople’s needs were met. Campaigning for re- election, Old Jasper finds himself pitted against a “College Boy who had based his campaign on economy.” But Jasper is optimistic about his prospects. After all, he sees the

“National Budget [as] a presumptuous encroachment upon his privileges” as a

Congressman. Plus, his record fighting for Squeedonk “always got the old lad in solid with the folks.” Things are looking good for Jasper until, in a twist, the people of

137 Plato, The Republic, Book IV, Benjamin Jowett, trans. (2012). 138 Frederick A. Cleveland, “Evolution of the Budget Idea in the United States,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 62, Public Budgets (Nov., 1915): 18.

154 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump

Squeedonk “changed their point of view.” As townspeople become enlightened on the

Campaign of Economy they decide to forgo their much-needed public works project and elect College Boy instead.139

The story was candid in its appeals. Gerflump—who is described as dressing like a “Colored Person” and resembling the “Ornate individual on the red tobacco can”—fails as a politician because he fervidly represents Squeedonk’s interests at the national level.

College Boy, on the other hand, is the consummate politician because, in forswearing the needs of Squeedonk, he represents the economic interests of the entire nation. Couched in the language of racism and anti-populism, the lesson is clear: enlightened citizenship requires citizens to subordinate local interests to an “interest in the operations of public

(national) affairs.”140 Indeed, to become a member of the National Budget Committee was to pledge one’s support to the new philosophy of “Enlightened and responsible

American Citizenship.”141

Such conceptions of the national interest and its attendant responsibilities for citizens were familiar to many in the country’s intellectual elite. People like Herbert

Croly—a public intellectual and co-founder of the New Republic—argued in his Promise of American Life (1909) that the essential function of the state was to “represent the whole community.” This meant that, when divergent interests appeared, the state would need to “exercise a decisive preference” and choose a course of action that was best for

139 Harold J. Seymour, “The Fable of the Favorite Son” The Budget 1, no. 7 (Dec. 1, 1919). 140 “Individual Responsibility,” The National Budget 1, no. 3 (Oct. 1, 1919). This approach to democratic citizenship was diametrically opposed to the one presented by Allen. For Allen, budgeting was an opportunity for a plurality of interests to come to the fore and be hashed out in the civic sphere. For the National Budget Committee, budgeting was an opportunity for citizens to practice self-denial and embrace a uniform and collective conceptions of the national interest. 141 Membership Application, The Budget 1, no. 11 (Feb. 1, 1920).

155 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump all. It was a weighty task, suitable only for public-spirited men of the highest standard.

“The essential wholeness of the community,” Croly argued, “depends absolutely on the…political, economic, and social aristocracy.”142 Such an aristocracy—the nation’s

College Boy, as it were—was decidedly white, male, educated, and economically self- sufficient.143 And because local representation always tended to “give mediocrity to the

American popular representation,” the national interest would be better served if political leaders were selected at-large with no requirement to reside in the communities they were chosen to represent. Failing that, America would need to concentrate power and responsibility in the hands of a dominant and perspicacious authority.144

The executive budget carried Crolyian philosophy into practice. But while

Willoughby, Cleveland, Goodnow, and their fellow travelers were in agreement with

Croly’s ideas—and were no strangers to illiberalism themselves—they were more delicate in their messaging. Rather than advance the executive budget as the destruction of legislative authority, they characterized the reform as the construction of a new tool through which Congress—the nation’s board of directors—could assert control over the executive.145 “When Congress imposes on the President the duty of supplying a budget,”

142 Indeed, Croly’s book offered a reasoned countermeasure to the looming threat of working- class revolution, an issue he took up in greater force in his 1914 Progressive Democracy. Herbert Croly, The Promise of American Life (New York: Macmillan Company, 1909), 195–196. 143 As was demonstrated in municipal anti-suffrage efforts, white Progressive Era elites tended only to be comfortable with citizen participation in government when citizens looked and sounded like themselves. Croly did little to hide this preference. He wished to “civilize” immigrants, African Americans, and others whose “intellectual and moral qualities” were, as Croly wrote, “inferior to those of white men” (Croly, Promise of American Life, 81). Indeed, many Progressive elites like Croly wished to “remake the nation’s feuding, polyglot population in their own middle-class image” (Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870–1920 (New York: Free Press, 2003), xiv). 144 Croly, Promise of American, 325–332. 145 On this point, the campaign’s outward rhetoric diverges from its internal dialogue. Memos and correspondence often describe Congress as an archaic institution and put the concession of its budget-making authority less delicately (e.g., “what Congress must give up” “the price Congress

156 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump

Willoughby explained to the House Committee, “it is simply giving orders to a subordinate to send up the information in proper form.”146 Plus, with the new administrative arrangement, Congress would have more free time to spend on “helpful and constructive work” that would, in turn, restore the public’s flagging faith in its representatives.147

Careful reframing was extended to citizens as well with the vote treated as the ultimate source of control. It was an argument reminiscent of Cleveland’s view that, through financial auditing, shareholders became the true source of managerial authority.

Arguing the point forcefully, one National Budget article explained that when a corporation goes bankrupt, its stockholders ought to be blamed “first for not electing…a wide awake board of directors; second, for not insisting that [they] adopt a suitable work plan.”148 The executive budget, according to one editorial in the Nation, would create an

“ideal system of public control.”149 And Pratt, taking the point further, argued that

“Democracy in this country is not the success it should be” because the citizens had yet to embrace the new understanding of their civic responsibility.150. But the fact remained: in reframing democracy in “national” terms, the role of the individual citizen was diminished. The common citizen could not speak on anyone’s behalf but his own and

must pay”). See, for example, “Outworn Methods of Congress” (n.d.) National Budget Committee, Box 90, Samuel McCune Lindsay Papers, RBML). 146 Congress, Hearings, 74. 147 John T. Pratt, “An Executive Budget System: What the Country has Done, What the Country Can, and Should, Do,” Mar., 1919, Folder 317, National Budget Committee, Box 40, Civic Interests, OMR, Rockefeller Family Archive, RAC, 25; Stimson, “National Budget System II,” 532. 148 “Individual Responsibility.” 149 J.P. Chamberlain, “American Budgetary Reform,” The Nation 108, no. 2816 (Jun. 21, 1919): 978. 150 Pratt, Chautauqua Conference on Democracy and Reconstruction.

157 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump therefore his inclusion in the budget-making process would necessarily distort the national interest.

Under this new understanding of citizen control, the executive budget was rendered a powerful tool for democracy. The budget, reformers argued, would provide the public with a direct line of sight on the decisions being made in their name. “There must be no question as to who should be arraigned at the bar of public opinion,”

Cleveland wrote.151 Indeed, “executive power” is only safe when it is granted to one person “who can be held accountable for its use.”152 In other words, the only way to hold the executive publicly accountable would be to concentrate power in his hands. Should executive decisions distort the public will, the nation’s Board could oppose the

Executive’s business plan. Failing that, the people themselves could vote the Executive out of office within four years. Centralizing power would therefore thwart what Elihu

Root had called “invisible government,” the situation in which the public was deprived of knowing whether its will had ever been enacted and, if so, by whom.153 In this sense, the executive budget was an instrument for publicity. “It at once serves to make known past operations, present conditions, and future proposals,” Willoughby wrote.154 The claim would have been easily recognized by anyone familiar with Allen’s work at the Bureau of

Municipal Research. But where Allen’s publicity sought to give citizens a say in

151 Frederick A. Cleveland, “Popular Control of Government,” Political Science Quarterly 34, no. 2 (Jun., 1919): 257. 152 Frederick A. Cleveland, “Efficiency in Public Business,” New Republic (Jul. 15, 1916): 274. 153 Elihu Root, “The Invisible Government.” Speech delivered at the New York State Constitutional Convention (Aug. 30, 1915). 154 William F. Willoughby, “The Budget as an Instrument of Political Reform,” Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science in the City of New York 8, no. 1 (1918): 57.

158 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump government, Willoughby’s publicity only sought to show citizens what the government had decided on their behalf.

“For 126 years we have labored with this principle of popular control to make it effective,” Cleveland explained at the 1916 meeting of the American Economic

Association. And yet, he continued, “we still have irresponsible government, so insidious and abhorrent to democratic ideals.”155 It was time to try something new. To oppose the adoption of the executive budget, reformers argued, would be to oppose the furtherance of democracy itself.

The Creation of a National Budget In the early days of its post-war campaign, the movement for the executive budget had encountered fierce resistance. Yet, as the campaign wore on, it managed to persuade some of its strongest opponents. Rep. Swagar Sherley of Kentucky, a former advocate for the legislative budget, came to agree not only that the President should be tasked with formulating the budget, but also that the legislature should not take part in its creation.

Explaining his change of heart, he described the “paradoxical” fact that removing from a

Congressman his budget initiating powers would actually “enhance his power.” It would free him from the direct obligation to his constituency and therefore allowed him to make

“pure, disinterested” judgments on national policy.156

Rep. Fitzgerald—who had excoriated the Taft Commission for attempting to undermine Democracy—now conceded that, centralizing budget-making power in the

155 Frederick A. Cleveland, “Budget Making and the Increased Cost of Government.” American Economic Review 6, no. 1, Supplement, Papers and Proceedings of the Twenty-eighth Annual Meeting of the American Economic Association (Mar., 1916): 50. 156 Congress, Hearings, 391.

159 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump executive would represent an improvement in fiscal administration.157 And Rep. Garner, a longtime advocate of legislative budgeting, eventually came around to the executive- centric proposal. The performance at the hearings had been convincing, Rep. Good told

Willoughby. And thanks to the work of the Institute for Government Research and its affiliated propaganda campaign, the executive budget had become conceivable, even desirable, in American government.158 After the bill was reported out of Committee, it passed the House with 285 “yeas” 3 “nays” and 143 not voting—effectively a rubber stamp on the Committee’s decision.

From there, the bill followed a strange trajectory. The Senate—preoccupied at the time with the Treaty of Versailles and the League of Nations—would not take up the issue until returning from fall recess. Medill McCormick, a Republican from Illinois and executive budget supporter, took it upon himself to prepare a bill that, while in many respects was similar to the Good Bill, ultimately undercut important aspects of

Willoughby and the Institute’s plans.159 The main difference was McCormick’s decision to place the proposed budget bureau under the auspices of the Treasury and tasking the

Treasury with the audit. At the Senate committee hearings to discuss the bill—a brisk affair held over five days in December and January—only 11 witnesses were asked to testify (seven of whom had testified before the House Committee). Representatives from the Institute and National Budget Committee, including Willoughby, Pratt, and Butler,

157 Congress, Hearings, 332. Fitzgerald maintained some reservations about “completely revolutionizing the present system.” 158 William F. Willoughby to Charles D. Norton, Oct. 2, 1919, Correspondence with Board of Trustees 1915–1930, Institute for Government Research, BIA. 159 See Robert Brookings to Samuel Mather, Jun. 30 1920, Mather Correspondence with Board of Trustees, Correspondence of the Board of Trustees 1915-1930, Institute for Government Research, BIA.

160 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump rehashed what had become a familiar case for the executive budget. They were also careful to emphasize their preference for the Good Bill’s design. Again, Allen was the key voice of dissent among a chorus of approval.

When the Senate hearings drew to a close, McCormick invited Willoughby to help improve the bill. Because Willoughby had thought McCormick’s plan to be “in almost every respect unsatisfactory,” he relished the opportunity to provide input. As

Willoughby later explained to the Institute’s board, the Senate committee had “permitted him practically to rewrite the bill.”160 Willoughby’s revisions stuck and the bill passed the

Senate without a recorded vote. From there it was sent to conference to be reconciled with the House version. By June 2, 1920 the Bill had passed both houses and was sent to

President Wilson.

And then Wilson vetoed it. The unexpected veto concerned what Wilson deemed an unsettled constitutional matter. The Bill had granted the President power to appoint a comptroller to lead the General Accounting Office but withheld the corresponding power for the President to remove this officer. Wilson, in effect, wanted to be able to fire his own auditor. Weary of such privilege, Congress had reserved the removal power for concurrent resolution of the House and Senate. And since the veto came with only one day left before adjournment, the effort stalled.161 It would not be until late April the following year that Congress would revisit the matter.

By 1921, political conditions had changed. The new President, Warren G.

Harding, was an unknown quantity on budget reform—although one of his slogans “Less

160 ”Annual Report of the Director, 1919,” Mar. 1, 1920. Annual Reports of the Director 1916- 1926, Institute for Government Research, BIA. 161 Good and McCormick were unable to secure a supermajority to override the veto and Good’s attempt to push a revised bill failed to garner support.

161 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump

Government in Business and More Business in Government” rang of openness to businesslike administrative methods.162 Anxious to see their agenda succeed, the budget campaign sprang into action. Samuel McCune Lindsay gave Harding personal lessons in government theory during the lead up to the election.163 Willoughby travelled to St.

Augustine, Florida to visit with the President-elect and press the Institute’s case for executive budgeting. Although Willoughby returned with assurances of Harding’s support, he still felt it necessary to shift the propaganda machine into high gear lest there be any “backward action in respect to the budget.” Not taking any chances, he hired a leading “publicity man” to place editorials and encouraged the National Budget

Committee to “use its propaganda facilities” to do the same.164

In May 1921, the House and Senate again went to conference. Each body passed the bill by the end of the month. On June 21, Harding signed into law the Budget and

Accounting Act of 1921, later declaring it the “greatest reformation in governmental practices since the beginning of the republic.” The final bill, as Willoughby wrote in an article for the Congressional Digest, installed the President “as the general manager of the government as a business corporation.” Congress would look to him—and only him—to formulate a work program and financial plan for the national government.165

162 Warren G. Harding, “Less Government in Business and More Business in Government,” World’s Work (Nov., 1920): 25–27. Granted, Harding’s other slogan, “Return to Normalcy” seemed less conducive to radical administrative reform. 163 See Arthur W. Page to Henry L. Stimson, Sept. 17, 1920, reel 56, 179, Henry Stimson Papers, Yale University Library, quoted in Jesse Tarbert, “Corporate Lessons for Public Governance: The Origins and Activities of the National Budget Committee, 1919–1923” Seattle University Law Review 42, iss. 2 (2019): 584. 164 William F. Willoughby to Robert Brookings, Feb. 16, 1921, Correspondence of Board of Trustees 1915-1930, Institute for Government Research, BIA; William F. Willoughby to Robert Brookings, February 21 1916, Correspondence of Board of Trustees 1915-1930, Institute for Government Research. BIA. 165 William F. Willoughby, “National Financing—The Old Way and the New.” The Congressional Digest 2, no. 2 (Nov., 1922): 42.

162 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump

To assist the President in this duty, the Bill created the Bureau of the Budget, an agency that would be placed under the Treasury Department but with a Director and

Assistant director appointed by (and directly responsible to) the President. And to audit all matters related to the receipt and disbursement of public money, the bill established the General Accounting Office, an independent agency to be led by a presidentially appointed Comptroller who could only be removed via joint resolution. The measure, passed by a bipartisan majority announced that the idea of presidential representation and the even more foundational tenet of a uniform national interest—ideas that only a few years before were deemed objectionable to American political values—were now matters of common sense.166

Having built an extensive associational propaganda machine for the executive budget, the National Budget Committee committed itself to a new goal: encouraging its adherents to defend the new system against lingering opposition. Within a week of the

Act’s passage, the Committee called on members to join its National Budget Guard, an initiative intended to “protect the United States Treasury from invasion by enemies of governmental economy and thrift” and enforce “strict observance” of the budget bill’s provisions.167 The Budget Guard employed many of the Committee’s tried and true tactics. For instance, when Senator Jim Reed referred to the Budget Bureau’s director as a nuisance, the Budget Guard sprang into action. They planted editorials around the

166 Dearborn, “Presidential Representation,” 18. 167 See, for example, New York Evening Mail, clipping in Pamphlets and reprints of the National Budget Committee, Collection 01220, Institute of Governmental Studies Library, University of California, Berkeley, CA.

163 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump country dismissing the Senator as a “statesman of the ‘old school’” who never cared about government spending as long as “Missouri got a goodly share of it.”168

Another article of this genre declared that any Congressman who challenged the new budget system was a “pseudo-statesman” of the “log-rolling, pork-barrel’ type” who by “keeping their ears to the ground”—that is, attempting to represent his constituency’s concerns—revealed himself uncommitted to the national interest.169 Accompanying the attacks on executive budget holdouts, the Committee planted a glut of stories fawning over the nation’s new form of financial administration. The nation’s business, proclaimed one article, was now a “one-man job” where “everything depends on the president.”170

One revealing story, published in a November 1922 issue of the Saturday Evening

Post, came from Martin Madden, a Representative who just a few years before had worried the executive budget might promote an “autocratic” power “offensive to the people.”171 The old fear, Madden wrote, was that “efficiency in government decreased in almost the same ratio in which democracy increased.” In other words, democracy and efficient administration were deemed incompatible. But the new “science of government”—as crystalized in the executive budget—had resolved this once- inescapable tension. The new system’s success, moreover, was not the product of science alone. Instead, it had been predicated on a widespread transformation in political attitudes and understandings of American democracy.

168 “Dawes and Jim Reed,” Meridian Mississippi Star (Oct. 7, 1921). 169 “Cowardice in Congress,” Atlanta Journal Constitution (Oct. 22, 1922). 170 Kenneth L. Roberts, “Adventures in Budgeting,” Saturday Evening Post 195, no.1 (Jul. 1, 1922): 3–4. 171 Congress, Hearings, 552.

164 College Boy vs. Jasper Gerflump

Much like the fictional citizens in Jasper Gerflump’s town of Squeedonk, the nation seemed to have adopted a sense of “forbearance and self-sacrificing of local interest in favor of the common good.” Under the new conception of democratic politics,

Madden argued, leaders of citizen movements would need to weigh the merit of their cause against the national interest “so far as cost is concerned.”172 Through the campaign to support executive budgeting and through arguments like Madden’s, antique Federalist anxieties over factionalism had been reformulated and reinvigorated. The threat that factions posed to national political unity was now fundamentally financial in form: a threat to national government economy.

172 Martin B. Madden, “The Budget to Date,” Saturday Evening Post (7 Nov., 1922): 52, 54, 56.

165 Toward an Organizational Sociology of Democracy

5

Toward an Organizational Sociology of Democracy

In the early decades of the 20th century, an unlikely coalition of administrative scholars, charity workers, patrician government reformers, and the titans of Gilded Age philanthropy, joined forces around a shared dream of the rational, efficiently run

American state. Behind the common interest of introducing modern methods of financial management—honed in capitalist enterprise during the industrial boom of the late 19th century—were divergent conceptions of democracy and the proper role of the citizenry within it.

Equipped with the self-confident maxims of hierarchy and efficiency, administrative scholars sought to cut the Gordian knot of democratic politics with the shears of accountancy. To them, conforming government to administrative theory would endow it with the placidity of a silently spinning top. Accordingly, democracy required expert administration; ordinary citizens would only knock it off-kilter. Charity workers, on the other hand, while no less scientific in their methods, sought to use expertise to make government accessible to the common person. Orderly accounts and systematic

166 Toward an Organizational Sociology of Democracy budgets would lay bare the indisputable facts of government and thwart misinformation.

Through access to such knowledge, citizens could find common purpose, advocate effectively for their interests, and exercise intelligent control over their government. Elite government reformers—who, for years, had campaigned against universal suffrage and for restrictive criteria for public office—saw in financial management a promising new weapon in their crusade against government corruption. Philanthropists shared similar ambitions to elite reformers but with an added interest in using government to promote the stable social conditions in which businesses (and, in many cases, substantial investments in government bonds) could flourish. Having amassed fortunes through exacting administrative control, inducing modern financial methods in government was congenial to philanthropic interests.

In 1905, these disparate strains of Progressive Era elite society converged at the

New York Bureau of Municipal Research. Although the Bureau was an entirely new kind of organization—an independent, donor-supported, government research institute—it quickly garnered public acclaim by publishing investigations into city administration, ruffling the feathers of machine politicians, and encouraging citizen participation in public affairs. Looking to municipal finances as the ultimate locus of reform, the

Bureau’s staff set about creating uniform accounting classifications and standardizing bookkeeping methods across the municipal departments. Their crowning accomplishment, the 1908 municipal budget, was both an administrative and democratic achievement. By presenting a systematic and consolidated plan for government spending, the budget made good on the rational promise of financial management. And, by

167 Toward an Organizational Sociology of Democracy accompanying that budget with a large-scale publicity campaign designed to empower

New York City citizens, it facilitated popular participation in the budget-making process.

The Bureau’s model—its budgetary procedures, budget exhibits, and publicity campaigns—spread around the country, even catching the attention of President Taft who, in 1910, selected one of the Bureau’s directors to head his Commission on

Economy and Efficiency. Here, the idea of government budgeting was stripped of its accompanying citizen-centricity and recast as a means for administrative centralization and executive control. Emphasizing the primacy of administrative science over political tradition, Taft’s commission sought to formalize the idea that democratic government was simply “a type of organization, a kind of machine” that, just like any other organizational machine must be treated as a unified whole with authority flowing inward and upward to the executive.1 Although the Commission’s proposals would lay the groundwork for the Budget and Accounting Act, it would be nearly a decade before their program was effected into law. In 1912, Congress rejected the scheme outright, seeing the executive budget as an instrument of despotism and an attempt to subvert American political institutions.

Convinced by the intrinsic correctness of their ideas, the Commission’s members were confounded by the vociferous resistance to the budget proposal. In their view, if the object of democracy was to efficiently satisfy public needs, then government must be operated like a business enterprise. Their proposal was not anti-democracy, they reasoned, it was a necessary adaptation for the complex demands of modern society. But, as the Commission members and their supporters came to accept, any “attempt to engraft

1 Frederick A. Cleveland and Arthur E. Buck, The Budget and Responsible Government (New York: Macmillan Company, 1920), 385.

168 Toward an Organizational Sociology of Democracy

[a] foreign institution…is usually disappointing, and sometimes mischievous.”2 If their agenda was to be realized, they would need to “modify the conceptions and operations of democracy, so that business methods can be introduced.”3

In the years that followed, budget proponents turned their energies toward cultivating widespread public support for national administrative reform. The new approach materialized at the Institute for Government Research, founded in 1916 with significant funding from the Rockefeller Foundation and support from a veritable who’s who of American industry, philanthropy, and academia. Despite its self-proclaimed scientific objectivity and disavowal of political animus, the Institute was, at its core, an administrative propaganda machine working to coordinate a national movement for the executive budget. It is a fact that reveals a considerable degree of duplicitousness on the part of the Rockefeller Foundation. At the same time that it was driving William H. Allen from his job at the Bureau—his work to empower citizen participation deemed

“inconsistent with the dignity or scientific detachment” the Foundation sought to project—it was helping to assemble an organization, the purpose of which was to mobilize political support for its favored reform.

The Institute published books and reports on the need for a national budget, often blurring scientific argumentation and normative rhetorical appeals. Their fellow budget

2 A. Lawrence Lowell, “Introduction” in William F. Willoughby, Westel W. Willoughby, and Samuel McCune Lindsay, The System of Financial Administration of Great Britain (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1917), xi. Indeed, this observation reveals the cultural contingencies in blurring between once-distinct domains of organized social activity. Scientific communities and parts of the public may be convinced of certain unifying and systematic principles, but other deep-seated principles may spur resistance that scientization may have to adapt to overcome. See Patricia Bromley and John Meyer, “They are All Organizations: The Cultural Roots of Blurring Between Nonprofit, Business, and Government Sectors,” Administration & Society 49, no. 7 (2017): 939–966. 3 “Asks Voters to Solve Problems of the Day,” The National Budget 1, no. 3 (Oct. 1, 1919).

169 Toward an Organizational Sociology of Democracy proponents, most notably the National Budget Committee and the U.S. Chamber of

Commerce, churned out bulletins and periodicals—propaganda for the executive budget campaign. And working through local Chambers, newly created Budget Clubs, and established civic associations, these national groups persuaded their membership to support administrative reform and to convince others in their communities to do the same. Countless articles and unsigned newspaper editorials appeared around the country following familiar lines of argument:

government is a business, citizens are its shareholders;

all good businesses require a chief executive to formulate plans, anything else and the company would “go smash”;4

local representatives only serve local interests and could never represent the nation as a whole;

the President is the only true national representative;

to make demands of the federal government was to impose costs on fellow members of the national community;

concentrating power in the executive was fundamentally democratic, because it left “no question as to who should be arraigned at the bar of public opinion.”5

By 1921, the executive budget, once deemed objectionable to the principles of American democracy, had come to be seen as a legitimate feature of the American administrative apparatus.

4 Medill McCormick, “A Budget System Or—” Nation’s Business 7, no. 7 (Jul. 1919): 26. 5 Cleveland, “Popular Control of Government,” 257.

170 Toward an Organizational Sociology of Democracy

How an Elite-Led Campaign Reconfigured Democracy On the surface, the administrative transformation of American democracy—the emergence of executive budgeting and its associated centralization of political authority—follows a familiar empirical pattern. Administrative rationalization begot an oligarchic elite. But, as I have shown, there was nothing natural or inevitable about this transformation. Indeed, it would seem as if the approach initially developed at the Bureau of Municipal Research was better suited to the values and traditions of American politics.

This fact was confirmed, at least initially, when the Taft Commission’s centralizing approach was met with heavy resistance and viewed as a sure route to oligarchy.

Additionally, the concentration of power atop the government hierarchy was not some self-evident efficient solution to the problems of complexity, nor was it the only way to solve the coordination problems of an expanding state. In fact, the very meaning of efficiency and coordination were at issue in the contest over the national budget:

Efficient to what end? Coordination with whom? Even with narrower conceptions of efficiency—e.g., more public benefit per dollar spent—there was no a priori reason to assume executive budgeting was the superior approach.

It is also difficult to square the budget case with the idea that an embryonic administrative elite sought to fortify its position. After all, it was Congress that held the reins to federal administration; it was Congress that forfeited its own power to the executive. And, in the budget case, the so-called “incompetence of the masses”—which, for Michels, was the reason authority must be centralized in the hands of the few—was not so much an objective fact as it was a rhetorical justification for limiting citizen inclusion in government. The flipside of that popular incompetence, what Michels called

171 Toward an Organizational Sociology of Democracy the “cultural superiority of leaders” was not an objective quality either. It was a quality that budget proponents had ascribed to themselves.6

Indeed, as I have demonstrated, the emergence of oligarchy had less to do with what was going on inside the organization in question and more to do with what was happening in the broader political setting in which that organization was embedded. The public and its direct representatives did not simply bow to the awe-inspiring genius of modern administrative science and budgetary procedure. Instead, American oligarchy required a coordinated, nationwide effort to redefine the meaning of democracy and articulate a new conception of responsible citizenship. Only once the values and norms of the broader social context were transformed could executive budgeting be introduced and the centralization of political authority legitimated.

To be sure, campaigners for the national budget did not invent the idea of the national interest whole-cloth. But, in linking their transgressive proposal to the emergent idea of a common national interest, budget proponents took advantage of an opportune cultural moment. The country’s growing interconnectedness—through interstate commerce, popular culture, networks of civic associations, and the reciprocity of charitable gifts—had helped to nurture common interests and collective identities across the country’s geographic expanse.7 American participation in the First World War helped to foster a general sense of national interest and how that war effort was funded helped to

6 Robert Michels, Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy (New York: Free Press, 1962), 107–114. 7 Theda Skocpol, Diminished Democracy: From Membership to Management in American Civic Life (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003); Elisabeth S. Clemens, Civic Gifts: Voluntarism and the Making of the American Nation-State (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020); see, more generally, Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York: Verso, 1983).

172 Toward an Organizational Sociology of Democracy cultivate connections between the taxpayer or bondholder and the national government.

Amid this mounting national self-awareness were also the racist, classist, and anti- immigrant attitudes of well-to-do, urban, white Americans worried that their money would be unscrupulously channeled to the “lowest stratum” of society. Into this cultural breach stepped the national budget campaign. Core to its rhetoric: political individualism is unfriendly to the collective national interest.8 That national interest, as Progressive public intellectuals like Herbert Croly made clear, represented the moral and intellectual qualities of affluent white Americans.

These observations share an affinity with Hannah Arendt’s argument that society became scientific and governable “only when men had become social beings and unanimously followed certain patterns of behavior.” The managed state effectively

“assumed one interest of society as a whole.”9 Taking the point further, John Meyer and

Ronald Jepperson have argued that “universal myths of the collective good” are effectively prerequisites for administrative rationalization.10

Certainly such conditions are conducive to oligarchical control. Indeed, the national interest—dependent on assumptions of unanimity and universalistic conceptions of the public good—was essential for administrative centralization. But it is incorrect to argue, as Weber did, that the “the belief in norms and relations of authority,” were, in any

8 For a similar point regarding business interests and the National Civic Federation, see James Weinstein, The Corporate Ideal in the Liberal State, 1900–1918 (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968). 9 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 2nd Edition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 42, 43–44. 10 Ronald L. Jepperson and John W. Meyer, “The Public Order and the Construction of Formal Organizations,” in Walter W. Powell and Paul J. DiMaggio, Eds., The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 206, 208.

173 Toward an Organizational Sociology of Democracy sense “passively accepted.”11 Rather than treating these social conditions as intrinsic to the national context, the inevitable outgrowths of sweeping modernization, or readily accepted by a submissive public, I have argued that these conditions were the result of an elite-led, coordinated effort to reconfigure the meaning of democracy and the responsibilities of American citizenship.12

Core to my argument regarding why the Bureau’s model was, by and large, lost to history while the more transgressive Taft Commission model was institutionalized in

American government, was the relative ease with which each model resonated with powerful alters. That is, how well each model fit with the interests and ideological perspectives of the people and organizations who were positioned—socially, economically, and politically—to cultivate political support for administrative reform. In the absence of such sponsorship, the citizen-centric model of government budgeting faded from public consciousness (indeed, to some degree, it was pushed from public consciousness). With sponsorship, however, the more restrictive model of executive budgeting had sufficient resources to overcome formidable resistance.

Given the centrality of elite influence in my story, it is tempting to conjure up that standard bit of cynical sociology: rich and powerful members of society are free to impose self-serving schemes and worldviews as they please. But in the budget case, the cynical perspective comes with wrinkle. Clearly, social and economic elites tended to favor the executive budget. But what it took for their aims to be realized was not a direct

11 Max Weber, “The ‘Objectivity’ of Knowledge in Social Science and Social Policy,” in Hans H. Bruun and Sam Whimster, Eds., Max Weber: Collected Methodological Writings (New York: Routledge, 2012). 12 Studies observing links between polity and organizational forms tend to find their variation between nations as opposed to within as has been my interest here.

174 Toward an Organizational Sociology of Democracy imposition of their will. Rather, it was a much more indirect act of sponsoring scholars who were convinced of the fundamental rightness of their ideas, suppressing dissenting voices that promoted plausible alternatives, and underwriting extensive research and publications that would serve as the bedrock for more nakedly propagandistic efforts.

Moreover, by setting the terms of public discussion taking place in that nebulous but all- important sphere of civil society, these powerful groups were able to engender support for their agenda with insidious efficacy.

After 1921 In the decades following the passage of the Budget and Accounting Act, perennial efforts to augment Presidential power, strengthen the executive branch and conform federal government to the precepts of administrative science grew less and less controversial.

With the idea of the national interest well established and a new understanding of citizen responsibility institutionalized at core of federal administration, such endeavors were widely viewed as legitimate—even necessary—for the furtherance of American democracy.

The ideas that had once carried the national budget campaign became codified into training programs for public administration. When Syracuse University opened the nation’s first “school of citizenship” in 1924—modeled on business management education and the New York Bureau of Municipal Research Training School—it offered a freshman course on the “Fundamentals of Citizenship.” Readings by Herbert Croly,

Woodrow Wilson, A. Lawrence Lowell, and James Bryce—the philosophical lodestars of administrative reform—dotted the syllabus. Such texts, the school’s founders reasoned, would acquaint students with the “peculiar rights, duties, and inheritances of our

175 Toward an Organizational Sociology of Democracy citizenship.”13 Through such education, students would learn to “possess the just, wise, and omniscient qualities of Plato’s guardians⁠.”14 The sentiment was strong enough that

Syracuse faculty elected to inscribe the Athenian oath of citizenship on a plaque at the entrance to their building.15

Frederick Cleveland would eventually become a Professor of United States

Citizenship at Boston University, and other programs in public administration sprang up at universities around the country including Berkeley, Cincinnati, Harvard, Princeton, and

Southern California. Courses on budgetary procedure often relied on texts that, only a few years before, had served as propaganda for administrative reform.16

Changes were also evident in the broader cultural regard for oligarchic authority and administrative centralization. Walter Lippmann, who had already determined that

“ordinary men” were ill-equipped to deal with the “heart-breaking perplexity” of modern life, had grown more pessimistic in his views.17 In 1922, he argued that the “theory of

13 “Announcement of School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University,” Aug. 1924, Bulletins 1924–1927, Box 1, RG 04, Gen. 001, Maxwell School Collection, Syracuse University Archives, Syracuse, NY. Interestingly, Croly experienced a change of heart in 1920. Observing how working-class interests had come to be seen as a “betrayal of the national ideal,” Croly remarked that it was actually the new American aristocracy—industrialists, financiers, intellectuals, and politicians—who had betrayed the national community. This groups had become an “autocratic authority” that maintained its place through “moral intimidation.” Croly now believed that the working-class must take the reins of management, both in industry and government (Herbert Croly, “The Eclipse of Progressivism,” New Republic 24 (Oct. 27, 1920): 210–216). 14 John M. Pfiffner, Research Methods in Public Administration (New York: Ronald Press Co., 1940): 25. 15 “Documents of Record of the Institute of Public Administration, Vol. 3,” Box 1, Subseries C, General. IPA Series I, BNL. 16 Lawrence A. Matika, “The Contributions of Frederick Albert Cleveland to the Development of a System of Municipal Accounting in the Progressive Era,” PhD diss. (Kent State University, 1988), 58. On programs and texts, see Social Science Research Council, Committee on Public Administration, “Research in public Budget Administration,” , 1941, Folder 1485, Box 252, Series 1, RG 1, Social Science Research Council Records, RAC. 17 Walter Lippmann, Drift and Mastery: An Attempt to Diagnose the Current Unrest (New York: Mitchell Kennerly, 1914), 197.

176 Toward an Organizational Sociology of Democracy universal competence” on which American democracy was premised had proven false.

Democracy required specially trained administrators with their

filing cabinets, card catalogues, graphs, loose-leaf contraptions, and above all the perfectly sound ideal of an executive who sits before a flat-top desk, one sheet of typewritten paper before him, and decides on matters of policy.18

And by 1925, Lippmann was convinced: ordinary Americans had “been saddled with an impossible task and asked to practice an unattainable ideal.”19

John Dewey thought Lippmann had been too dismissive of public participation.

Lippmann’s proposal, he argued, was bound to result in an oppressive “oligarchy” whose power was derived not from the masses but from an “intellectual aristocracy.” Worse,

Lippmann had disregarded the social function of public discourse and deliberation. More than merely a method for making decisions, it was a means of fostering community and public spirit.20 Because democracy was a form of community life, oligarchy’s effect would be far more insidious than its initial deprivations of citizen voice in government affairs. Disagreements between Lippmann and Dewey over the nature of public participation mirrored the antagonisms between Cleveland and Allen over the nature of public administration.

Just as Cleveland’s schemes had been institutionalized in public administrative practice, the coming years would tend toward a more Lippmann-esque understanding of the public, especially during the Great Depression and lead-up to the Second World War.

Nervously looking to Europe for inspiration, Senators declared that “if this country ever

18 Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York: Michell Kennerly, 1922), 369–370. 19 Walter Lippmann, The Phantom Public (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1925), 10. 20 John Dewey, The Public and its Problems: An Essay in Political Inquiry (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1927), 204–219.

177 Toward an Organizational Sociology of Democracy needed a Mussolini, it needs one now.” Lippmann argued that “a mild species of dictatorship will help us over the roughest spots in the road ahead.” And Nicholas Murray

Butler mused to a freshman class at Columbia that totalitarian regimes, more so than elected governments, tended to put “men of far greater intelligence” at the center of political affairs.21 By such accounts, democratic liberalism was an outmoded hindrance to effective government.

The new administrative obsession—national planning—revealed the depth to which this new conception of democracy had been institutionalized. Through planning, the relatively new concept of a “national interest” had been endowed with a trajectory and equilibrium of its own, characteristics that could be adjusted through federal government administration.22 Seeking to bolster the nation’s administrative capacities,

Franklin D. Roosevelt established the President’s Committee on Administrative

Management. After traveling in 1937 to Germany, Italy, and France to learn from

Europe’s administrative greats, the Committee enjoyed “a stimulating trip home on the

Hindenburg,” and drafted a proposal for increased executive centralization.23 Roosevelt, announcing the proposal to Congress with a speech prepared by one of his Committee members, asked the country:

Will it be said, “Democracy was a great dream, but it couldn’t do the job?”…I know your answer, and the answer of the Nation, because after all, we are a practical people. We know good management in the home, on the farm, and in

21 Sen. Reed, Congressional Record (May 5, 1932): 9644; Walter Lippmann, “Semi-Dictator?" Barron's 13, no. 7 (Feb. 13, 1933): 12; Butler quoted in Ronald Steel, Walter Lippmann and the American Century (New York: Transaction Publishers, 1999), 299. 22 James Smith, The Idea Brokers: Think Tanks and the Rise of the New Policy Elite (New York: The Free Press, 1991). 23 Guy Moffett to Sir Henry Bunbury, Aug. 12, 1936, Folder 711, Public Administration Clearing House, Box 66, Series 4.2, Spelman Fund of New York Records, RAC.

178 Toward an Organizational Sociology of Democracy

business, big and little. If any nation can find the way to effective government it should be the American people through their own democratic institutions.24

Revealing how far the country had moved since the early 1920s, it was the Brookings

Institution (previously known as the Institute for Government Research) that challenged the Roosevelt Committee’s proposals as a radical affront to American political values.

The country would shift further still. As the United States entered the 1960s, the social problems of the era, according to President Kennedy, had become “technical problems,” requiring “sophisticated judgments which do not lend themselves to the

‘passionate movements’” of politics.25 And as Kennedy’s Assistant Secretary of Labor,

Daniel P. Moynihan, gushed in the inaugural issue of The Public Interest, “exponential knowledge,” “econometric revolution,” and the “professionalization of reform” would finally usher in a post-political era. The country would soon see the end of “stupid controversies,” “mile-long petitions and mass rallies.” Freed from the burdens of politics,

Americans would finally be able to “turn to issues more demanding of human ingenuity than that of how to put an end poverty.”26 It was the sort of expert-led, post-political appeal that Cleveland, Willoughby, Goodnow and their supporters would have relished and exactly the kind of idea that Allen—who died in 1963—would have despised.

Indeed, imagining an alternate trajectory where Allen’s ideas (and not

Cleveland’s) resonated with powerful allies and were elevated to national prominence

24 “Message to Congress – Administrative Management,” Jan. 12, 1937, Franklin D. Roosevelt Master Speech Files, Jan. 19, 1898–Apr. 13, 1945, Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library Archives, Hyde Park, NY. 25 John F. Kennedy, “Remarks to the Members of the White House Conference on National Economic Issues,” May 21, 1962, White House Audio Recordings, 1961–1963, WH-098-001, John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, Boston, MA. 26 Ironically, Moynihan’s essay preceded a piece titled “The Myth of the Scientific Elite.” Daniel P. Moynihan, “The Professionalization of Reform,” The Public Interest, no. 1 (Fall, 1965): 6.

179 Toward an Organizational Sociology of Democracy encourages a series of what-ifs that are not easily answered. One might suspect, given

Allen’s emphasis on local community, hands-on publicity and education, and direct citizen involvement, that public administration specifically—and American democracy more generally—might have moved in a distinctly more local and communitarian direction. For Allen, citizens deliberating and finding common purpose through participation in local government was a far more meaningful form of democracy than the quiescence and spectatorship that executive budget proponents promoted. This is not to say there would not have been a national budget—there is certainly evidence that Allen had national ambitions. But it is to say that nationhood and membership within it might have looked quite different than it does today. In 1916, worried what a shift toward a nationally focused American democracy would mean for the possibilities of engaged citizenship, Edward Fitzpatrick, one of Allen’s fellow travelers, wrote:

Unfortunately most of the civics taught in our elementary schools and high schools and in the universities of the country deals with the state and the nation. The city is an incidental concern, and yet from every standpoint of life…the city is the fundamental phase of government. It is a phase of government with which every individual comes in direct contact. It is the only phase of government in which civic education can be said to deal with the community life. The state is not a community, nor is the nation in any genuine sense of these terms. The state and the nation are merely more or less artificial things compared to the city.27

In 1921, signifying the shift toward a national democracy that had crystalized in the executive budget, the Bureau of Municipal Research—an organization founded to

27 Edward A. Fitzpatrick, “What is Civic Education?” National Municipal Review 5, no. 2 (Apr. 1916): 278.

180 Toward an Organizational Sociology of Democracy empower citizen participation in local government affairs—changed its name to the

National Institute of Public Administration

Revisiting the Democracy-Administration Tension in Organizational Theory I began this dissertation with a discussion of the age-old argument that democracy is inevitably undermined by rational administration. Formative statements to this effect are stark. As Weber put it:

Bureaucratic administration always tends to exclude the public, to hide its knowledge and action from criticism as well as it can…if it is to be successful [bureaucracy] can be publicly supervised only to a very limited extent.28

And according to Weber’s mentee and friend, Michels, ever with a flair for apocalyptic language:

Organization is, in fact, the source from which the conservative currents flow over the plain of democracy, occasioning there disastrous floods and rendering the plain unrecognizable.29

It has been my contention that the fact we do not see many egalitarian organizations does not make oligarchy a natural fact. Indeed, a growing body of sociological research demonstrates deviations from the oligarchic tendency that are attributable to everything from organizational structure, styles of social interaction, embeddedness within broader cultural contexts, and the affordances of communication technologies. Such deviations, I have argued, not only provide exceptions to the iron law,

28 Max Weber, Economy and Society, Guenther Roth and Claus Wittich, Eds. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978), 922. 29 Michels, Political Parties, 62.

181 Toward an Organizational Sociology of Democracy they challenge the inevitability of the law itself. The emergence of government budgeting in the United States and its accompanying administrative centralization have provided evidence for my claim. The negative relationship between bureaucracy and democracy is not preordained; it is a social accomplishment. Public administration did not have to be an oxymoron.

In place of apocalyptic maxims, my study comports with the idea, as James

March and Johan Olsen argued, that the “relation between democracy and expert knowledge is troubled.”30 That is, as William H. Allen put it, “inequality of knowledge precedes monopoly of opportunity.”31 Introducing expert authority into egalitarian settings is fraught with apprehension. But, as illustrated by Allen’s approach at the

Bureau of Municipal Research, these tensions need not result in despotism. What matters is not that there are experts or that there is organization—these things do not inherently subvert democracy. Instead, it is important to consider what these experts and organizations actually do. To improve upon the basic democratic incompatibility thesis of organizational theory, we must attend to the specific nature of administrative practices and how these practices permit inclusion and allocate the privileges of access, voice, and participation.

Democracy, from this perspective, does not exist in the abstract. Rather, it exists only in and through human and organizational activities. This idea is a familiar one in sociology. As Anthony Giddens argued, social schemas only exist in conjunction with

30 James G. March and Johan P. Olsen, Democratic Governance (New York: Free Press, 1995), 178. 31 Allen in “Proceedings of the Pittsburgh Conference for Good City Government and the Fourteenth Annual Meeting of the National Municipal League, November 16-19, 1908, Clinton Rogers Woodruff, ed. National Municipal League (1908), 127.

182 Toward an Organizational Sociology of Democracy social practices. Action and meaning are mutually constitutive: practices are concretizations of normative ideas and normative ideas take shape in a world delimited by practical action.32 In this vein, it is important to see administrative practices as instantiations of political theories—however implicit or explicit, unintended or deliberate—because it is through their execution that they shape the possibilities for public influence over organizational activities. Indeed, as Michèle Lamont and Virág

Molnár have argued, “practices have inescapable and unconscious classificatory effects that shape social positions.”33 And, as I have shown, how these practices are stabilized in new social environments can profoundly influence how they structure the relationship between organizations and their publics.

Accordingly, an organizational sociology of democracy must seek to understand

(1) how administrative practices are imbued with particular conceptions of the public vis-

à-vis the organization, (2) how these practices are introduced into particular organizational settings and what changes occur in the process, and (3) how the implementation of these practices—or, more broadly, sets of practices—condition the possibilities for public access, voice, and influence.

Focusing on the organizational construction of democracy helps to extend more general sociological treatments of democracy beyond grand statements about the cultural and structural correlates of formal democratic government. Indeed, many mid-century

American sociologists and historians took the United States as the pinnacle of modern

32 Anthony Giddens, Central Problems in Social Theory: Action, Structure and Contradiction in Social Analysis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979), 65; William H. Sewell, Jr. “A Theory of Structure: Duality, Agency, and Transformation.” American Journal of Sociology 98, no. 1 (Jul., 1992):1–29. 33 Michèle Lamont and Virág Molnár, “The Study of Boundaries in the Social Sciences,” Annual Review of Sociology 28 (2002): 172.

183 Toward an Organizational Sociology of Democracy democracy, often regarding the nation through the whiggish lens of inevitable national progress, and regarding other nations in terms of how well they approximated the

American ideal. Scholars like Seymour Martin Lipset argued that capitalist economic development was a precondition for modern democratic government because it produced key sociocultural changes (e.g., wealth, education, industrialization, and urbanization).

Modernization perspectives basically held that capitalism led the way to democracy and democracy, in turn, benefits capitalism.34 And as Barrington Moore put it, democracy depended on a “vigorous and independent class” of citizens—“No bourgeois, no democracy.”35

At least in the American case, these macro-sociological approaches come up short. Lipset errs in assuming relatively uniform and stable conceptions of freedom and equality that exist both across social class and endure over time.36 As I have argued, this sort of ideological consensus was an early-20th century invention that helped to justify a restrictive transformation in government administration—not the expansion of democracy. National context cannot be treated as an exogenous factor in explanation when it is endogenous to the explanation itself. And Moore, in arguing that a strong bourgeois class is essential for democracy, seems to have overlooked that large portions of the American taxpaying class were active in suppressing citizen participation either by limiting their participation in elections or by limiting what voting accomplished. Indeed, to use the United States as an exemplar in any theory of democracy, both past and

34 Seymour Martin Lipset, “Some Social Requisites of Democracy: Economic Development and Political Legitimacy,” American Political Science Review 53, no. 1 (Mar. 1959): 69–105. 35 Barrington Moore, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966), 418. 36 For a further development of this idea, see Seymour Martin Lipset, Continental Divide: The Values and Institutions of the United States and Canada (New York: Routledge, 1990).

184 Toward an Organizational Sociology of Democracy present, is to ignore that, for a great many American citizens, access to the most basic rights of democratic participation has never been a sure thing. Perhaps by considering how organizations—both state and otherwise—permit equitable inclusion and public influence, we can begin to identify ways to make good on this long-unfulfilled promise.

The Possibility of an Organized Democracy There is little doubt that the borderlands of popular sovereignty and the social control of experts are rife with tension. It is a tension that while quite evident at various moments in the past, has, in recent decades, remained largely peripheral in mainstream political discourse. That was until Trump won the presidential election in 2016. His campaign lit the fuse to a powder keg of racism and nationalism, and his disregard for establishment politics tapped into decades of popular disaffection and disempowerment. However disingenuous and hateful his rhetoric, he spoke to rising social inequality and the offshoring of American jobs—deep-seated grievances for which neither major party had mustered a compelling answer. According to Trump, the elite—experts, scientists, government officials, anyone claiming specialized knowledge, “the swamp”—had no legitimate claim to political authority. And when his opponents dismissed his supporters as an irredeemable “basket of deplorables” that were unworthy of voice, he offered his followers assurance. “They’re not the elite,” Trump told a crowd in August 2018. “You’re the elite.”37

Trump had no shortage of fodder. Even before he had won the 2016 election, headlines made bold assertions like “Democracies end when they are too democratic,”

37 Donald J. Trump, “President Trump Remarks at Campaign Rally in Ohio,” C-SPAN (Aug. 4, 2018).

185 Toward an Organizational Sociology of Democracy

“Voters Are Making a Mess of Democracy,” and “It’s Time for the Elites to Rise Up

Against the Ignorant Masses.”38 Political philosopher Jason Brennan, in his book Against

Democracy rekindled John Mill’s argument that political power ought to be apportioned according to intellectual ability (i.e., an epistocracy).39 And Christopher Achen and Larry

Bartels, with all the scholarly sobriety of Frederick Cleveland, provided empirical support for the idea of the “irrational” or “incompetent” voter.40 Such claims could just as easily have been pulled from late-19th century fulminations against “degenerate” municipal citizens or early-20th century national budget propaganda explaining why the people of Squeedonk ought not have their local interests represented.

Even as Trumpian rhetoric has devolved into paranoiac theories of a shadowy cabal of unelected bureaucrats pulling the strings of American government, more measured voices have called attention to the apparent disparities in political authority.

Such voices have taken aim at the nation’s political and economic power structure, emphasizing how the “1%,” “rigged systems,” and the hollow promise of meritocracy have deprived ordinary citizens of opportunities to participate in the decisions that shape their lives.

After four years of the Trump presidency, the Biden administration has inherited a weathered national government that faces both immense administrative challenges and a crisis of legitimacy. Indeed, Biden’s presidency bears striking parallels to Harding’s presidency 100 years before. Both took office following a tumultuous presidency and in

38 Andrew Sullivan, New York Magazine (May 1, 2016); James Traub, Foreign Policy (Jun. 28, 2016). 39 Jason Brennan, Against Democracy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016). 40 Christopher H. Achen and Larry M. Bartels, Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016).

186 Toward an Organizational Sociology of Democracy the shadow (or, in Biden’s case, the midst) of a global pandemic that the prior occupant had done little to acknowledge. And both campaigned on the promise that their presidency would be a “return to normalcy.” But normalcy currently seems unlikely. At this historical juncture, the pressing question (one among many) is how our governmental machinery and, more generally, the spirit of our political system has come to appear so tone deaf and unresponsive in the eyes of its people.

The answer I have sought to provide—and it is only a partial answer to this momentous question—is that we built it this way. Indeed, it was organizational scholars at the center of a project to conform reality to the principles of administrative theory.

Administrative dogma became democratic dogma and, in turn, structured our imaginations of how an organized democracy ought to run. The most consistent theme, as historian Barry Karl put it, is that a “rational bureaucracy will significantly reduce the level of conflict in a democratic society.” But that, he added, would be “the end of democracy as we have known it.”41 Further complicating the matter, according to Robert

Dahl, is that administrative theorists tend to assume their ideas “have a universal validity independent of…moral and political ends.”42 In other words, organizational theory, despite an impoverished conception of democracy, has had a hand in structuring the possibilities for citizen participation in the state.

As Alvin Gouldner wrote in 1954: “If the sociologist may not expatiate on what

‘ought to be,’ he is still privileged to deal with another realm, ‘the realm of what can

41 Barry D. Karl, “Philanthropy, Policy Planning, and the Bureaucratization of the Democratic Ideal,” Daedalus 105, no. 4 (Fall, 1976), 149. 42 Robert A. Dahl, “The Science of Public Administration: Three Problems,” Public Administration Review 7, no. 1 (Winter, 1947): 1.

187 Toward an Organizational Sociology of Democracy be.’”43 Indeed, there are countless exceptions to the iron law of oligarchy that, like

Allen’s model at the Bureau of Municipal Research, are informative, participative, and deliberative.44 Such schemes might seem like implausible alternatives. But the current arrangement was once itself an implausible alternative. And it has since come to structure how we think about democracy, what we expect of it, and how we understand our role within it.

43 Alvin W. Gouldner, Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy (New York: Free Press, 1954), 28. 44 Archon Fung and Erik Olin Wright, Deepening Democracy: Institutional Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance (New York: Verso Books, 2001); Hélène Landemore, Open Democracy: Reinventing Popular Rule for the Twenty-First Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020).

188