Since the time of Adam Smith, we have more or less passively accepted the type of economy which tossed us from boom to depression and back again. The adoption by Congress of current proposals for “full employment” legislation would constitute a substantial divergence from this passive course. The representatives of the American people would declare, essentially, that they propose to do whatever is necessary to make the national economy provide employment for all men and women who wish to work. Acceptance of this policy implies simultaneous acceptance of the responsibility for devising plans for influencing the economy and creating governmental machinery for carrying them out. Hence, our purpose here is twofold: first, to suggest the tasks to be performed by the federal government in maintaining full employment; and second, to raise the foreseeable questions about the organizational arrangements within the federal government that may be required to accomplish this end. At the present stage in the evolution of the rôle of government in the maintenance of full employment, much that will be said must necessarily be speculative.

But political scientists have as much right—and obligation—to speculate as do economists. The economists have speculated effectively as to the pleasant state of affairs that will obtain when there are jobs for all who want to work. They have speculated fruitfully as to ways of achieving full employment. It is high time, now, that the political scientists contribute the results of their own speculation. What, for example, are to be the responsibilities of government in the “full-employment age”? How will government discharge these responsibilities? How will the federal government formulate an annual employment and production budget and the complex integrated network of national policies essential to the achievement of full employment? The political scientists may also be expected to consider how the collaboration between the federal, state, and local governments and each sector of private enterprise essential to this objective will be obtained. They, too, are obligated to evolve a prescription for the planned, harmonious administration of these integrated policies by a considerable number of agencies of the federal government. When they essay such speculation, they will conclude that the “Full Employment Act” focuses attention on the need for effective governmental staff services as no previous legislation has done.

“Do not give to a people institutions for which it is unripe in the simple faith that the tool will give skill to the workman's hand. Respect Facts. Man is in each country not what we may wish him to be, but what Nature and History have made him.” Bryce, Modern Democracies, I, 206.

With minor exceptions, the panorama of constitutional growth in the Western Hemisphere reveals two main streams. The United States Constitution, the British North America Act of 1867 (which is the Canadian fundamental law), and the organic laws of the various New World British possessions of today all stem, obviously, from English constitutional and institutional ancestry. The constitutions of the twenty Latin American states, on the other hand, all reflect in varying degree the experience and institutions of their three mother countries. These modern constitutions are, it is true, influenced by alien examples at one point or another, but the core is undubitably Latin. More narrowly, the inspiration is Hispanic; and still more narrowly, Spanish.

It is not easy to explain in detail the degree of similarity between French political institutions and those of the Iberian peninsula in the centuries between the emergence of the several national states and the political revolutions in Latin America. At least, the French belonged to a not unrelated family. A much closer relationship is easily discernible among the political institutions of the three main Iberian entities that ultimately became the national states of Spain and Portugal, viz., Castile, Aragon, and Portugal. It is often forgotten that for many generations no political or constitutional “Spain” existed, that Aragon and Castile were as distinct from each other in most ways as either of them was from Portugal, that an easily possible union of the ruling houses of Castile and Portugal—supplanting the marriage of Isabella and Ferdinand—might have changed the whole subsequent course of history.

World War II has called forth greater organizational and administrative efforts than ever before on the part of the armed forces, private industry, and government. The sheer size of the new organizations that were formed to fight battles, manufacture matériel, and administer government programs has intensified the problems of top management and executive control, as well as the technical problems of military operations, supply, and industrial production. Great dynamic changes in society always afford occasion for reappraising basic philosophies, and these significant changes in the scope and scale of our great enterprises are no exception. The field of management is perhaps less spectacular, less open to popular discussion than are the issues of foreign policy and of government participation in the national economy. But effective management of our enterprise is of fundamental importance to a successful conclusion of the war and subsequent maintenance of peace. The demands of the war on the home front have stimulated much re-thinking of the theories of government and business administration. This article is concerned with the relation between the basic theories of two of the greatest contributors to the field of management—Frederick Taylor and Henri Fayol.

We all know what the task of organizing for war has been during the past four years. Arms production of undreamed of magnitude had to be developed in a matter of months. To produce the vast number of planes, tanks, and ships, new enterprises sprang up over night and existing ones expanded to many times their original size. Similarly, the federal government, in addition to creating tremendous staffs in the War and Navy Departments, had to develop quickly “administrative leviathans” to control prices and ration goods, allocate industrial production, and direct the production and distribution of foods. War-time control had to be exercised to an unprecedented degree, frequently for hitherto unregulated matters, in connection with oil, censorship, transportation, manpower, and the like. Besides a need for more technical personnel in industrial production, there developed a need for people able to organize and direct large new enterprises.

No reference was made in the Dumbarton Oaks proposals to colonial questions, and this, the most important omission among the subjects covered in the Covenant of the League of Nations, brought forth immediate comment. There was, first of all, the problem of those territories held under mandate as part of the League of Nations system. They were all under the administration of members of the United Nations, except for the former German islands in the North Pacific, which were under mandate to Japan. If the new organization was to supplant the League, some formal changes would, in any case, be required.

A second problem was the disposition of such territories as had been taken from Italy and would be taken from Japan. If the self-denying ordinances of the Atlantic Charter and the Cairo Declaration were to be taken literally, there would be territories to dispose of which could hardly be turned into colonies.

Finally, the unfortunate experiences of many European states during the earlier years of the war in the Asiatic and Pacific territories under their control had caused a large amount of discussion of colonial questions. The belief had been voiced in various quarters that colonial administration needed modernizing, that self-government of the natives was not always their goal, and that colonial problems should be considered as international problems and not merely problems of individual colonial powers. Some of these powers looked upon the United States as the center of anti-colonial feeling, and even went so far as to suspect the United States Government of a desire to force changes on them. It was held by some groups in the United States that, as these colonies would be freed largely by American arms, the United States thereby would acquire some responsibility for their future. As the war situation improved and the colonial powers began to think about a peacetime future, they started to make tentative schemes for colonial reform which might avert any sort of outside intervention or internationalization. The British Colonial Development and Welfare Bill, the French proposal to unite all colonies in a “union” with the metropole, the Dutch proposal for a federalized state, all seemed related to the anti-imperial trend of the early days of the war.

In this country, we are in general agreement that high-level production and employment should be sought for in the framework of a private-enterprise economy. This is specifically acknowledged in the “Full Employment Act” now before Congress, which said in its earliest version under Sec. 2(a): “It is the policy of the United States to foster free competitive enterprise and the investment of private capital in trade and commerce and in the development of the natural resources of the United States.” Declarations to a similar effect are to be found in other parts of the bill.

At the present writing, the bill is not yet law, and in what form it may emerge for final vote, if it does emerge, is not clear. There will doubtless be a considerable number of changes, some of them important, but it is not probable that major dependence will be asserted on anything except private enterprise. This position is not merely that reflected in the pending legislation. It accords also with the belief and practice of an overwhelming majority of the people of the country, as is evidenced by political action and by popular polls. Thus we face no practical necessity for defending private enterprise as compared with other forms of economic and political organization.

“Democratic caesarism,” whether by military caudillo or doctor en filosofía, has discouraged administrative efficiency and contributed to political disorganization in Latin America. Concentration of executive authority without responsibility has given free rein to the worst administrative practices of poor presidents without demanding the best from competent chief executives; and, with minority groups in congress dominated by a rubber-stamp majority—the entire legislature gasping in the shade of strong executive government—active groups have turned to revolution as an outlet for political and administrative expression. Poor organization of power and authority constitutes one of the most important problems of government in the Latin American countries, and a dovetailing of a series of approaches probably is necessary for a complete solution—better preparation of leaders, elimination of caudillismo, reform of codes and laws to conform with the spirit of the democratic constitutions, reorganization of parties along doctrinal lines rather than those of personalismo, and development of public opinion and participation in politics by the masses through education and increasing the standard of living.

“Industrial management” and “efficiency engineering” have become by-words in private business; in the field of public administration, we hear of “control.” The second World War has given great impetus to the development of effective practices in “management” or “control” in government departments.

As soon as the news of Pearl Harbor electrified the United States, armament production was expanded overnight to the limit of the country's resources. Pursuant to the defense program, the Department of War constructed not only many munitions plants, the great majority of them operated by private concerns under cost-plus-fixed-fee contracts, but also numerous storage depots and other installations owned by the Department of War and operated for the most part by its Ordnance Department, a division of the Army Service Forces.

During the initial months of the war, the problem uppermost in the minds of those who were directing the nation's defense program was how to achieve mass production of arms—a goal doubly difficult to reach because of the need of using entirely new techniques of manufacture. Not until the problem of quantity production was solved could attention be concentrated on obtaining maximum efficiency in operations. Swift expansion in any productive activity will by its very nature arrive at that point of unwieldiness where streamlining becomes imperative. Furthermore, because of the labor shortage, which grew more acute with the induction of increasing numbers of young men into the fighting forces, consideration of the efficiency of war plants early became mandatory.

The régime of Getulio Vargas has in the past fourteen years wrought a major transformation in the national government of Brazil. A vast centralization has taken place whereby the states' rights direction of the post-Empire period—1889–1930—was reversed and both the states and the municipalities were brought under control. New ministries and other national organs were created. A merit system was established and a public service organized. The national administration has been integrated both structurally and by means of central management agencies.

These sweeping changes have come rapidly, mostly in the past five years. There is added interest for people in the United States of America because the precedents have been taken from the theory and practice of this country. It will not be possible to present in this brief paper more than a summary of the Brazilian administrative reforms.

Writers on the constitutional aspect of the Vichy régime in France have now shifted the focus of their attention. In the beginning they were concerned almost exclusively with the study of how far the Constitutional Law of July 10, 1940, did or did not square with the constitution of the Third Republic. Later publications broached the question as to whether, assuming the legitimacy of the Constitutional Law of July 10, 1940, Marshal Pétain's government, by its actions under the cover of that Enabling Act, had remained within the scope of the authority conferred by that measure. Pierre Tissier, the author of the most comprehensive published study of the Vichy régime, argues that for a correct construction of the Enabling Act the ratification “by the nation” of the new constitution must be considered as a condition precedent, in the technical meaning of that term, rather than as a condition subsequent. He further points out that since this refers to a temporary change of the constitution, as well as to a permanent one, the pretended and self-styled “constitutional acts” of Marshal Pétain, even though he himself ascribed to them only an interim character, were merely “so many coups de force.” According to the same author, a comparison between the powers delegated to the Marshal by the National Assembly of Vichy and the use he made of them leads to the conclusion that his government “betrayed its own solemn engagements.” Tissier charges the Marshal also with an “abuse of power.” Similarly, another French author of a pertinent monograph makes the emphatic statement that the constitutional acts of the Pétain régime, “despite their name, were really abuses of power,” since the mandate conferred by the National Assembly “was not—despite all that has been reported—a blank check,” and the conditions for putting into effect any constitutional act have so far not been met.