THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE. JANUARY 16, 1944. 9 Ickes Defines-and Defends-the Bureaucrat By Harold L. Ickes He is the man, says the Secretary, who makes ministrations that had run from 1921. I Secretary of the Interior even went so far as to retain employes T HREE particular terms of oppro- the Government tick-and private industry also. "Bureaucrats" who occupied positions of brium have been applied to this particular trust and confidence in the of- Administration as a whole, with fice of the Secretary himself. particular reference to certain members tions and nuances in this rough definition. competent, if sometimes too deliberate, ca- Despite all of the clamor to the con- I leave it to anyone to imagine what thereof. The first badge of disgrace was reer-man who makes the governmental "braintruster." The second, which has run trary, "Bureaucracy," like marriage, is kind of mess the Department of the In- watch tick. throughout the years, has been, and still "an honorable estate," or at least it ought terior would be in today if I had dis- I know more about the Department of missed employes by the thousands. It is "New Dealer." The current one, which to be, even if there are times when it isn't. the Interior than about any other agency became my rule-of course I made some is rolled hissingly under the tongue, Of course, it might be better for demo- of government, SO let's talk about it. When mistakes which I lost no time in rectifying although it hasn't a sibilant in it, is cratic pretenses and for proper adminis- I was inducted into the office of Secretary, when I discovered them-to appoint only "Bureaucrat." No one has ever made the tration, to present to every voter when he I made hardly a handful of changes. Nat- competent people. I made no changes ex- mistake of calling me a "braintruster," goes to the polls on the first Tuesday after urally, the political appointees, such as cept for good cause, and when vacancies although I have been called everything the first Monday of each quadrennial No- assistant secretaries and one or two have occurred during the past almost else in the dictionary of an unpleasant vember, a ballot as big as a horse blanket, others, resigned. There was one man high eleven years, in all instances successors connotation, but I have risen automatical- on which he would have an opportunity to in the solicitor's office whose departure were chosen on the basis of ability with- ly to the top of the minds of many when note his preference as between rival can- was welcome to me because I had not re- out reference to politics. I have done this the term "New Dealer" or "Bureaucrat" didates for the chief clerk of the Depart- garded highly his attitude toward the In- as Secretary of the Interior, as Public has been uttered. ment of the Interior, or for the foremen dians, those bedeviled, cheated and op- Works Administrator, and more lately as The editor of THE NEW YORK TIMES in the Government Printing Office. pressed wards of the Government. But, Petroleum Administrator for War, Solid Magazine has been wanting me to write a Some people think that that would be generally speaking, I kept the principal Fuels Administrator for War, and as Co- piece about the pariah "Bureaucrat." true democracy. They want as many of- executives of the department on, and they ordinator of Fisheries. If I have had any Frankly, it seems to me to be somewhat in ficials-all of them, if possible, above the retained their sub-executives, because measure of success, it has been because the nature of a waste of time because one grade of scrubwoman-"elected by, and from the beginning I operated on the of my policy of choosing people, not on of these ays-sooner rather than later- responsible to, the people," although how theory that if I were to hold a bureau chief the basis of their political merits or polit- someone will hit upon another designation the electorate could select with intelli- responsible for results, I could not force ical pull, but on that of their ability to do of even more untrustworthy and unhappy gence, and how the responsibility would upon him an employe he didn't want. a good job for the people. connotations, and then "Bureaucrat" will be exercised, no one has told me. I And yet the Department of the Interior fall into an estate of innocuous desuetude, That there is a bureaucratic system in DID not inquire in a single instance is a bureaucracy, and as a bureaucracy it as Grover Cleveland might have put it. government, not only in Federal but in whether a man was a Republican or a is teeming with bureaucrats. Frankly, I But, to satisfy the still prevalent curios- State, and more or less in county and mu- Democrat. All that I wanted to know was don't know how the department could ity of the same kind of people who indulge nicipal governments, no one can deny. We whether he was competent and loyal, not function if it were not a bureaucracy in vivisection in order to see how the hap- would have a political chaos on our hands to the newly installed Democratic admin- chock-full of bureaucrats. A bureaucrat less victim reacts, I will yield to the im- were it otherwise. Even a partisan Mayor istration but to the Government. I have in a department, like the clerk in the drug portunities of the editor in question or Sheriff has to give always suspected that store, knows on what shelf he can find (although I suspect that he is a bureau- a pretense of efficient most of my bureau the particular drug called for in the pre- crat of parts himself and could do a better administration, which chiefs were Republi- scription. There would indeed be hell to piece than I) and attempt to do something he couldn't do by even cans. I believe that pay if every time there was a change of on the subject, which seems to be of such a wide chance if he that is true to this administration an army of new employes absorbing interest to those mimicking cit- swept out of office all day. This was not a were falling over each other learning izens who cerebrate with their prejudices of those of the oppo- violent assumption, just what their job was and how to do it. or their emotions instead of with their site party that he because the Roosevelt Certainly a department such as mine, with brains. found in when he took Democratic Adminis- almost 50,000 employes, would be nothing over. It is the "Bu- Aration-in 1933 suc- short of a public. scandal unless it were SHALL not attempt to exhaust the many reaucrat," the steady, ceeded Republican Ad- manned, as it is, generally speaking, with definitions and connotations of "Bureau- crat." Even with the same persons they people Department who of have the Interior been employed many years in the for will vary from day to day and from cir- and who not only know their own place cumstance to circumstance. Neither shall in the line-up but can coach the newcomer I profoundly set forth what any of the as to his duties. unabridged dictionaries have to say on the subject. After all, it is the people who, T HERE are those who never conceive with their vernacular, finally make the of a bureaucracy except in terms of the dictionaries. I believe that a rough over- government service. This is superficial all definition of "Bureaucrat" could be set thinking of the thinnest. Every big busi- down as a man who doesn't hold public ness is a bureaucracy. It could not be office and who doesn't like the fellow who a big business if it were not, or being one does, either because it would soon fall he belongs to a dif- apart, leaving noth- ferent and therefore ing but unintegrated hated, political party, pieces to be swept up or because he insists by the janitor and upon playing the thrown onto the ash- game according to pan. the rules thereof as It may come as a set down in the shock to my dema- statute books, or gogic friends who doesn't say "yes" with keep yelling "Bu- alacrity before the reaucracy" at the top proposition is made. Continued on Page 45) There may be varia- Drawing by Carl Rose