E NEW YORK TIMES, WEDNESDAY, JULY 26, 1944. Books of the Times By JOHN CHAMBERLAIN C LIFTON FADIMAN has the quaint but forty-one of the total population, or about one probably entirely accurate idea that busi- to seventeen of the nation's working force. No nesses go broke buying filing cabinets and doubt the cost of government must come fairly keeping elaborate records that never again see high in an age of intricate technology. But the light of day once they are interred in their since the Government has no money, no energy costly cardboard envelopes. But if businesses and no man-hours of its own, it follows that the flop because of the paperwork overhead, what cost of supporting the 3,000,000 Federal em- about a Government that employs clerks running ployes must come out of you and me. In other into the millions? In words, it takes seventeen gainfully employed tax- "The Bureaucrat " payers to keep a Federal employe alive. Does John Crider warns the Federal employe enable the seventeen gain- the American people fully employed taxpayers to earn enough extra that the cost of gov- to carry him? Mr. Crider can't answer this ques- ernmental paperwork tion with any statistical accuracy. But he notes can be out of all pro- that empires have foundered in the past when a portion to the pro- fair proportion of the working energy of their ductive energy that it peoples has gone into maintaining marble build- releases, and that not ings, protocol, elaborate records, retinues of every addition to the guards, and files in triplicate. He senses a late staff of a big shot in Roman flavor in Washington, and it worries him. the Social Security Principle Dates Back to the Pharaohs Building or the De- partment of Com- The prophets of what Eric Johnston calls merce or Temporary "maturism" would have us believe that when pri- "Q" represents an in- vate industry falters the Government must inter- crement in the basic vene in the economic process. But when it mixes wealth of the nation. into the affairs of John Smith and Joe Doakes, Mr. Crider's book is a John H. Crider another inspector, another questionnaire writer, close-up study of a another stenographer and another elevator op- human type that is always with us, done with erator all go on the public payroll. The inspec- the accuracy and acumen of a first-rate reporter. tors, the questionnaire writers, the stenographers It is not an all-out attack on government as such, and the elevator operators don't raise melons or for Mr. Crider is certainly no anarchist. But it radishes, so we can't eat what they create. They is an attack on what might be termed the inter- don't make bicycles and they don't bring in oil office memo mind, which runs high, wide and gushers, so we can't travel on the results of their handsome when it is protected by political fiat work. They do help make a market for the Inter- from the natural check of competition. national Business Machines Corporation and the Not all bureaucrats, says Mr. Crider, are Otis Elevator Company, so perhaps they add to straws on the camel's back of the poor old elec- the sum total of the nation's employment. But torate. If you can discover a Joe Eastman, who you and I pay for the elevators, the typewriters served his country honorably and honestly as and the tax forms, which keeps us from using the chief of the Interstate Commerce Commission, or money to buy tractors, pumps and ice-cream if you are lucky enough to have a Leon Hender- freezers. The Egyptians bought pyramids and a. son heading up OPA in the crucial early days of Sphinx with their bureaucracy money instead of a war, you don't have to worry about bureau- filing cabinets, typewriters, carbon paper and cratitis. But the good bureaucrat is few and far marble buildings. But the principle was the same between. even in the days of the Pharaohs. The late Mr. Justice Holmes said he bought Spawns With Great Rapidity civilization when he paid taxes. True enough. The bureaucrat is incorrigibly fertile, and he But we also buy overhead. Some overhead is spawns in boards, commissions, authorities and inevitable in any business; indeed, it has a crea- departments with a speed that sometimes puts tive role to play, for it helps the managers to the fruit fly to shame. True, he depends on Con- channel energy to the place where it can be most gressional funds for his bread and butter. But productive. But the measure of a successful busi- strangely enough a Congressman will think ness is its ability to keep the overhead down. Mr. twice before he does any cheese-paring on the cost Crider is quite willing to admit that maybe a of government. The Congressman knows that couple of million Federal employes constitute necessary overhead; if we didn't have them our every clerk on the nation's payroll represents national energy stream might be misdirected. But some sort of patronage, even though civil service do we need three million? He has his doubts. is there to prevent the crasser kinds of nepotism. The doubts come from his study of the past. As Isabel Paterson says, Government employ- There was too much overhead in Inca Peru, ment works by a sort of ratchet-action; it is Hanoverian England, Bourbon France, Imperial easy to increase it, but it is the devil's own job Germany, Mussolini's Italy. To keep the peoples' to cut it down. minds off the diversion of their energy into pa- Mr. Crider counts 3,000,000 civilian employes perwork, the rulers of high-overhead nations have on the Federal payroll, which is about one to naturally had to seek outside enemies. The end of unproductive overhead has been slavery or *THE BUREAUCRAT By John H. Crider. Lip- war. pincott. $3.