THE GOVERNMENT AND THE PUBLIC WORKS.
FOUR years ago, or in August, 1883, there appeared in Lippincott's Magazine a paper by Frank D. Y. Carpenter, treating of the relations of the civil assistants in the Corps of Engineers to the government service. It may have been the modest protest of a class of employees against a real or an imaginary injustice, or it may have been a patriotic effort on the part of the writer to expose the defects of fortuitous legislation and suggest a remedy, but, whatever the purpose, the seed was sown, has taken root, and is already yielding fruit.
Numerous magazine articles, animated discussions in technical journals, leaders in the dailies, conventions of scientists, resolutions of societies, committees of investigation, committees for collating statistics and information, advisory councils, and in fact a large part of the political machinery of the government, have all aided in developing a growing interest in the important question which is believed to have been definitely introduced by that article.
The policy of the government towards its public civil works, and its relations to those intrusted with their execution, are subjects involving many important questions of history, methods, means, results, and future requirements, and to understand them we must unlock the wicket of the present with the key of the past, that we may obtain a vista of the future.
In the January (1886) number of the Journal of the Association of Engineering Societies, President L. E. Cooley shows, in a vigorous argument, that the United States has no "Rational Policy of Public Works;" in the May (1887) number of The Forum, General W. F. Smith explains the confusion that exists in various government departments, resulting in reduplication of work and a jealous grasping after appropriations. The same facts are testified to by Major J. W. Powell, Director of the U. S. Geological Survey, in his evidence before the joint commission to reorganize the "Signal Service, Geological Survey, Coast and Geodetic Survey, and the Hydrographic Office of the Navy Department."
The interesting contribution by Mr. F. P. Powers to the July number of Lippincott's Magazine on "West Point, the Army, and the Militia" is another argument to show cause for progress in a more systematic development of the machinery of government administration. Were further proof of the need of a better system required, it is only necessary to refer to the toils and tribulations of the River and Harbor bill, to the odium which attaches itself thereto, despite the vigilance of its framers, to the serious losses to the country at large from its repeated failures to become a law, and to the depreciation of an important class of works and the demoralization of its personnel in such times suspension.
The need of reorganization being conceded, it remains to determine the available resources and the manner of assembling and arranging them so as to produce more economic results. Here the horizon broadens
