Charles A. Beard

Administration, a Foundation of Government.

The authors of the Constitution of the United States regarded it as a triumph for the human spirit in America that a new form of government could be established by the process of discussion, deliberation, and popular action, as distinguished from the age-long processes of violence. Looking backward from their time and forward into our own, we may say that they were justified in their celebration. With reference to a far less momentous occurrence, this modest occasion, we may properly regard as a triumph for the same spirit a voluntary action of public officials and interested citizens looking to the resolute and continuous improvement of the public services. It is this action, the establishment of a Society for Public Administration, that we are ratifying and approving today. These officials and these citizens are no hirelings of a despotic power, taking orders from above. They are not seeking the aggrandizement of a class, bent on exploiting and holding down a subject people. They are not concerned primarily with emoluments, promotions, and honors as such. On the contrary, they are proposing to search their own hearts and minds, to study ways and means of making more efficient and economical the services rendered by government to the people. They do not wish to diminish either civil liberties or individual responsibilities in society. On the contrary, they cherish these eternal values and intend to discover and develop schemes and methods of administration deliberately adapted to the perpetuation of these precious elements in the American heritage. The step taken today, though it may seem novel to some, is only the culmination of a long chain of events, extending over a period of forty years and more. The establishment of systematic instruction in comparative administration under the auspices of the late Frank J. Goodnow at Columbia University long ago was among the great beginnings. The organization of the New York Bureau of Municipal Research was another advance. The foundation of

Some Aspects of Regional Planning

The subject of regional planning now stands high on the calendar of American social thinking. Miss Kimball, in compiling her admirable manual of information three years ago, was able to make a fair display of papers and documents on regional, rural, state, and national planning. Since that time the sheaf of materials has grown substantially in bulk and variety. This increase of interest in the topic was inevitable. As in the world of abstract ideas every attempt to cut through to the heart of a problem lands us in metaphysics, to use the penetrating observation of William James, so in the field of municipal development any effort to follow the filaments of city planning to their roots leads us beyond the immediate urban area into the large and indefinite region of which it is a part. Anyone who has for a moment got away from the political aspects of a specific city government and taken up some particular question, such as transportation, knows how quickly he is carried beyond the legal boundaries of his municipality into its regional, state, national, and even international, relations. If anyone, perchance, has doubts on the point, let him spend a few hours with the 1920 report of the New York-New Jersey Port and Harbor Development Commission. Of course to adepts this is all trite enough, but it is an indication of what must be the inexorable drift in the thinking of those who are concerned with anything more than the decorative aspects of municipal design.