“Granted the truth of all you say; that every county officer stands on his independent pedestal of authority, that the county is a headless institution where responsibility is scattered in a thousand different directions; that urban counties are the weakest brothers in the political family—granted all that, but what of it?”
So cogitates the “average American”—or so it would seem. If he reads his county paper consistently he has been held in his seat over and over again by the hackneyed lines of Pope:
“For forms of government let fools contest;
What e’er is best administered is best.”
After a long course of mental stimulation along these lines, we are quite prepared to hear him remark that after all what really counts for government is MEN—an observation which is supposed to silence all contradiction. Your “average” friend, if he has more than an average political energy, then goes out and helps to see that the “right sort” of man is elected coroner.
There is undoubtedly more than an element of truth and wisdom in all these sentiments. The industrial world is coming more and more to believe that the great essential in coöperative effort of any sort is not plan of organization, not methods, but personnel—men. And even government presents instances of men who have “made good” conspicuously against a form of organization which favored insubordination, against the interference of invisible powers, against the hundred and one cunningly devised handicaps to good administration.
We might with good grace take kindly to a system that brought distinguished, capable, honest, well-qualified men for the public service. If we could get good men and good administration as the normal output of the existing systems of county government, there would be satisfaction all around.
But does the typical American government work that way? We shall examine in this chapter the relationships between the system, the men and the product.
To get the right angle on the subject, we should put ourselves in the position of, let us say, the sheriff of Pike County. He is a likable, popular fellow—that is how he happens to be sheriff. His likability, his popularity, have made him a particularly valuable adjunct of the Pike County Republican (or Democratic) organization. In the election campaign he has proven himself a vote-getter, he has given the organization a respectable tone. And now that he is in office his congenital good nature has not been changed. His popularity has been due to his unfailing loyalty to his friends and supporters. These good people swarm about him on the first day of his term and he has it not in his heart to refuse the only favor within his power to grant.
So much for one set of claimants upon his favor. But there is also the whole body of his supporters, the general electorate and the tax-paying contingent of the county; they have a claim upon him too and the new sheriff enters upon his duties with a sincere desire to serve them by running his office in the most efficient and economical manner. The significant part of the whole business is that these two ambitions are more than likely to prove inconsistent. Personal friendship dictates that he should hand out deputyships to “the boys” of his own heart; public service, that he should ignore the claims of friendship and man his office with competent assistants, regardless of personal, political or ecclesiastical connections. And so the new officer, through a situation not of his own making, is caught in a dilemma. Probably nine out of ten county officials either resolve the difficulty on the grounds of friendship or strike a compromise between their conflicting desires—and the efficiency of the office in either case is impaired. Every man coming into an office with favors to dispense has strings attached to his person. He cannot look his public duties quite squarely in the eye, but has always to qualify every new plan, every selection of a subordinate with “What will the county chairman say?” And if he has ambitions to hold office for a second term, or to go higher, he is naturally careful about irritating the goose that lays the golden egg. For the county chairman is not apt to be keen about the plans for economy or reducing the number of jobs for “the boys.” Such plans do not fit in with his requirements.
The system hamstrings the man. Once a county officer in New Jersey needed two additional clerks. Believing, however, that the board of chosen freeholders was following a strict program of economy, he went to them asking for four new men, with the thought that his requisition would be cut in half. But not so. The official and the board were of opposite parties. A member of the board came around and remarked that “you need eight new men.” The officer is said to have taken the hint and jobs were accordingly provided for four deserving members of each of the leading parties.
In such cases it is clearly not personality but the system that dominates.
The enforced division of allegiance between party and people is but a single source of personal inefficiency. Under the much lauded “government of laws” that reaches the heights of absurdity in the county, the chance of effective law enforcement is reduced to a minimum. Take it for instance in the exact compliance with statutory procedure. The sale of a piece of real estate for non-payment of taxes, for instance, must be conducted in accord with a detailed series of steps set forth in the law, or the title of the property is clouded. Claims for payment for services rendered or material supplied, may also be legally allowed only after the proper formalities have been observed. And in countless other directions the efficiency of the county officers and employees must be measured principally by a meticulous obedience to the law.
But contrast the necessity with the performance: The former chief of the Bureau of Municipal Accounts in the Comptroller’s office of an eastern state, after examining the affairs of fifty-six counties, was able in 1914 to say: “In not a single county examined has there been found compliance with every provision of law. On the contrary, in each of the counties examined serious irregularities in financial transactions have been disclosed, and the taxpayers’ money illegally expended, in some cases beyond recovery.”
The comptroller’s agents examined the affairs of county “A.” Of the transactions for the year ending October 31, 1913, they said: “County administration during that year was carried on, in many important respects, illegally, and in many cases the officials completely ignored the law, resulting in waste of public money, amounting to many thousands of dollars.” The former treasurer of this county, according to the official report, “had, it would seem, no proper conception of the legal duties imposed upon him. He made payments of unauthorized drafts of committees of the board.... His important statutory duty to pay only on proper legal authority apparently constituted meaningless words.” The same authority reported that:
“The board of supervisors ordered payments that were without authority of law, to the extent of many thousands of dollars. The illegalities in the audits of the board of supervisors were particularly objectionable because of the fact that many of the subjects of criticism were called to the board’s attention in the report of a former examination. Illegal payments under such circumstances became a defiance of legal restriction.... The administration of the poor fund was not in accord with the law and through a failure of the officials to understand the requirements of the law and the necessities of the county, the lack of proper coöperation between the county treasurer, the superintendent of the poor, and the board of supervisors, confusion resulted in the poor fund finances and a large deficit accumulated which was financed by illegal temporary loans.... The county has suffered to a material extent from inefficiency, indifference to law and neglect.”
That discoveries were by no means local or unique is indicated by periodical complaints that have come up from other parts of the country.
Was it men, as such, or was it not also a system that gave rise to the evidences of bad government in County “B.”? Did it simply happen that the treasurer, the county judge, the district attorney, the sheriff and the justices of the peace were all breaking the laws at once? Is it to be supposed that law-breaking flourished naturally in the atmosphere of that particular region? The performances of these officers are both so instructive and picturesque that they will bear a brief recounting here.
The examiners of the affairs of this county a few years ago turned up this quaint little document:
“Ellenberg Center, Nov. 21, 1900.
County of....................., Dr., to Wellington Hay. 1898, Sept. 22. To 7 days’ labor with deputy sheriff looking up stolen horse $14.00 To paid all expenses per above 15.60 $29.60 “Mr. Hay performed services in following up two horse thieves who had stolen his horse at my request as sheriff, one of the men, George Burnham, had several indictments against him in this county and all who knew his doings were anxious for his capture, I certainly think Mr. Hay should be paid.
“C. W. Vaughan,
“Late Sheriff.”
In this instance, Mr. Hay, a deputy sheriff, was charging the county for chasing up his own horse. The county treasurer who paid this claim was the one who, in spite of very definite provisions of law, had failed to designate the banks which should have custody of the county funds, and deposited them with a favored institution which paid the county no interest; who failed to keep any cash book or any account with any bank even on the stubs of his check book; who allowed at least one creditor of the county to collect an illegal claim four times. This is the county in which the county judge was found to have his own private law offices elaborately furnished with all the up-to-date filing devices and blanks, all at the public expense; in which the coroner reports that between the 13th and the 19th of May he had worked fifteen days and collected in full from the county. The records of practically every other officer in the county revealed similar irregularities and a similar lack of any fine sense of the interests of the public.
Did it just happen that the people of county “A” or county “B” elected none but law-breakers to office? Was it the character of the officers which alone was responsible for “inefficiency, indifference to law and neglect?” Would the condition have been different with another average set of men in office?
This is certain: that upon the officers of county “A” was imposed the duty of enforcing laws which were both intricate and difficult for a layman to find, and when found, to understand. But over and above all this, there was no constant discipline of a responsible organization and no certain and swift penalty for non-compliance with or disobedience of the law.
So difficult is the case, in fact, that it would seem from reports emanating from different parts of the country, that county officers have long ceased to worry about the legality of most of their acts. A common practice is not to investigate the law at all but to look back over the work of predecessors and follow in their tracks—an easier and more natural method for the untrained mind than to seek legal authority for action at its fountainhead in the statutes. But it makes a joke of the statutes! And when, in the absence of a powerful executive head, these written laws, which constitute most important connecting link, between the various county officers, are broken, the directing hand of the state is perforce withdrawn.
The failures of government in these counties were due in no small measure at least to the system, rather than to the individual men. No mere “good” man would necessarily have been better qualified or more inclined to look up the law and follow it implicitly. For it is not of such qualities that political “goodness,” from the voters’ standpoint, consists!
Nor are these minor delinquencies the sole products of the evil system. In Hudson County, New Jersey, with a citizenry somewhat less alert and with state officials a little less vigilant, the essential factors present in the counties mentioned gave rise to positive conscienceless and willful waste of public funds. The story is illuminating:
The building of the court house was begun under an act of the legislature which authorized a committee of the board of chosen freeholders to purchase such lands and erect such county buildings as might be needed. The committee was empowered to appoint its own counsel and architect to go ahead and build. The only limitation upon its powers was that it should spend not to exceed four fifths of one per cent. of the county ratables. This was a restriction which, under the amount of ratables as of the time when the project was authorized, would have permitted a maximum expenditure of about $1,580,000. But before even the contracts had been let the growth in valuations had so increased that the committee might legally spend $7,500,000.
The original figure for the cost of the court house had been $990,000, but before the citizens of the county were aroused it reached $3,328,016. Investigation revealed such extravagance and carelessness with the county’s money in every detail, that the legislature in 1911 abolished the committee and created a court house commission, the members of which were to be appointed by the Justice of the Supreme Court.
The building of county court houses under just such auspices and with a similar outcome is a characteristic bit of local history the country over. But county shortcomings do not always stop at willful extravagance. Sometimes it is a tale of grafting of the grossest sort, of which typical conditions a story is related by Herbert Quick, who had charge of an investigation into the affairs of Woodbury County, Iowa, some twenty years ago. The county supervisors apparently had traveled unobserved, unchecked, along the same road but further, as the officers of county “A” and the court house committee of Hudson County. Says Mr. Quick:
“A supervisor would draw thousands of dollars from the road and bridge funds on his own warrant, put the money in his pocket, and account for it by turning in receipts for road or bridge work. Some of this work was done and some was not. Most of the receipts were signed by political supporters of the supervisors. To some of them were signed names of persons who never existed.
“Everything the county bought was extravagantly bought. Any dealer who was willing to put in padded bills could get the chance to sell his goods.
“There was a regular system of letting bills go unpaid so that the persons furnishing the goods would put in the statements the second time, after which they would be paid twice—once to the firm to which they were really owing, and again to one or more of the county ring. In most cases the merchant furnishing the goods never knew of the double payment. They had a system of orders and receipts by which the merchant was kept in ignorance.
“In some cases the approaches to bridges were built and charged twice, once to the road fund and once to the bridge fund. The man who did the work got one payment and the grafters got the other. The people paid twice in these cases, and sometimes three times.
“A merchant sold some blankets to the county for the use of the prisoners in the jail. He was allowed about a hundred dollars on the county claim register, but refused to accept the payment and sued the county. In court he recovered judgment for all he claimed, and was paid out of the judgment fund. The general fund claim he had refused to accept showed as unpaid. Somebody on the inside went to him and got an order for ‘any sums due me from the county’ and drew the original bill over again. So the county paid the original allowance, the amount of the judgment, and the costs of the lawsuit. Rather dear blankets!
“Orders of this sort were drawn in the names of the people who had been dead for years.
“This is a sample of the sort of work which prevailed in that county, and which plunged the county into debt from which it will not recover, the way things generally go, for generations.”
In Indiana the leaven of obscurity and irresponsibility had long been working when the state board of accounts took up its work in 1909. The records of that office since that time show that more than one million six hundred thousand dollars had been charged against local officials and partly recovered. The board states that in their belief fully ninety per cent. of this was not due to deliberate wrongdoing but to an indulgent indifference, resulting in an almost endless confusion and incomplete accounts. Like the county officers in many another state, the officials in the Indiana counties, according to a message of former Governor Mount, “had been following precedents on an ascending scale.”
If the whole trouble lies in the personnel of government, there is either no real county problem or else the problem is unsolved. If it is merely a matter of men, the voters of the county need only, when the next election falls due, to “turn the rascals out” and elect more promising successors. But then that is what the voters have been doing these many years, and county government has not materially improved!
But if when the “good man” theory has been tested to the limit and found wanting, nothing else appears, may it not be suggested that the system has much to do with the man first in his selection and then in the influence that determines his conduct? The officers in the counties cited were creatures of the flesh. They found themselves involved in an organization which not only gave them little or no moral support, but which actually surrounded them with temptation to loaf, to commit errors and to steal. They were under no discipline to obey the law or to treat the interests of the county with any due consideration.
In the realm of government, as in the department of horticulture, it would appear that figs are not gathered from thistles.