Between the various
executive officers and visiting committees there was apt to be a
more or less extensive interchange of favours, or what is called
"log-rolling;" and sums of money would be voted by the council only
thus to leak away in undertakings the propriety or necessity of which
was perhaps hard to determine. There was no responsible head who could
be quickly and sharply called to account. Each official's hands were
so tied that whatever went wrong he could declare that it was not his
fault. The confusion was enhanced by the practice of giving executive
work to committees or boards instead of single officers. Benjamin
Franklin used to say, if you wish to be sure that a thing is done, go
and do it yourself. Human experience certainly proves that this is the
only absolutely safe way. The next best way is to send some competent
person to do it for you; and if there is no one competent to be
had, you do the next best thing and entrust the work to the least
incompetent person you can find. If you entrust it to a committee your
prospect of getting it done is diminished and it grows less if
you enlarge your committee. By the time you have got a group of
committees, independent of one another and working at cross purposes,
you have got Dickens's famous Circumlocution Office, where the great
object in life was "how not to do it.
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