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AbstractA study of city politics in post‐war Germany.

Governor Pinchot's appointment of followers of two powerful politicians to the Philadelphia magistracy came at a time when the entire magisterial system was facing the stiffest criticism from the higher courts, the state bar association, and the more alert lay opinion that it has faced since Magistrate Perri was convicted of extortion and bribery in 1929. Philadelphia magistrates from time immemorial have been charged with partisanship, ignorance, and corruption; and the temper of the present times has begun actively and militantly to react against these shortcomings of a judicial system that is steeped in politics rather than pervaded with a spirit of justice.

While hundreds of "hunger-marchers" milled about outside, the first session of the Seventy-second Congress convened on the first Monday of last December. The mob outside lent a tone that was recurrent in a Congress given over to the consideration of national need and budget-balancing. Often lacking either in leadership or in the will to follow, Congress went its muddled way working against great odds and confronted with tasks of great complexity. The delicacy of the party balance as much as the spur of emergency pointed to the desirability of forgetting partisanship in the presence of national distress. Whether this pious attitude rendered less frequent actions dictated by political expediency remains open to question. In fact, special interests were particularly clamorous during this session.

The regular long session of the 69th Congress met in December to harvest the legislative fruits of the Republican victory of 1924, then almost too well dried by thirteen months' standing and a little damaged by some bad weather in the special session of the Senate. The spirit of quiet husbandry, almost bereft of partisanship, was signalized by the enactment of the Revenue Act of February 26, 1926, which at last virtually realized the oft-frustrated "Mellon plan" of tax revision. Within two months, however, the propitious, if hardly exciting, skies that looked down on these early scenes were darkened, and an almost dramatic transition from sunshine to the shadow of farm-relief perplexities and the distant thunder of the oncoming primaries invested the session with other points of interest besides its industry and output.

Prior to the National Revolution of 1933, one of the foremost postulates guiding the conduct of German civil servants was that of political neutrality. The permanent public personnel—national, state, and local—was to consider itself, in the apt formulation of the Weimar constitution, "servants of the whole people, not of a party." Although imprudent legislative and executive measures taken during the republican era weakened rather than strengthened the principle of neutrality, it was effectively upheld by the disciplinary courts. Indirectly, the professional tenet of non-partisanship facilitated German bureaucracy's identification with a broadly conceived constitutionalism. At a time when the National Socialist vote had become the largest in national elections, organizers for the new creed still made least headway among the government personnel. Statistics published in 1936 disclose the fact that less than four per cent of all civil servants joined the national Socialist party before Hitler's rise to the chancellorship. As the incoming Reich cabinet was not slow to recognize the "impossibility" of large-scale displacements, it resorted to transitional regulations in order to weed out overtly heterogeneous elements.

Long sessions in presidential years are short ones in the sense that the conventions dictate earlier and more definite limits than even Washington weather invites. Moving to such an end, the recent session could not escape the season's contagion. Yet presidential politics hardly set the tone of the session. Its work had unusual inherent interest. The array of questions before it, mingling economic and technical elements, was indicative of the trend of problems of public policy. It presented the paradox of all Congresses, of course: partisanship in building the machine; eclectic voting or bipartisan combinations in the actual passing of bills.Membership. The Republican majority in the House had been cut by the 1926 elections and by a party shift in one of five by-elections from 61 to 40—a margin safe enough for purposes of organization, even apart from the relaxed mood and leaderless condition of insurgency in the lower chamber.In the Senate, however, the Republican lead had been reduced to a hair. Even if Smith of Illinois and Vare of Pennsylvania were counted, those called Republicans numbered only 48, against 47 Democrats and a Farmer Labor member. Deaths chanced to net the Republicans a seat, so that at the session's close, although lacking Smith and Vare, they still had a plurality of one. Two empty seats in the meantime were evidence of the weakness of the regular Senate Republicans when deprived of the aid of House amendments and House conferees.

Since officers who conduct hearings in benefit procedures are given so much latitude and are so free from any leading-strings of a court process, it is of the essence not only that they possess a judicial attitude of mind but that they be keenly alive to the social implications of their work. In 1929, the New York Industrial Survey Commission wrote: "Referees are in every essential judicial officers; and they should be, so far as is humanly possible, above suspicion of improper practices, political or otherwise. They should be persons of mature judgment and be skilled in law—not alone the Compensation law—for they touch many and various points of law not comprehended within the language of the Compensation law. They should be trained in the value of evidence, and they should know the rules of evidence even though they are not obliged to apply them in compensation hearings."It is safe to speculate that if the above had been written in 1941, it would have contained more emphasis on the social viewpoint needed by referees. They must realize that on them depends to a large extent the difficulties accompanying denial of benefits which not only may cause serious hardship to individuals but may even have repercussions of the utmost importance in the community at large. Thus referees conducting hearings are supposed to have a kind of partisanship toward the law, in that they must constantly remember that its aim is to secure payments to all qualified claimants, not merely to decide the merits of a dispute between two opposing parties. Nevertheless, an attitude which is supposed to resolve doubts in favor of a claimant as required by the compensation law does not negate a judicial frame of mind in deciding the merits of a disputed claim.