Suchergebnisse

This is the latest and most comprehensive of the series of studies promoted or patronized by Mr. Hoover, which began in 1921 with the report on "Waste in Industry." In September, 1929, the President called upon a group of leading social scientists to examine recent social trends with a view to preparing such a report "as might supply a basis for the formulation of large national policies looking to the next phase in the nation's development." This was an ambitious undertaking, more ambitious than any of those which had preceded it. But the President believed firmly in the method of fact-finding by commission, as was demonstrated by the contemporaneous creation of the Wickersham Commission. This belief appeared to be justified by the accomplishments of previous commissions, especially the commission whose report on "Recent Economic Changes" was then approaching completion. Be that as it may, it was logical that the series of studies should culminate with a broader view of the great society which constitutes the American community. For the purpose of making this survey, President Hoover secured the services of six expert investigators whose past performances had gained for them the confidence of American students of the social sciences. Among them there was a thoroughly competent representative of political science. There was also assurance of adequate financial support. Thus the enterprise began with a good prospect of achieving whatever it might be practicable to achieve in the existing state of the social sciences.

At the outset, it is pertinent to recall the high hopes with which, ten years ago, the Washington Conference Treaties were proclaimed to the world. We can still remember the measured words with which President Harding brought the Conference to a close. "This Conference," he declared, "has wrought a truly great achievement. It is hazardous sometimes to speak in superlatives, and I will be restrained. But I will say with every confidence that the faith plighted here today, kept in national honor, will mark the beginning of a new and better epoch in human progress."The grounds for these high hopes were set forth in the official summary transmitted to the Senate along with the record of the proceedings of the Conference and the texts of the treaties themselves:To estimate correctly the character and value of these several treaties [it is written in this document] they should be considered as a whole. Each one contributes its part in combination with the others towards the establishment of conditions in which peaceful security will take the place of competitive preparation for war. … Competitive armament, however, is the result of a state of mind in which a national expectation of attack by some other country causes preparation to meet the attack.

Professional students of American politics, like other members of the governed classes, have their private reasons for discontent with the present administration at Washington. The business depression, to be sure, has not injured the educational interests of the country to the same extent as most others. Decreased income from tuition and endowments has reduced somewhat the demand for young Ph.D.'s in colleges and universities, and the American Association of University Professors has received an extraordinary number of calls for help from older teachers who have been laid off for more or less obscure reasons on the plea of lack of funds. But in general, education seems to be one of the public services for which the public will not readily reduce its effective demand. Boys and girls continue to grow up in bad times as in good, and the increasing difficulty of finding remunerative employment only stimulates the desire for further education. Professorial salaries, once fixed, are not easily reduced, and the fall in the general level of prices leaves most professors better off than before. Hence the private reasons of professors of political science for discontent with the present administration, though no less exigent than those of other members of the governed classes, are of a peculiar nature.In the first place, the present administration has not fulfilled the high hopes of many political scientists for improvement in the methods of legislation at the national capital. It was hoped, for example, that the executive would take a vigorous initiative in recommending measures to the Congress and would make greater use of technical experts in the preparation of administration measures.