Suchergebnisse

Growth of Administrative Services. Any one returning to Washington after an absence of several years must be struck at once by the physical changes which have taken place in the political nerve center of the nation. These changes are largely the result of the erection of new government buildings and the clearing away of old structures to make way for others yet to come. In May, 1932, the Washington telephone directory listed 663 office telephones under the heading "United States Government." In June, 1935, it listed 892, or a gain of nearly 35 per cent for the three-year period. This expansion of physical equipment may be said to symbolize the growth of the administrative organization of the national government. One sees on every hand new departmental edifices, and whole buildings now occupied by bureaus or commissions which were formerly tucked away in departmental buildings, or by new independent agencies which were non-existent until a year or two ago.

The use of superlatives is always dangerous, but it may be said, with little exaggeration, that Henry Adams was the Aristotle of America. His similarity to the great pupil of Plato, however, lies not so much in his influence upon subsequent thinkers as in the astonishing range of his interests and studies. Probably no other man of recent times has made such an ambitious effort as he to explore the entire realm of human knowledge and to deduce from it some logical answer to the riddle of the universe, with particular reference to the destiny of society. At a time when specialization had become the order of the day, and when it was considered presumptuous for a man to attempt to master more than one tiny segment of knowledge, he ranged the whole field like a titan, concerning himself with history, politics, economics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, mathematics, geology, anthropology, and psychology.

On November 8, 1932, Minnesota, for the first time in her history, chose Democratic presidential electors. The breach in the ranks of the Solid South in 1928 was hardly more of a break with tradition. That, however, was not the only interesting feature of the recent election. In the first place, all nine of the state's representatives in Congress were elected at large. That alone would not confer any great distinction, but the importance of an election at large was magnified in the present case by the fact that Minnesota is the only state in the Union in which a genuine three-party system prevails. The third party, or Farmer-Labor party is in this instance not only a factor in state politics, but at present the dominant one.