He is in a position to do that
because he presides over a vast collection of bureaus and their
agents, which report as well as act. But he tells Congress what he
chooses to tell it. He cannot be heckled, and the censorship as to
what is compatible with the public interest is in his hands. It is a
wholly one-sided and tricky relationship, which sometimes reaches such
heights of absurdity, that Congress, in order to secure an important
document has to thank the enterprise of a Chicago newspaper, or the
calculated indiscretion of a subordinate official. So bad is the
contact of legislators with necessary facts that they are forced to
rely either on private tips or on that legalized atrocity, the
Congressional investigation, where Congressmen, starved of their
legitimate food for thought, go on a wild and feverish man-hunt, and
do not stop at cannibalism.
Except for the little that these investigations yield, the occasional
communications from the executive departments, interested and
disinterested data collected by private persons, such newspapers,
periodicals, and books as Congressmen read, and a new and excellent
practice of calling for help from expert bodies like the Interstate
Commerce Commission, the Federal Trade Commission, and the Tariff
Commission, the creation of Congressional opinion is incestuous. From
this it follows either that legislation of a national character is
prepared by a few informed insiders, and put through by partisan
force; or that the legislation is broken up into a collection of local
items, each of which is enacted for a local reason.
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