An important and clearly marked recent trend in American government is that in the direction of systematic planning—local, state, and national. City planning has developed for the last twenty years, and there are now some 700 city planning agencies. The activities of these boards have been halted somewhat during the depression, although some 9,000 workers under the C.W.A. aided in the development of city plans in 1934. On the whole, the cities have fallen behind in the movement they started.

The most significant single event in the urban field is the establishment of a new type of planning agency in Cincinnati, known as the department of economic security, an office through which the employment and reëmployment problems of that community are made the subject of governmental study and action, in cooperation with industry. The director is a man of wide experience and broad social vision in the person of Colonel Waite, one time city manager of Dayton and recently deputy administrator of public works

Classification is regarded by some as a very elementary and a very barren scientific device or method. For those who attach most importance to applied science, and to the achievement of practical ends, classification seems a dry and futile procedure. For those likewise who insist upon the importance of moral standards and purposes, the brutally empirical inductive process of classification seems inhuman, possibly even anti-social.

That classification is an elementary task of science, in the sense of occurring early in the whole scientific process, no one could deny, albeit only some one who has had immediate and serious experience in classification can appreciate the advanced problems, both of theory and of application, which can be encountered therein. From the point of view of human interest, something would depend upon what is being classified, whether pearls or potatoes, for example, although it would seem to be an implied tenet of pure science that no knowledge of the universe is without value and that we are not able to say beforehand how important a given piece of knowledge will turn out to be.

The rule that the national government may not burden the governmental agencies of the states by taxation is generally familiar to students of constitutional law. An interesting phase of the development of this doctrine is found in judicial and administrative rulings on the immunity of state agencies under the national stamp-tax laws.

The Early History of the Stamp Tax as Applied to State Judicial Documents. Stamps had been used as a means of securing revenue for nearly two centuries when such a method of taxation was suggested for the United States in 1797. The stamp tax originated in Holland in 1624, when, during a time of “dire necessity,” the States-General offered a reward to anyone who would invent a new kind of tax, and someone proposed “the requiring of stamps on documents and writings having a legal operation or forming necessary steps in suits in the law courts.” In 1694, England adopted this method of raising revenue. Congress first resorted to the stamp tax on legal instruments in acts of 1797 and 1813.

Sharp criticism by Chief Justice Hughes and Associate Justice Brandeis of the Supreme Court, in the Eastern Texas oil case, of the haphazard manner in which executive and administrative orders having the force of law are distributed attracted public attention to a much-needed reform which has been advocated at intervals by political scientists. Lack of definite information concerning the issuance of these orders, combined with their rapidly increasing number and importance under the codes of fair competition, are factors in the growing demand that they be published in some definite and available form.

If one consults the Catalogue of Public Documents, under the subject “executive orders,” one finds the following: “See notes, entries, and lists of references under President of the United States. Executive orders—also subjects of orders.”

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.

The history of public administration in the United States is a record of compromise between conflicting principles. The oldest and most bitterly-contested of the many clashes between antagonistic points of view is that between the principle of the spoils system on the one hand and the merit principle on the other. Stripped of eulogistic verbiage, these principles present two diametrically opposed objectives—the former that administration shall be the happy hunting ground of the spoilsman, the latter that administration shall be a non-political service where “efficiency is king.” For a century at least, with the possible exception of the early days of the national administration, the advocates of the spoils system held a dominant position in the struggle, compromising only where a tradition of service protected a public office from partisan control. By 1870, however, the movement for civil service reform had gained strength and the following three or four decades witnessed a determined drive for the adoption of the merit system. The reaction to the spoils system principle, once begun, has continued ever since. Today, administration, by virtue of its sweeping powers over individual liberty and property, has come into closer contact with the citizen than ever before, and this fact is serving to accelerate the movement in favor of the merit principle in the public service.

With the rapid expansion of the services of the United States government, especially since the inception of the New Deal, one of the greatest problems in the maintenance of efficient administration is the coordination of the multitude of governmental activities. Some may object to better coordination and increased efficiency because of the fear of reducing the number of employees and increasing unemployment. This fear is unfounded. The object of coordination is greater efficiency. This might result either in decreased employment and expenditure or in more effectively accomplishing the objects of government, and in the performance of more or better services than would otherwise be possible. In the latter case, coordination might result in increased employment. If the government is to accomplish the purposes of the New Deal, all its establishments must work in harmony. No greater need for coordination has existed than during this depression.

The Treaty of Versailles provided that at the termination of a period of fifteen years from its coming into force, a plebiscite should be held in the Saar Territory to determine under what sovereignty its inhabitants desired to be placed. The following conditions were laid down for the plebiscite: “A vote will take place by communes or districts on the three following alternatives: (a) maintenance of the régime established by the present Treaty and by this Annex; (b) union with France; (c) union with Germany. All persons, without distinction of sex, more than 20 years old at the date of voting, resident in the Territory at the date of signature of the present Treaty, will have the right to vote. The other conditions, methods, and the date of voting shall be fixed by the Council of the League of Nations in such a way as to secure the freedom, secrecy,and trustworthiness of the voting.”