| Show THE RED TAPE DISEASE the evils of red tape must indeed have assumed formidable dimensions to need a commission to abate the nuisance such seems to be the fact abo keep commission Is now engaged upon an inquiry into departmental methods which is merely a polite way of indicating a whole system of red tape which is more effective than anything else in dampening enthusiasm and discouraging activity an ordinary private business conducted in detail as the great government offices are conducted would not be long in reaching the bankruptcy court it would be strangled by the weight of its own machinery the president to whom red tape must be a peculiar abhorrence instructs the commission to put forth a resolute effort to secure brevity in correspondence and to eliminate useless letter writing it Is doubtful if the commission will succeed red tape probably owes its origin to unnecessary officials who have no valid duties and who seek to excuse their own existence by the manufacture of fictitious duties tha smallest operations are therefore encumbered with innumerable details formal letters about nothing in particular are solemnly addressed by one official to another in the next room and entries records and registrations are piled one op another without serving any con cel vable purpose except to make work red tape la a disease of the officials mind which under its influence grad bally confuses the means with the end and so exalts the former that the blatter becomes almost impossible of attainment and so the president instructs the commission that there is a typo of bureaucrat who believes his entire work and the entire borte of the government should be the collecting of papers in reference to a case commenting with eager minuteness on each abid corresponding with other officials id reference thereto he tells us that these people alre nothing at all about the case but only for the documents in tho case that is of course tho whole trouble the means has become the end and the end never reached at all it can prevent it the commission may do something to check an evil that is common to all govern ments but it awill not bo so easily cured the fault is not so much with a system as with human nature |
