Instead of the often static, even hostile, attitudes which exist in so many State capitols and in Washington between legislators and administrators, here is a dynamic and friendly handling of common problems. The committee's initiative in bridging the gap between administrative interests and activities and legislative understanding and action marks one of the few significant advances in recent legislative practice.

The committee has extended its cooperative relations to legislative as well as administrative agencies. During the past 2 years it has met with the joint committee on interstate coooperation and kept closely in touch with the work of the economy commission at points of mutual interest. A number of legislators not members of the committee are thus better acquainted with its activities. When legislation touching industrial and labor relations is contemplated, the committee has an opportunity to help in its formulation. The fact that the ranking majority and minority leaders of both houses are ex officio members of the committee-and frequently attend its meetings-increases the understanding of its program on both sides of the aisle.

Most of the committee's work goes on in closed informal sessions. Formal hearings on pending legislative proposals are the exception. However, the committee does hold formal hearings from time to time and it never refuses to provide an opportunity to any interested group to submit written or verbal testimony on any legislative proposal within its province. It seeks, however, to draw these groups into informal, off-the-record conference first, to explore the issues involved, and to reconcile conflicting viewpoints by consensus rather than compromise. This method has usually achieved its objective. Legislative proposals advocated by special groups concerned with industrial and labor relations have more than once been postponed voluntarily, pending general agreement on principle and detail.

STATE-WIDE CONTACTS

As the committee's analysis of industrial and labor conditions has broadened to include such areas of study as industrial migration or postwar reconstruction, it has sought to establish collaborative contacts with every interested agency in the State. Many of these bodies, civic and educational as well as industrial and labor, have developed the habit of consulting members of the committee or of the staff on matters of mutual interest. Organized labor, for instance, usually talks over legislative proposals with the chairman and others of the committee's personnel before each session. The same habit is developing among other organizations. Apparently there is a growing appreciation of the objective but sympathetic hearing and advice which every group receives from the committee.

From the committee's side, these contacts are, of course, highly useful. They promote confidence between it and a broad spectrum of the State's economic and social agencies no less real than that developed with official bodies. The effect of these contacts on the character of the legislation sponsored by what are often called pressure groups—and on the spirit in which they exert their pressures-needs no underlining here.

But the committee has not waited for these organizations to come to it for advice or help. More than once it has actively sought their

cooperation. This was true, for instance, in its study of industrial migration, much of the field work for which was carried out by cooperating private groups in all sections of the State. Similarly, in developing its educational and postwar studies, the committee has enlisted the services of individuals and agencies directly concerned with various facets of its program. The fact that the committee has sought to bring these unofficial bodies in on the ground floor of its own activities, to participate in the initial planning of its program, has enhanced the value of their contributions to its efforts.

This brief review of the committee at work can give at best only a highly distilled sense of the real flavor of its active life over 6 years. One would need to be the "invisible bystander" at its meetings to catch the quality of its vigorous discussions. Only by attending its sessions with the various administrative agencies would it be possible to see the way collaboration grows from a mutual will to improve industrial and labor relations. In these sessions, one would discover that the ultimate harmony does not arise in an absence of sharp divergencies of opinion or the subservience of the administrative to the legislative viewpoint. Instead, one would become aware of an established custom of frank debate, animated by a common purpose but untrammeled by questions of precedence or authority.

Again, one would have to observe some of the committee's off-therecord hearings or participate in its conferences with unofficial agencies to realize how genuine is its desire and how successful its efforts to foster understanding. But those who share the work of the committee soon sense the very practical results of its confidence in the ability of apparently conflicting interests to find common grounds of cooperative action.

THIS SPIRIT OF GOOD WILL

This unique experiment in legislative trail-blazing is no mere accident. It rests primarily on the effective leadership of the committee's chairman, the will of its members to promote stable industrial and labor relations, the careful strategy of its counsel. The attitude of mind that has guided the committee from the beginning is the real source of its success. That attitude was stated in its 1940 report:

The most satisfactory and the happiest human relationships are the product not of legal compulsion, but rather of a voluntary determination among human beings to cooperate with one another. Though we may legislate to the end of time, there will never be industrial peace and harmony without good faith, integrity, a high degree of responsibility, and a real desire to cooperate on the party of all parties concerned. Without this spirit of good will, all of the social, economic, and labor laws of man will prove eventually to be in vain.

What of the result? Two aspects of the record already noted are permanent contributions of the committee to the legislative process in New York State; they are results which can be achieved in every other State.

First, the relations between the legislature and many administrative agencies have been lifted from a plane of negative frustration to one of positive cooperation. No single factor of the contemporary political scene is so critical for the future of democratic government-indeed for its survival.

Second, the committee has succeeded no less effectively in taking industrial and labor relations "out of politics." A nonpartisan ap

proach to the conflicts which still persist in our society is the surest, perhaps the only, guaranty that democracy is the best instrument for the promotion of the general welfare. In achieving this approach in New York State, in persuading all the groups concerned, in and out of the legislature, to adhere in practice to the spirit in which the committee views these problems, it has made democracy more meaningful-and more vigorous.

[From the American Magazine, February 1945]

STREAMLINING CONGRESS

(By James F. Byrnes')

The new Congress will face decisions perhaps as fateful as any in our history. And yet it convenes in a certain atmosphere of doubt whether a legislative body, many of whose procedures and techniques date back to the gaslight era, is equipped to deal with the swift-moving complexities of modern government. More and more frequently, in recent years, people have been asking:

"What is the matter with Congress?"

It is not so generally known that Congress itself is asking the same question. Last August the Senate passed a resolution, sponsored by Senator Maloney, of Connecticut, providing for the creation of a joint bipartisan committee of House and Senate to explore the whole question of "strengthening the Congress, simplifying its operations, improving its relationships with other branches of the United States Government, and enabling it better to meet its responsibilities under the Constitution."

A similar resolution was introduced in the House by Congressman Monroney, and awaits passage.

Here is a matter of deep concern to us all. Our system of representative government cannot function properly without a strong, vital, efficient, well-informed, and vigilant Congress. Writing not as a public official, but as a citizen, I venture to make such comments based on my 25 years' experience in the House and Senate.

I disagree with those critics who believe that Congress is lacking in intelligence or patriotism. But I agree that there is opportunity for reform of the legislative machinery just as there is opportunity for reform in the executive and judicial branches of the Government. Here are some of the ways in which I feel that Congress can be streamlined and its efficiency increased:

The individual Senator and Congressman should be given adequate staff assistance to allow him more time for legislation, and should be better paid in accordance with his heavier modern duties.

The entire committee system should be revised in accordance with present needs. The number of congressional committees should be reduced. Chairmen of committees should constitute a congressional cabinet to meet with the President, thereby promoting a closer rela

1 Justice Byrnes is one of the few men in our national history to have had active experience in all three branches of the Government-first as Representative and Senator, then as Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court, and finally, in the executive branch, as Director of War Mobilization and Reconversion.

tionship between the White House and Capitol Hill. This would permit an allocation and concentration of responsibility which would bring out existing qualities of leadership in both Houses, and promote both a stronger and closer relationship with the White House. A permanent staff of trained career men should be built up to aid and advise the committees on legislation.

An improved procedure should be devised for handling and checking on appropriations of funds.

And finally, for the better information of the legislators, members of the Cabinet should be authorized to appear upon the floor of Congress on invitation to answer questions.

Such changes as these would help the Members of Congress, already able as individuals, to rise to their full responsibilities as a group.

Many factors have contributed to the lessened influence of Congress. For one thing, when, in 1911 the House increased its membership from 387 to 435, its effectiveness was impaired and its power lessened. Legislation can be enacted only as a result of debate and compromise, and obviously it is more difficult to secure an agreement of 435 men than it is of 387 men. As a practical matter, this cannot be remedied by Congress, since to do so the House would have to reduce its membership by voting its Members out of office. The State legislatures would have to do the job by redistricting, thus taking out of Congress' hands the determination of which Members should go.

Again, with each passing year there was transferred to the Federal Government powers previously exercised by the States. One would think this would increase the power of the Congress and of Congressmen. As a matter of fact, it lessened the influence of Congressmen as legislators. The Congress could only enact laws fixing general policies; it could not determine in advance just how these general policies should be applied to many varied situations arising in all sections of the country. It became necessary to delegate to the executive branch of the Government the power to issue regulations in order to carry out the general purposes of laws.

As an example, when the States, in order to augment their funds for public roads, agreed to the Federal Government's supervising the expenditure of Federal-aid funds, Congress, in turn, delegated this supervision to the Bureau of Public Roads.

The necessary effect of such delegations was to leave to the executive departments considerable discretion in determining how these laws should be applied in individual cases. This resulted in greatly increasing the business of citizens with the executive departments in Washington. This might have lightened the work of the Congress, but it did not lighten the work of the Congressmen. On the contrary, it so increased the demands made by citizens upon the national legislators as to make it almost impossible for a Senator or Congressman to find the time necessary to attend to his legislative duties.

The people of a congressional district have come to look upon a Congressman, not as their representative in Congress, but as their representative in Washington. The average man who has business with a department of a State government seldom thinks of communicating with the State legislators, but if he has business with the executive departments of the Federal Government he calls upon the Senator or the Congressman to attend to his business with the Government.

It is now not unusual for a Senator to have 25 or 30 people a day come from his State to Washington on business with departments. They ask the legislator to leave his duties at the Capitol and accompany them to various departments to attend to their business. The people who come are people of political influence. If they are not personally known to the legislator they bring letters from personal and political friends, and it is difficult to refuse their requests.

If the legislator should attempt to comply with all requests to visit departments, the only way he would know what is going on in Congress would be by reading the newspapers. He would never get an opportunity to read or answer any of his mail, and the average Congressman each day receives at least 100 letters, many of them requiring not only answers, but the writing of other letters.

This does not include the inspired propaganda which the Congressman soon learns to detect. It is nothing new. I recall the day I became a Member of the House, Speaker Champ Clark, addressing the new Members, stated that each day we would receive so many letters advising us how to vote on every pending question that we would be apt to conclude every voter in our district was writing. He declared, however, that not more than 5 percent of the people would ever write a Congressman, but that 5 percent would constantly write, and it was the duty of a Congressman always to remember the 95 percent who attended to their business and trusted him to represent their interests properly.

So, if you think the trouble with Congress is that Congressmen do not devote enough time to legislative problems, the answer is that the people who elect men to serve in the Congress then work diligently to keep them from doing what they were elected to do.

The appropriations for the staff of a Senator or Congressman should permit the employment of one person at a salary of at least $6,000 to enable the legislator to secure someone to help look after the business of constituents with departments. The Congressman should also have sufficient funds with which to employ an efficient office staff. In increasing its clerk hire fund, Congress should take steps to protect itself against criticism because of nepotism.

Senators and Congressmen should receive higher salaries. The Washington representatives of labor, farm, and business organizations as a rule receive higher salaries than the Senators and Congressmen who represent all the people. In addition, they have expense accounts. Congress authorizes the payment to officials in the executive departments of salaries higher than their own salaries. But daily men are leaving the executive agencies to accept appointments in private corporations at three and four times their Government salaries.

Having voted for the stabilization law preventing any increase in the compensation of private citizens, Congressmen would not at this time vote to increase their own salaries. But with the termination of wage control, Congressmen should promptly increase the salaries of Senators and Congressmen from $10,000 to $15,000 a year.

It is in the interest of good government that the retirement law which covers other officials and employees of Government should be extended to cover Members of the Congress on the same terms and with the same contributions to the retirement fund.