512 Forestry Quarterly 



strata its worth in the United States. The result has been a 

 reaHzation that governmental systems work well only when 

 thoroughly adjusted to the economic, racial, social and industrial 

 condition of the people, and that no general theory is applicable 

 to even the same people under different conditions. Consequently, 

 with the changes that have taken place in the racial and indus- 

 trial conditions in the United States there has come a marked 

 tendency to place upon the central government greater and 

 greater responsibility for national undertakings that have an inti- 

 mate relationship to the daily life of the people. Naturally, if 

 these national enterprises do not pay expenses the difference must 

 be made up in the form of taxes, and as few men are able to 

 escape the tax collector, the question of efffciency in govern- 

 mental administration becomes one of direct import to every citi- 

 zen unless we are prepared to admit that the government owes 

 every man a living whether he earns it or not. 



This brings up the question as to who is best qualified to per- 

 form the functions of executive government. It was long held 

 in the United States that the functions of government were essen- 

 tially so simple and commonplace that they could be performed 

 by any ordinary citizen. In a simple agricultural community, 

 with no complex internal industrial relationships, no great prob- 

 lems of foreign trade or policy, and abundant room for internal 

 expansion of population, a government of this simple character 

 may work satisfactorily. But the moment the government under- 

 takes to perform tasks of a technical character, tasks which 

 involve the possession of special qualifications in the personnel, 

 then the necessity immediately arises for the establishment of 

 a system for securing government officers who possess these 

 special qualifications ; in other words, the expert becomes an 

 indispensable part of the government machinery. The introduc- 

 tion of the expert into governmental activities has met unusual 

 difficulties in America, not because of economic or political con- 

 ditions so much as because of social conditions. In practically 

 all European states the great mass of the people has always been 

 accustomed to more or less rigidly drawn lines of class distinc- 

 tion, with the commonly accepted idea of a governing class spe- 

 cially endowed with the privilege of exercising the leading part 

 in the national government. Where these governing classes have 



