!64 PROBLEMS IN WILD LIFE CONSERVATION 



cerned. Each bureau has its friends in Congress and most 

 bureau chiefs are strongly opposed to transfers or consoli- 

 dations. Consequently, congressional reorganization faces 

 almost insurmountable inherent difficulties. The situation 

 was well summed up in the testimony of Secretary of In- 

 terior Wilbur before a House committee when he said : 4B 



This is the most difficult task in the government ; it is the most 

 difficult in every organization, to bring about reorganization with 

 the consent of the people who are to be reorganized. They form 

 a defense organization to protect themselves. It is just a na- 

 tural human reaction. But here comes the President and says 

 " I am willing to take the gaff ; I am willing to go down with 

 this thing ; I have been studying it for a dozen years ; I see a 

 chance to make great economies, and if Congress will let me set 

 up certain procedures here I am willing to take the trouble and 

 put the thing through." My personal belief is that only the 

 Executive, knowing the situation and willing to take the trouble 

 and to stand the pains of the thing, will ever bring this about. 

 It will never become automatic. Take my own position as head 

 of a department: I cannot recommend that any head of depart- 

 ment, any bureau, be transferred to any other department. I 

 would lose the loyalty of that bureau at once. I cannot recom- 

 mend that some other bureau be given to us from another de- 

 partment because I will get the enmity of that department at 

 once. But the President sitting up there, and knowing all the 

 different factors of the government, can say to me, " I think you 

 must arrange matters so that everything that has to do with con- 

 struction is elbowed out of your department, and I want you 

 to tell me how it can be done," and then I tell him how it can be 

 done, and he takes the pain and the medicine; I do not have 

 to take them. 



Legislative reorganization was tried first. A joint com- 

 mittee of the Senate and House on reorganization of the 



45 Hearings on H. R. 6665 and H. R. 6670, House Committee on Ex- 

 penditures in the Executive Departments, 72nd Cong., ist Sess., March 

 10, 1932. 



