INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY 



vs. COMMISSIONS* 



How Methods in Vogue Under National Reclamation Act could 

 be Adapted to Advantage in Construction of the Panama Canal 



BY 



HON. FRANCIS G. NEWLANDS 



United States Senator from Nevada. 



THINK it is conceded by all men 

 connected with great corporate en- 

 terprises that the responsibility of a 

 great work must be individual ; that it 

 must be put upon one man ; that that 

 man must appoint his assistants for the 

 different branches of the work and 

 hold them responsible to him, and that 

 these assistants in their various areas 

 of control shall pursue the same meth- 

 od. 



At the very start we did not indi- 

 vidualize this responsibility. It is true 

 we intrusted the work (of constructing 

 the Panama canal) to the President 

 but instead of giving him a free hand 

 in organization we instructed him that 

 he should do this work through a com- 

 mission, and we ourselves designated 

 in great part the personnel of that 

 commission. We provided for a com- 

 mission of seven. I think that was a 

 mistake. I think we should have put 

 upon the President of the United 

 States the responsibility for this work ; 

 that we should not have permitted him 

 to share that responsibility with any 

 commission of this kind. We should 

 impose upon him the duty of appoint- 

 ing his own subordinates, individual- 

 izing responsibility everywhere as far 

 as possible. 



It is not to be wondered at that we 

 should make mistakes in organization 

 at first, for the United States govern- 

 ment has not been accustomed to great 

 works of construction. We are now 

 entering upon an era of construction, 

 and I believe the area of our work in 



that particular will increase until it 

 finally embraces governmental public 

 utilities which are not now dreamed of. 



The only other great work of con- 

 struction upon which we have entered 

 was entered upon under a law passed 

 almost simultaneously with the act un- 

 der which the President is acting, and 

 that was the irrigation law. There 

 we individualized responsibility. We 

 shaped a most comprehensive bill ; pro- 

 vided a fund from the sale of public 

 lands through which construction 

 should be conducted, and provided a 

 revolving fund so that the money 

 could be used over and over again as 

 the lands reclaimed were sold. 



But he gave the Secretary of the 

 Interior full power to execute the law. 

 and he placed no limit upon that pow- 

 er except that he should not make a 

 contract for construction unless the 

 money for its payment was actually in 

 the fund. 



What did the Secretary of the In- 

 terior do under that act? He referred 

 the administration of the act to the 

 Geological Survey, a scientific branch 

 of the government which for years has 

 been engaged not simply in geological 

 research, but in the study of every- 

 thing that relates to the topography 

 and resources of the country, to our 

 mineral deposits, to the measurement 

 of streams, to the control of streams 

 for navigation as well as irrigation, 

 and which, during the formative pro- 

 cess of the irrigation agitation, had 

 been engaged in making plans for the 



*Froin a speech delivered in the United States Senate, Dec. 16, 1905. 



