PARK AND CEMETERY. 
234 
the hands of individual members or sub- 
committees of the board independent of 
their executive officer or over his head, 
diminishes the latter’s responsibility to 
the commission for getting good results, 
disorganizes the discipline of the em- 
ployes and involves all the practical ob- 
jections on the score of diminished ef- 
ficiency that lie against a multi-headed 
executive as compared with a single- 
headed executive, but what is of far 
more vital consequence, the commission- 
ers tend to become so absorbed in atten- 
tion to executive details properly belong- 
ing to their employes as to lose sight of 
and entirely fail to perform the supreme- 
ly important function which they alone 
can perform, namely, the exercise of a 
disinterested scrutiny as to the net ef- 
fects and tendencies of the work as to 
their harmony with the established 
general policies and purposes of the 
commission; as to the wisdom of 
those policies and the desirability of 
modifying them to meet new condi- 
tions. 
It is often necessary for a commis- 
sion to act through the agency of an 
executive committee, especially if the 
commission be a large one as in the 
case of the Rhode Island Metropolitan 
Park Commission; but the greatest 
care should be exercised to keep the 
executive power unified and by never 
delegating it to m.ore than the one re- 
sponsible executive committee, and 
where sub-committees are appointed by 
Watching jealously lest they drift into 
the position of semi-independent execu- 
tive agencies. It is an excellent prac- 
tice to require that all sub-committees, 
instead of giving instructions to the 
executive staff direct, shall report to the 
whole board or to its representative the 
general executive committee, and ob- 
tain votes of instruction to be trans- 
mitted through the responsible executive 
officer; but in itself this is not enough; 
for a commission or general executive 
committee readily falls into the habit of 
treating votes recommended by its 
standing subcommittee as routine mat- 
ters to be discussed only in a perfunc- 
tory manner and of regarding the opin- 
ion of the permanent sub-committees as 
almost conclusive in the special field of 
each; so that no effective effort is made 
to unify or harmonize the several in- 
dependent policies on the several units. 
Especially pernicious in this regard, 
as tending to lack of unity is the very 
common practice on the part of park 
commissions of dividing into several 
sub-committees charges with the over- 
sight of different localities in the park 
system. It is a division of duties that 
suggests itself naturally enough, espe- 
cially where the territory covered by 
the jurisdiction of the board is large 
and the residences and local interests of 
the members are widely scattered; but 
in practice we believe it to be the cause 
of some of the gravest and most per- 
nicious defects in the administration of 
park work in the majority of American 
cities. It tends almost inevitably toward 
the delegation, in practice, of the powers 
of discretion of the board to a series 
of individuals or sub-committees each 
of whom tends to become absorbed in 
the problems of his own locality and to 
lose sight of the larger questions, the 
study of which, as we cannot reiterate 
too strongly, is the sole justifying pur- 
pose of a commission as compared with 
a single-handed executive. A large com- 
mission or unpaid executive board must 
delegate some of its work to sub-com- 
mittees and some of these committees 
must probably be standing committees; 
but it would seem desirable that the 
subjects referred to any such standing 
sub-committees, instead of being ap- 
portioned by localities, should relate 
to the system as a whole, as for exam- 
ple sub-committees on finance, on per- 
sonnel and organization, on design, etc. 
The second important principle has al- 
ready been touched upon almost suffi- 
ciently. It is that there should be a 
single responsible executive head, who 
should devote enough time to the work 
and be of sufficiently large mental cali- 
bre and with sufficient grasp of the tech- 
nical aspects of the work to exercise an 
effective control over all the departments 
of activity for which the commission 
is responsible. It is quite immaterial 
whether this officer is called president 
or chairman or secretary or general su- 
perintendent ; the essential thing is the 
real and effective concentration of ex- 
ecutive responsibility upon a man of 
big enough calibre to rise to the occas- 
ions with which he will be confronted. 
Beyond that essential, the broader and 
more thorough his equipment in the 
complex varieties of technical knowl- 
edge and skill concerned in park work 
the better. Good general executives are 
yet very rare in park work, because con- 
ditions have not been favorable to lead- 
ing men of the necessary mental capa- 
city into positions where they could at- 
tain the necessary technical knowledge 
and skill. Every effort should be made 
to test numbers of young men in minor 
capacities in connection with park work 
with a view to discovering an occasional 
individual of promising mental calibre 
and then training him in the school of 
steadily increasing his responsibilities, 
with the goal of respectably well-paid 
positions for those who make good. It 
is quite absurd to expect first-class re- 
sults and broadly efficient methods in 
the administration of a business involv- 
ing several million dollars worth of 
property of a most complicated and eas- 
ily damaged sort, like many of our lar- 
ger park systems, if the executive man- 
agement is confided to men of a me- 
diocre mental calibre. 
For the present and at least until the 
work develops considerably beyond its 
present preliminary stages it would seem 
unquestionably the best policy, in view 
of the difficulty of securing for such 
positions men who have both the desir- 
able technical training and a proper 
grasp of the subject as a whole, for 
the secretary to act as the executive offi- 
cer of the board. 
Under the executive officer, and re- 
sponsible to the board through him, 
must act a number of men of more or 
less special technical training, each re- 
sponsible for certain departments of 
work. At present, apart from clerical 
and other assistance in general admin- 
istration, the work consists of only three 
distinct classes or departments : first 
design, involving selection of suitable 
lands and determination of their boun- 
daries with a view to economical and 
effective subsequent development, toi- 
gether with the necessary surveying and 
engineering investigations ; f second, 
what may be called for convenience the 
department of land claims, involving 
mainly real estate valuation, and the 
conduct of negotiations in connection 
with land purchases and settlements ; 
and third, lave, involving at present 
mainly questions of conveyancing and 
interpretations of the law governing the 
powers and actions of the commission. 
An executive department charged with 
the ordinary labor of caring for the 
areas acquired will soon have to be 
established. 
The law business of the commission 
will naturally be transacted through the 
attorney-general’s office, and for con- 
venience the attorney-general might 
well be asked to designate one of his 
assistants specifically to take charge of 
the law business of the Commission. In 
regard to the real estate work, although 
it may be best to act through a num- 
ber of different agents, it is desirable to 
make some one expert confidentially 
responsible for advising how to proceed 
in every case. This principle we un- 
derstand the executive committee has 
adopted, and if it has not already done 
so it should make an appointment to 
the position. In the department of de- 
sign the Commission has adopted the 
sound principle of fixed responsibility 
(Continued on page XVIII) 
