PUBLIC OPINION by WALTER LIPPMANN TO FAYE LIPPMANN ...

the national university and teachers scattered over the country. If
the association was as flexible as it ought to be, there would be, as
a supplement to the permanent staff, a steady turnover of temporary
and specialist appointments from the universities, and exchange
lecturers called out from Washington. Thus the training and the
recruiting of the staff would go together. A part of the research
itself would be done by students, and political science in the
universities would be associated with politics in America.
7
In its main outlines the principle is equally applicable to state
governments, to cities, and to rural counties. The work of comparison
and interchange could take place by federations of state and city and
county bureaus. And within those federations any desirable regional
combination could be organized. So long as the accounting systems were
comparable, a great deal of duplication would be avoided. Regional
coordination is especially desirable. For legal frontiers often do not
coincide with the effective environments. Yet they have a certain
basis in custom that it would be costly to disturb. By coordinating
their information several administrative areas could reconcile
autonomy of decision with cooperation. New York City, for example, is
already an unwieldy unit for good government from the City Hall. Yet
for many purposes, such as health and transportation, the metropolitan
district is the true unit of administration. In that district,
however, there are large cities, like Yonkers, Jersey City, Paterson,
Elizabeth, Hoboken, Bayonne. They could not all be managed from one
center, and yet they should act together for many functions.
Ultimately perhaps some such flexible scheme of local government as
Sidney and Beatrice Webb have suggested may be the proper
solution. [Footnote: "The Reorganization of Local Government" (Ch. IV),
in _A Constitution for the Socialist Commonwealth of Great
Britain_.] But the first step would be a coordination, not of
decision and action, but of information and research. Let the
officials of the various municipalities see their common problems in
the light of the same facts.
8
It would be idle to deny that such a net work of intelligence bureaus
in politics and industry might become a dead weight and a perpetual
irritation. One can easily imagine its attraction for men in search of
soft jobs, for pedants, for meddlers. One can see red tape, mountains
of papers, questionnaires ad nauseam, seven copies of every document,
endorsements, delays, lost papers, the use of form 136 instead of form
2gb, the return of the document because pencil was used instead of
ink, or black ink instead of red ink. The work could be done very
badly. There are no fool-proof institutions.