CONTENTS PAGE Economic Purposes and Possibilities in State Administration in 135 THE EDITOR Oregon's Affairs Administered Through the Office of Secretary of State BEN W. OLCOTT 142 The Need for a Consistent General State Policy as to Public Utilities.. 150 CLYDE B. AITCHISON Public Service Commissioner Duties and Responsibilities of the Commissioner of Labor and O. P. HOFF Commissioner of Labor and Factory Inspector Evolution of the Principles of Employers' Liability and Workmen's WILLIAM A. MARSHALL Chairman Industrial Accident Commission 163 168 Practical Operation of the Oregon Workmen's Compensation Act...... 178 CARLE ABRAMS Member Industrial Accident Commission The Development of Oregon's Forest Policy........ E. O. SIECKE Deputy State Forester 189 Some Essentials for Improvement of the Tax System of Oregon........ 200 CHARLES V. GALLOWAY State Tax Commissioner Industrial Preparedness and Its Relation to the Army and Navy........ 211 JOHN H. LEWIS State Engineer Wealth, Debt and Taxation-A Study of Census Figures as Applied to Oregon JAMES H. GILBERT, PH. D. Professor of Economics, University of Oregon Tendencies in Growth of Financial Burdens Demanding Consideration A. E. WHEELER A Tentative Draft of the Rural Credit Bill... Proposed by Committee consisting of C. E. Spence, Master 254 VOL. I The Commonwealth Review of the University of Oregon APRIL, 1916 Economic Purposes and Possibilities in No. 2 The great majority of the papers of this number of the Review relate to the work of several departments of the State government. These discussions were prepared by the heads or representatives of the respective branches of the State's administrative activities for use as lectures to a class in the Economics of State Administration at the University of Oregon. A somewhat unique social purpose is thus associated with the origin of these papers and is expressed through them. They were designed to throw light on the features of organization used and the public service rendered in the work in which each State department is engaged. But more particularly significant is the fact that they represent the beginning of most generous and helpful coöperation on the part of the State's leading public servants with the State University in its effort to arouse among its students an interest in and an appreciation of our commonwealth institutions. Every weekly meeting of the class is provided for, and every state official appealed to for aid toward preparing a more useful and devoted citizenship responded promptly to the request. STATE ADMINISTRATION AGENCIES AS AIDS IN ORGANIZING A CREATIVE COMMONWEALTH ORDER The primary aim in securing these expositions of the functions of the different organs of the State government has been to suggest to students of Oregon welfare, whether these are in or out of the University, the opportunities for creative service to the people through a more effective and wider use of the principle or organization as it is partly realized and more largely foreshadowed in the different features of our common wealth organization. In the pull forward and upward in Oregon a wise and scientific use of commonwealth agencies will be more and more relied upon, not to the exclusion of private initiative and enterprise but to make the way for these smooth and safe. The economics of the problem of progress in this favored but isolated region are unique. Much is given in climate, soil, water powers, timber and scenery, and much is required to realize on these. To make these available a much higher degree of associated effort will be necessary than was required to establish an industrial order in any section of the Mississippi Valley. In this insistence upon the preeminent importance to the people of Oregon of the largest and best use of these State agencies for associated effort, I am not unmindful of the burdens of maintenance of this public service in its initial stages. Once the full measure of returns from these appear, the multiplied enhancement of the powers of production in Oregon will make these public expenditures light. In the meantime, however, it is absolutely essential that the cost of every unit of service through administrative agencies should be brought to the lowest possible standard with us. Our conditions are those of a small and scattered population with its energies still largely absorbed in unremunerative stages of development in which we are meeting the extra costs of getting our farms stocked, equipped, drained and irrigated, our orchards matured to a bearing age and our enterprises generally provided with a marketing organization. In this preliminary stage a balance of outlay is incurred in the field, on the farmstead, on the highway and in the marketing process. A heavy per capita burden of taxation added thereunto makes a back-breaking load. We feel as if our hands were tied, keeping us from our private enterprise, and that the means for any measure of satisfaction in the life of today were cut off. Elimination, therefore, of every form of waste, of duplication, of low pressure and intermittent functioning of these administrative agencies should be effected summarily. The attainment of efficiency through the use of the best principles of administrative organization and through the centralization of responsibility and the selection and retention of the best expert skill in public service not only saves waste but also reënforces the means indispensable to Oregon's economic regeneration. Consolidation and coördination of boards and commissions there should be, but all with the view of fostering the growth and usefulness of these organs of the common welfare. The best that has been developed in accounting systems and in budgetary practice should be applied so that the demands of every tax levying unit-State, county, municipality, school and road district-may be brought to the lowest figure consistent with the most economic use in individual and coöperative effort of every dollar of the social income in Oregon. The more fundamental and far-reaching grounds for urgency in economy and efficiency in State administration in Oregon are to be found, therefore, in the opportunities for the higher uses of our social surpluses in creative administrative activities. Only as our commonwealth policy is wisely dominated by this idea is real and lasting relief from oppressive weight of taxation in Oregon insured. Now what is the basis in Oregon experience of the claims that have just been made? First, that scientifically planned expansion of State administration means in opportunities for private enterprise more than proportionately enlarged possibilities. Second, that the paramount interest in the study of Oregon administration is the determination of the advisable features of a policy for the expansion of it. SOME OF THE REGENERATIVE ACHIEVEMENTS EFFECTED BY THE DIFFERENT DEPARTMENTS The authors of the papers on the different branches of State administration presented in the body of this issue were concerned simply in making clear what they were doing and how this work was done. It was just this that was requested from them and the reader of their statements will, I am sure, agree with me that this was their sole conscious purpose. Yet the really vital lesson taught by these discussions, the really significant fact conveyed to the people of Oregon by something like a decade of experience with these different lines of State administration, is about as follows: (They are referred to in the order in which they were presented to the University class in the Economics of State Administration.) As a means of estimating what the establishment and maintenance of the Oregon Railroad Commission, now the Public Service Commission, has meant to the Oregon people, we have but to recall the character of the services they were receiving from their transportation agencies prior to the creation of this agency of regulation. Oregon industry was suffering from a prolonged car famine, petitions for the settlement of claims in too many instances seemed to be studiously ignored. Discourtesy characterized the attitude of too many of the employees toward the public. The transportation service in the State generally was wretchedly poor and inadequate. Time schedules were little adhered to. Under regulation the service of the public utilities throughout the State has in all respects become highly satisfactory. In their attitude toward the public the representatives of these interests are uniformly most courteous. Even the railway mileage in the State during the last decade has approximately doubled and many rate adjustments making for equity and reasonableness have been secured. While all of these improvements can not, of course, be credited to the influence of the Commission, enough of them certainly can to have made the cost of maintaining this agency of State administration a most fortunate investment for the people of Oregon. The Factory Inspector and the Industrial Accident Commission have wrought a similar degree of transformation in their respective fields of responsibility. Safety through safeguards instituted in the Oregon factory and a more approximate equality secured to the wage earner in the assertion of his rights in relations with the employer are fruits of the Factory Inspector's mediation. But even after the hazards of industry have been reduced to a minimum they entail an incalculable measure of misery and wretchedness unless obviated by a system of normal compensation for casualties suffered by the workmen. Through the administration of such compensation by the Industrial Accident Commission the public, too, is saved a large balance of costs formerly incurred through the almost inevitable recourse to the courts by the injured party. |