The Republican Era : 1869-1901 : a study in administrative history

by Leonard D. White, Jean Schneider

eng, Pages 420. Reprinted in 2015 with the help of original edition published long back[1958]. This book is in black & white, Hardcover, sewing binding for longer life with Matt laminated multi-Colour Dust Cover, Printed on high quality Paper, re-sized as per Current standards, professionally processed without changing its contents. As these are old books, there may be some pages which are blur or missing or black spots. If it is multi volume set, then it is only single volume. We expect that you will understand our compulsion in these books. We found this book important for the readers who want to know more about our old treasure so we brought it back to the shelves. (Customisation is possible). Hope you will like it and give your comments and suggestions. Original The Republican Era 1869 1901 A Study In Administrative History 1958 [Hardcover], Original Leonard D. White

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History

406 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1958

About the author

Leonard Dupee White was a historian who focused on the history of public administration in the US. He received his bachelor's degree from Dartmouth College in 1914 and his master's a year later. He received his doctorate from the University of Chicago in 1921 and was a Guggenheim Fellow from 1927 to 1928. His work, The Federalists: A Study in Administrative History, won a Woodrow Wilson Foundation book award in 1948.

Reviews

[Frank Stein · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was certainly a different time when this book won the Pulitzer Prize for History back in 1958. Experts in public administration tried to write for a general audience, and a general audience might read a detailed book on public administration.

That's what this is. It looks at how the federal government actually operated between the beginning of Grant's presidency and the end of McKinley's. It delves into detail on how the Treasury Department, the Navy, War, Post Office, Interior, Agriculture and others worked, how much staff the Secretaries' had, when they got Assistant Secretaries, how the the departments were divided into divisions and bureaus and how that hampered or helped administer them. This all can seem tedious, and I won't deny it gets tedious at times, but for all the other research today about elections and politicians and parties, its amazing how little effort is spent understanding what government actually does and how it does it. White performs that essential work here. For instance, the War Department supply or staff bureaus, like the Ordnance and Quartermaster bureaus , where seen as a little aristocracy in the army, since they were based in Washington DC (not on the Plains battling Indians), and they felt they only had to answer to the Secretary, not the Commanding General. This lead to providing supplies that often had little to do with military goals. Likewise the basic division between the War and Navy departments came to tragedy in the Spanish-American War, where neither could force the other to participate in their attack on Santiago. Similarly, the Patent Office was hampered by the several layers of review for every patent application, including the ability of an applicant to have a district court review the facts behind a patent refusal, a rare right in this relatively less-litigious age.

White's best contribution, however, is his analysis of the President's battle with Congress to recapture control of his administration. Grant explicitly stated that the Executive should defer to Congress on policy and Senators like John Sherman could even say that Department heads should answer to Congressional committees not the President. Hayes, Garfield, and Cleveland fought back against the tide, though, the last finally succeeded in getting Congress to repeal the remnants of Tenure of Office Act of 1867 that forbade Presidents to remove Department heads without cause.

Despite some tedium, then, this is an absolutely unparalleled look at the practice of policy in the Gilded Age. If only more writers had followed in his footsteps, we'd have a better understanding of the subject today. Unfortunately, few have.