The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865-1896 (Oxford History of the United States)

by Richard White

Fee-based governance represented an administrative strategy that was no less “modern” than the bureaucracies that came to define European states. It used fees, bounties, subsidies, and contracts with private individuals or corporations to enforce laws and implement public policy. In the immediate wake of the Civil War, what might superficially look like a bureaucracy in the General Land Office, the Office of Indian Affairs, or the Treasury Department really amounted to a collection of agents who lived on the fees they collected and the economic opportunities their jobs presented. Where fees and bounties did not suffice, the federal government routinely delegated governmental functions to corporations, churches, and a variety of other independent actors. The net result was an unwieldy and inefficient system that required few taxes but was ubiquitous and often intrusive.