The Farmer’s Cabinet: Why Seattle’s Papers Are Fighting a War in Washington

The aspirations of the officers of the Agricultural Department at Washington for a rank and a salary equal to those of the aid established departments have failed for fulfillment by the Forty-seventh Congress. The ambition of standing as Commissioner of Agriculture to a Cabinet position, which is really what it all amounts to in popular years, was too glaring, the usefulness of the measure so apparent, that ridicule of the flagging has been seen more than folly is in fair way to consummation.

The creation of an Executive Department is not a matter of every day occurrence. The last to be added to the Union was the Department of the Interior, established in 1849, and put in charge of a large number of bureaus, exercising supervision over some of the most important affairs of the nation. It is obvious at a glance that the interests of agriculture can be properly cared for by a bureau of this department, and that here they properly belong.

The advocacy of creating an Executive Department of Agriculture, a far-fetched contradiction in terms even in its title, argues the strangest confusion in the Congressional mind with regard to the essential functions of a bureau and a department, and the inherent differences between them. A true Executive Department... is established to exercise the distributed powers and transact the business of the Government. The President... cannot be omnipresent. He is therefore authorized to delegate powers in certain specific directions... to executive officers, who are placed at the head of their respective departments; who attend to matters of detail, which one man could not possibly master; who are responsible to their chief and to Congress for the honest and efficient exercise of their powers; and who are very properly the advisers, or 'Cabinet,' of the President.

The whole theory of the department is that it pertains to and assists in the exercise of executive power. The bureau is a subordinate subdivision... The functions of a bureau are clerical, of a department executive; and so plainly does this difference appear in all national affairs, that the inability to appreciate it on the part of any well-informed person is almost a marvel.

These obvious and necessary objections imply nothing derogatory to the importance of agricultural interests... The sole functions of the Government with respect to agriculture is to collect statistics, and make reports for public information relating to this branch of industry. This is every important function, but it is the appropriate work of a bureau. What should be done is to establish the Census Bureau as a permanent institution... The bill for its fulfillment ought to be unconditionally condemned.