Page:Hine (1912) Letters from an old railway official.djvu/116

 is substituted the cabinet idea of comprehensive deliberation, unified administration and  devotion to a common purpose. (Anvil chorus: “It’s that way on our road now”) Perhaps so, but if so, what assurance have your stockholders and the public that the same happy condition will obtain ten years hence? Each head of the nine executive departments in Washington is a line officer running his own department. At the President’s cabinet table he becomes a staff officer deliberating upon the problems of all. The attorney-general should be called secretary of law, and the postmaster-general secretary of posts. Then all nine would have the uniform title of secretary. The position of secretary to the president, an assistant to proposition, should be abolished—usually I prefer the gentler expression, “title discontinued.” His duties should be performed by the secretary of state, who is always the ranking member of the cabinet. In the first cabinet, that of George Washington, the secretary of state, Thomas Jefferson, was in effect, though not in name, prime minister and chief of staff. Foreign affairs, then an incidental feature, are now so extensive for a world power that we should have another