Scientific Management

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 186, 4 May 1933, Page 11

Scientific Management

Sir. —Your correspondent AV. Stunrt AVilson strikes at the root-cause of our troubles when lie avers that the great, need of the moment is better and more efficient leadership. He is infinitely more near the mark in his assertion that a drastic alteration in the existing system of government is imperative.

It requires no profound economic perception to appreciate the dangerous condition of our affairs. It requires even less perception to know that there is no fruitful future for our national. life until, and unless, we bring into being a form of governance completely divorced from the undeniably dangerous principles of the present system. In short, there can be no possible permanent relief until our country experiences the difference between rule by trained administrators — by experts—as opposed to governance by the untrained. AVhy should politics alone escape the world’s demand for expert guidance nnd control? How long.will it lie before we are sufficiently civilised to know that Hie man or woman candidate for governmental or municipal administrative office must be a person duly qualified for his job? Government must become a career—not as now, a part-time hobby. Suppose I desire to become Alinistcr of Education. A r ery well, I must, with such an end in view, adopt education as my vocation, and study every phase, every complexity, pertaining to the science of education. And so with finance, health, law, and so forth. AVith such vocational control of the country, each, candidate would be compelled to stand before the electors as an individual expert. Lawyers, architects, plumbers, teachers, and so on, are compelled to train for their respective careers, but —extraordinary anomaly—the administrators of the country are permitted to be amateurs. How will it be realised that, in our social evolution, we have arrived at a period demanding complete structural reorganisation of our whole social edifice? Law, government, social usages, and education, formulated to meet the mentality and exigencies of a \vastly different age, emphatically are obsolete to-day. Government will never be feasible or sanely workable until we scrap existing and wholly obsolete methods, until we evolve a working method of testing the qualifications of would-be candidates. —I am, etc., G. HAMILTON FRASER. Havelock North, Alay 2.