From “Brains in Washington,” which appeared in the March 1936 issue of Harper’s Magazine. The complete article—along with the magazine’s entire 174-year archive—is available online at harpers.org/archive.
No news from Washington is so certain to arouse the rage of conservatives as reports of an increase in the army of federal employees bursting out of the District of Columbia. number of federal workers reaches wartime peak: such a headline is sufficient to send the temperature of guardians of the Constitution shooting upward. Conservatives see in such a report only a vast political machine greased with the millions that each month line the pockets of federal jobholders.
Those jobs, at the Public Works, Works Progress, or Federal Emergency Relief Administrations, are made up of “intellectuals”—not necessarily experts or specialists in a field, though some of them may be that, but brainworkers, men and women trained to think abstractly. They have been drawn from universities and colleges, from advertising agencies and newspapers, from publishers’ offices and cooperative colonies, from labor organizations and large metropolitan law firms. Just how large this intellectual sector is it is impossible to say, but it constitutes an important part of the New Deal. And while there are occasional deserters, the intellectual stratum is enlarging. It is interesting to see these intellectuals multiply in kind, building up their own patronage machines.
Most of the intellectuals in the government could be put down as liberals. A few, partly as the result of their Washington experience, have moved farther to the left. And from the beginning there have been some cynical radicals. But it is a curious fact that certain of these radicals have become so enchanted by authority and privilege that they are now wedded to the service of a middle-of-the-road government bent on saving capitalism from its sins. In the bosom of that government have been anarchists, syndicalists, Wobblies, Communists, but they have been so well and so long sheltered that they have since faded to a pale-pink color and are now quite harmless.
Indeed, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that the majority of these minor brain trusters have worked to little purpose. Too often adequate direction has been lacking. Too often there has been confusion of purpose. Too often their efforts have been restricted by what politicians consider expedient and necessary. Duplication of endeavor and conflicts of authority have given rise to the more deadly diseases of bureaucracy—intrigue, inner politics, jockeying for place.
And these brainworkers have been haunted by the uncertainty of their own position. They are neither fish nor fowl, without the cloak of respectability that goes with the civil service or the security of the political appointee who feels he is safe so long as the voters return the party to power. The whims and caprices of a volatile administration have given most of them a deep sense of insecurity. Although many of these intellectuals speak with contempt, or a weary disgust, of the administration of which they are a part, they add, as a devout person would cross himself, “but of course Mr. Roosevelt will be elected again.”
One must remember that much of what they have done has been sheer improvisation. They have had to do intensive foraging in a social desert, improvising tools as they went along. There has been no social background, very little tradition or precedent, to call upon. And while the average of fools, poseurs, and dilettantes would surely be no higher than in any private organization of equal scope, it is a curious fact that their errors, their egregious blunders, their stupid posturings have been largely overlooked by that very section of the press that would most delight in discovering them.
On every piano in the Western gambling halls, or so the legend has it, was a sign that said: please don’t shoot the pianist. he is doing the best he can. It is a sign which, with some alterations, might well be placed on many Washington desks.
