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to unguarded machinery, slippery floors, misplaced stair wells, or some such thing, we'd inform the inspector and ask him to make an explanation as to why he hadn't found that hazard and corrected it.
At any rate, from that experience I knew that the job of getting work for people would be overshadowed by the delightful job of giving out the money for unemployment insurance. However, that was not Harold Smith's idea.
Harold Smith was a friend of mine and I liked him. Now, it's been said that he sought more than his fair share of power. I don't think he was a power-hungry man. I don't think that's a fair statement. I don't think he personally desired to exercise power. I don't think he had that personal tyrannical complex that I have seen in other people. He was a theoretical, administrative person. He saw things in patterns. He dreamed up all the time patterns of reorganizations. It was Harold Smith who started this fad for reorganization of the government and then some more reorganization, which we haven't ceased on yet.
Before Harold Smith arrived most people thought of the Bureau of the Budget as being an excellent modern device, introduced, I think, during Wilson's administration, to get a proper budgetary control of government expenditures, more or less on the lines of the New York City budget, by the Executive. It was to aid in the presentation of the budget to Congress, which still holds the purse strings to say yes
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