On February 5, 1920, Prof. Thomas H. Reed of the Department of Political Science, responding to a request from University of California President David P. Barrows, sent Barrows a report on the establishment of a Bureau of Public Administration at Berkeley. It was to be a modest effort.
"These recommendations," said Reed, "do not represent the ultimate development to which such a bureau might obtain, but they represent all-that in my judgment should be undertaken next year. It would be unwise to over organize such a Bureau. It is Samuel C. May better to begin in a small way and develop its work."
Interest in the study of public administration had grown significantly in the early part of the century, paralleling efforts to reform civil service and purify municipal government. Reformers sought to separate politics from public administration, and an academic movement arose to treat administration as a scientific discipline, one that could be managed to increase the economy and efficiency with which public business was done. Following World War I, a new generation of academics focused their attention on municipal government and produced a stream of new textbooks, courses, curricula, and even schools of public administration. On campuses across the nation, Bureaus of Public Administration sprouted to harness academic energies to the needs of state and local government. And California led the way.
Reed's letter to Barrows included a progress report from J. R. Douglas, the newly appointed secretary of UC's Bureau of Public Administration. "With the aid of a part-time assistant on the hourly basis," wrote Douglas, "I have been able to accumulate the beginnings of a Bureau Library, and to stimulate the interest of a number of students in the Bureau and in the field of administration. I have also recently undertaken on behalf of the Bureau for the States Relations Section of the National Research Council a very important investigation of the development of scientific research in the state government of California. This is in addition to several other smaller tasks which have been undertaken and performed."
Despite this rather modest start, Douglas had great expectations for the fledgling enterprise. "In broadest vision the work of the Bureau can be extended to the most generous limits," he wrote. "Everywhere in the country today there are forming groups of earnest people who realize that if our Democracy is to endure, it must be made efficient, and that efficient Democracy depends to a very large degree upon proper administrative organization. There are, perhaps, more such groups in this state than in most of the others. I see for the Bureau of Public Administration a splendid opportunity for the coordination of all efforts in the direction of efficient administrative organization."
Douglas envisioned the bureau as "a great Clearing House of Information relative to the field of public administration...keeping all groups informed as to the work of all others." It would be, he said, "a depository of facts and materials that can be drawn upon by and distributed among all such groups." He urged that, "activities in the direction of publications should be fully supported" and, "the Bureau should be in a position to supply to all persons or organizations in the state who apply for it general information upon all subjects in the field of public administration."
Though several years would pass before Douglas' ambitions would be realized, a plan of organization was proposed that, save for the addition of an associate director and the expansion of the role of research fellows, remains essentially unchanged today. The bureau would be led by a director who would be a member of the Department of Political Science. "His main function, aside from that of supervising and directing the work of research, should be the establishment of close relationships with organizations of a public and semipublic character interested in the field of public administration throughout the state." There would be an advisory committee "to advise and consult with him as to general policies." An assistant director would "conduct the actual work of investigation undertaken by the Bureau and be in direct charge of the office under the Director." Research fellows, "graduate students specializing in the field of administration" would assist in bureau research. A librarian would "attend to the routine business of collecting materials and cataloging such materials when acquired." Since "the Bureau will develop much data of a kind valuable for distribution among all of the agencies which it services, there should be a special fund for publications."
To support the new bureau's activities, Douglas recommended a budget of $5,500 for the academic year 1920-1921, $1,500 for an assistant director (the director would be paid by the political science department), $1,500 for two research fellows ($750 each), $500 for a librarian and stenographer at 50 cents per hour, and $2,000 for publishing, travel, and other expenses.
In July 1921, Barrows, who served as chairman of political science as well as president of the university, invited Samuel C. May to join the department as an assistant professor of political science. Born in Portland, Oregon, in 1887, May attended the University of Oregon for a year before going to Yale University, where he received an LLB degree in 1912. May returned to Portland and practiced law for five years, but felt an irrepressible urge toward academic life. He went to Columbia University in 1919 for graduate study in political science under Charles Beard and received his M.A. in 1920, but never took the time thereafter to go on for a Ph.D. "He was,? wrote Peter Odegard following May's death in 1955, "one of that small company of gifted teachers and scholars who make rather than take Ph.D.'s."
Following a year at Dartmouth, May moved to Berkeley. He left almost immediately, at Barrows' suggestion, for Europe where he studied the postwar transition in government then underway. On his return, May spent several weeks visiting bureaus of municipal research and reference libraries around the United States. Back in Berkeley, May taught courses in municipal administration and state administration, gave a year seminar in administration, a graduate course in administrative law, and another in constitutional law.
In his absence, department librarian Helen Page Bates had been busily assembling materials for a bureau library. In a report written the previous year, she noted that she had written 1,000 letters, received and classified more than 2,500 pamphlets, and prepared 4,000 subject cards. The collection, she noted, now totaled more than 15,000 pamphlets. More than 8,000 serials were available in a collection that leaned heavily toward economy and efficiency reports and government reorganization plans.
But May was not entirely pleased with its organization. Accustomed to working in public law, he was used to materials classified and cross-referenced so as to make them readily available to students. The materials in the Bureau of Public Administration, he complained, were not organized in a way that related to the courses he was teaching. At the end of his first semester, he wrote to Barrows: "I cannot say too emphatically that if the University of California is to continue to give courses in public administration, direction of the bureau should be in the hands of that member of the faculty, whosoever he might be, who is to give the courses and direct the research in the field."
Barrows asked May to draft a policy statement. And, on September 18, 1922, May sent Barrows a three-page memorandum. The bureau, he said, should limit its efforts to serving undergraduates, graduates, and faculty of the University on the Berkeley campus. "No attempt should be made at present," he wrote, "to make contacts with outside agencies other than for the purpose of acquiring material and information."
The bureau's objectives, urged May, should be limited, clearly laid out, and vigorously pursued. He suggested bluntly, "Either the Bureau should function or be abolished." May concluded by noting, "I am more than anxious to give my best efforts to whatever solution seems best to the Department and yourself."
The best solution, Barrows decided, was to turn the bureau over to May who lost little time putting his stamp on it. Over the next two years he built the bureau collection into one of the most valuable of its kind in the United States. In recommending May's promotion to associate professor in 1924, Barrows emphasized his pioneering work in the field of public administration. "May is one of the first men to grasp the importance of this field and will become a recognized authority in it," wrote Barrows. "He is working out the true principles upon which good administration rests, more fully and thoroughly than any teacher in any American college."
In 1925, May took a semi-sabbatical, traveling to bureaus of municipal and governmental research, examining libraries, and sailing to England to interview civil servants. His reputation, and that of the university, were increasingly recognized among scholars of public administration throughout the United States and abroad.
Once again, California seemed to be at the forefront of change. "Until very recent years courses in political science dealt with constitutions, the theory and structure of the state and a description of parties, elections and legislatures," observed an article on the bureau in the February 1925 edition of California Monthly. "Government performed comparatively few functions and there was little information published upon the actual work of putting into effect the policies and services. The individualistic spirit of our institutions fostered an attitude of distrust for more government activities than was absolutely essential.
"The last few decades have witnessed remarkable changes.... With a very large percentage of our working population employed by the government and the entire population increasingly in contact with it, a demand has come for the careful study of public administration, in order that information be made available to those men and women in the higher positions of responsibility and for the training of intelligent citizens and future executives."
The article noted that the bureau library had recently combined with the research library of the Department of Economics and now occupied six rooms in the University Library building. Under chief librarian H. P. Bates and two assistants, the collection was rapidly becoming one of the most comprehensive and useful in the nation.
In 1929, May arranged for the Rockefeller Foundation and the university to fund a research and training program in public administration. The Rockefeller Foundation would contribute $182,000 and the university $80,000 to the six-year program. Among the major projects would be a study of intergovernmental relations in the San Francisco Bay Area, a series of bibliographies and guides to the literature of public administration, a study of the relationships between local, state, and federal government, and a study of the administration of criminal justice.
The grant marked an important transition for IGS. The rapid growth of projects would require a cadre of research associates. To fill the need, distinguished researchers were drawn on a part-time basis from other departments, from government posts throughout the state, and from universities across the nation. Hugh Fuller came from Emory University to establish a system of criminal court statistics. Herman Adler came from the University of Chicago to direct a study of the inmates in California State Hospitals. Raymond Moley came from Columbia to launch a study of criminal prosecution in California.