he wishes of the minority who are interested. The
official is nominally subject to indirect popular control, but not to
the control of those who are directly affected by his action. The
bulk of the public will either never hear about the matter in dispute,
or, if they do hear, will form a hasty opinion based upon inadequate
information, which is far more likely to come from the side of the
officials than from the section of the community which is affected by
the question at issue. In an important political issue, some degree
of knowledge is likely to be diffused in time; but in other matters
there is little hope that this will happen.

It may be said that the power of officials is much less dangerous than
the power of capitalists, because officials have no economic interests
that are opposed to those of wage-earners. But this argument involves
far too simple a theory of political human nature--a theory which
orthodox socialism adopted from the classical political economy, and
has tended to retain in spite of growing evidence of its falsity.
Economic self-interest, and even economic class-interest, is by no
means the only important political motive. Officials, whose salary is
generally quite unaffected by their decisions on particular questions,
are likely, if they are of average honesty, to decide according to
their view of the public interest; but their view will none the less
have a bias which will often lead them wrong. It is important to
understand this bias before entrusting our destinies too unreservedly
to government departments.

The first thing to observe is that, in any very large organization,
and above all in a great state, officials and legislators are usually
very remote from those whom they govern, and not imaginatively
acquainted with the conditions of life to which their decisions will
be applied. This makes them ignorant of much that they ought to know,
even when they are industrious and willing to learn whatever can be
taught by statistics and blue-books. The one thing they understand
intimately is the office routine and the administrative rules. The
result is an undue anxiety to secure a uniform system. I have heard
of a French minister of education taking out his watch, and remarking,
"At this moment all the children of such and such an age in France are
learning so and so." This is the ideal of the administrator, an ideal
utterly fatal to free growth, initiative, experiment, or any far