Theodore M.
of Natural Resources, obviously with one intent being to assimilate the civil
functions of the Corps of Engineers into this department.
But the White House staff basically said, "No, we don't want to do it that
way." The White House, according to Caulfield, was under the influence of
Richard Neustadt, a Harvard political scientist who argued that the separation
of functional areas can work to the advantage of the President. The argument
was that you don't want to have big departments with so much power that they
can actually undermine the power of the President.
And so the Department of the Interior people fell back on the idea of having
the Water Resources Council bring all of the agencies together. In other words,
Caulfield argued that the idea for the council came up in the Department of the
Interior. Whether it came up before or independently or whether Clinton
Anderson or other people in the Congress were involved I don't know. I don't
think Caulfield answered that question. Do you have any knowledge of any of
this sort of stuff?
A: What I can verify is that there was a group of people in the Interior Department
promoting the idea that there should be a natural resources department when
I was working there in the 1940s. At the time of the first Hoover Commission,
we did a lot of work on material that was sent over to the task force on water
and power or whatever they called it at the first Hoover Commission on this
subject. As I recall, it was about the same time that I worked with Arthur
Maass on the Pine Flat Dam history. I think the idea of having a Department
of Natural Resources was also under consideration in the early years of the
Eisenhower administration. The member of the Senate Select Committee who
favored having a Department of Natural Resources was Senator Frank Moss of
Utah. It never came up in the committee, but he later introduced legislation
several times.
But I was not privy to the arguments within the administration about the
proposal to create the Water Resources Council. When the proposed legislation
came up from downtown, I thought it might lead to something that might
evolve into an independent agency like the Federal Power Commission. You
remember, the original Federal Power Commission created in 1920 was not an
independent agency. It consisted of the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the
Interior, and the Secretary of Agriculture. It was set up in 1920 with a staff
that was supposed to do comprehensive planning to provide a background for
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