Public Administration in the Atomic Age

On September 23,19…, in Roscommon county in the Southern Peninsula of Michigan, the county clerk called the local officials together at the court house. Of the county administrators, the sheriff, treasurer, prosecuting attorney, circuit court judge, register of deeds, health and welfare administrators, and highway engineer were present. Many of the township supervisors had managed somehow to reach the court house in spite of the streams of refugees pouring northward from the destroyed industrial cities of southern Michigan. Already the county was bursting with new and unforeseen problems of public administration. The traffic jam on U. S. highway 27 from Lansing northward was something beyond the memory of the oldest living inhabitant. Near Houghton Lake, this traffic was jammed by another stream which had followed U. S. 23 northward from Saginaw and Bay City, turning inland at Standish by way of state highways 76 and 55 to connect with U.S. 27. The flight of stampeding and determined refugees was flowing like a river through the county seat of Roscommon and ever northward toward Cheboygan and Mackinaw City at the tip of the Lower Peninsula of Michigan. “This meeting was called,” said the clerk, “to discuss how we can handle this emergency. One of the state police officers who has been on reconnaissance with a deputy sheriff will tell us what we are up against in this area. For 36 hours our telephone and telegraphic communications with Washington and Lansing have been out. We are on our own and must make the best of a terrible emergency.”