196 Politics and the administration
The executive departments
As we have seen, the president’s cabinet is composed largely of the heads of
the executive departments, and these form the core of the administration,
the part most under his control. They have gradually increased in number as
the functions of government have expanded. In 1789 the federal government
was inaugurated with the Department of State, the Treasury Department
and the Department of War. President Washington included the Attorney
General in his Cabinet, but the department that the latter leads today, the
Department of Justice, was not created until 1870. In 1798 the Department
of the Navy was added, and with the Department of War was the continu-
ing focus of much inter-departmental service rivalry. The emergence of the
air force in the twentieth century was not acknowledged with departmental
status until 1947, when it was detached from the army, but only two years
later all three service departments were subordinated to the newly created
Department of Defense. The Secretary of Defense became a member of the
cabinet; although the service departments continue to be called such, and
have Secretaries at their head, these officers are not in the cabinet. The Post-
master General became a member of the cabinet in 1829, but the Post Of-
fice became a fully fledged executive department only in 1872. In July 1971,
however, the Post Office was turned into a government corporation and the
Postmaster General no longer has cabinet rank. The other departments set
up in the nineteenth century were Interior (in 1849) and Agriculture (in
1889). Since then no fewer than nine executive departments, in addition to
the Department of Defense, have been created, reflecting the great expan-
sion of government functions. A Department of Commerce and Labor was
created in 1903, and was then divided into the Department of Commerce and
the Department of Labor in 1913. The government activity resulting from
the New Deal policies of President Roosevelt during the 1930s meant the
creation of numerous agencies and commissions, some squarely within the
executive branch, others with a greater degree of independence; but no new
executive departments were created during this period. In 1953, however,
many of the agencies that had been created to administer social security and
welfare programmes were amalgamated into a new department, the Depart-
ment of Health, Education and Welfare. In 1980 this in turn was divided into
two departments, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the
Department of Education. Further expansion of the responsibilities of the
federal government resulted in the creation of the Department of Housing
and Urban Development in 1965, the Department of Transportation in 1966,
and the Department of Energy in 1977. The Department of Veterans Affairs
was created in 1989. Following on the terrorist attack on the World Trade
Center the Department of Homeland Security was created in 2002.
The attainment of full departmental status with a seat in the cabinet
represents for most of the departments the culmination of a long process of
the creation and amalgamation of lesser agencies and bureaus, sometimes