The Dominion. FRIDAY, MARCH 18, 1910. GOVERNMENT BUSINESS METHODS.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 769, 18 March 1910, Page 4

The Dominion. FRIDAY, MARCH 18, 1910. GOVERNMENT BUSINESS METHODS.

In to-day's cable news there is a New York message which will be read with sympathetic interest by people in this country. A Bill has been introduced into the United States Senate by Senatoe Aldbich, in which it is proposed to establish a. "Government Business Methods Commission" • with the object of reducing the expenditure in various public Departments. In a Message to Congress in December last Me. Taft laid great stress upon the importance of reducing the enormous cost of government, and his speech was immediately followed by the Estimates of Me. M.'Veaoh, Secretary of the.Treasury. 'The total estimated expenditure for the "fiscal year 1910-11 (exclusive of the Panama Canal Estimates), amounted to 638,068,672 dollars, .which represents a decrease of 57,244;494 dollars as compared with the Estimates for the year 1909-10. When the naval programme is eliminated in both years the decrease in the ordinary Estimates is over 94,000,000 dollars. The reductions result from improved handling of the Government work and ithe postponement of expenditures which can be delayed. The ; growth of the Treasury's difficulties is due to the looseness and extravagance with which 'the needs of the public service have been met. In America the Government does not submit a Budget on, the British model, although Alexandee, Hamilton, far-seeing in this as in most things, originally planned the application of ,the! Budget system.. The expenditure is, in the words of the New York Post, a matter of "haphazard calculations'," and the series of unnecessary surpluses and unnecessary deficits are the natural result of tho plan of "arranging publip income and public outlay through different legislative Chambers and through separate committees in each of those Chambers." There has lately been established a supervising "Budget which to some extent will effect an approximation | to the British system of submitting the Estimates. ..

Senatob Aidbioh's proposal has had a sort of fore-runner in a proposal of Me. James A. Tawney, Chairman of the House Appropriations Committee,, that/there should be a central "purchasing bureau" for all Government supplies. A Commission that sat'years ago found that the Government was paying all kinds of prices in the various -Departments for exactly the same article mado by the same firm, whatever that article might be.: Mr..-Tawney had the satisfaction of scoing his proposal'tried by order of the Pre-sident,-.with the result that a huge saving was effected. To-day's cable message reports Senatoe Aldeich as having asserted that his Commission will save sixty million pounds sterling annually, but for pounds' we think dollars -.should be read. The President will, certainly be one of the stoutest backers of any scheme for introducing into the work of government the business methods which Americans know so well how to employ where their own pockets are affected. His message of economy, which did not merely proclaim the virtues of prudence, but'indicated the way in which economies ' could be effected, created as great a sensation, we gather, as would in this country follow the appearance of Sir Joseph Ward "as an earnest advocate of thrift in government. America's case has, indeed, not been very unlike the case of New Zealand. "We have had a long period of lavish outlay," said the New York Post in commenting on the President's Message, "with no Executive warning against the evils and perils of extravagance. Even the panic of 1907, and the Treasury deficits which followed, brought from the then President no determined plea for economy; on the contrary, the country was told that it could always find the money for whatever it really wanted. From this spendthrift temper, President Tavt makes a sharp and wholesome doparture in his detailed setting forth of the need of national economising." The gospel of "business methods" has to face the same obstacles in America as in New Zealand. For, to quote the Post again, "if you want to raiso a cheer in Congress, make a speech on the necessity of preventing governmental waste; if you want to get cold looks, press for passage a Bill cutting off concrete forms of that waste." America is fortunate in having a President whoso praise of economy is notmero babble, and whoso earnest intentions are rcoeiv-

ing a general backing by the leading politicians. Now Zealand stands quite.as sorely in need as America of some kind of "Government Business Methods Commission." The setting up of a Public Works Board and a Civil Service Board, and the removal of the railways from political control, would save this country many hundreds of thousands of pounds a year. In Mr. Seddon's last year of office there were abundant complaints of the outrageous figure at which the cost of govern-1 ment stood. If the introduction ol business methods—in other words, of plain honesty and common patriotism—did no more than bring the cost of government back, to that figure, nobody would ccmplain. And how much per annum would be saved oven by that measure of reform 1 Most people would say a hundred thousand or so. As a matter of fact the saving would be over a million and a quarter per annum.