ECONOMY CAMPAIGN.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LXVII, Issue 16591, 13 November 1919, Page 7

ECONOMY CAMPAIGN.

CUTTING DOWN THE NATION’S EXPENSES. A campaign has been started to cut down national expenditure. The Pnmo Minister has addressed a letter in strong terms to all the spending departments of the State pointing out the urgent need for effecting all possible economies and for bringing the establishment strength back to the normal. Mr. Lloyd George requests that a report shall be prepared by each department before the reassembling of 1 arliament, showing what steps have been taken to these ends. ' Sir Auckland Geddcs, the President of the Board of Trade, has now announced that a Finance Committee has been formed .of which the Prime Minister is chairman, with tho object of exercising economy. “ENORMOUS RESULTS.” , Speaking at Basingstoke Sir Auckland said he saw in the press that the Government were doing nothing to cut down expenditure. The very reverse was the case. “When I survey,” he continued, the hours and hours of close, concentrated work I have devoted in common with other Ministers to getting expenditure reduced, I wonder sometimes whether any problem has been more intently studied. With the willing assent indeed, I think at the suggestion—of the Chancellor of the Exchequer we have formed a Financial Committee, on which the Prime Minister is chairman, "with the object of exercising economy, and I can tell you lie is throwing himself with all his wonderful energy into the work of cutting down expenditure. As a consequence enormous results arc being achieved. •‘We. have great commitments which nothing can immediately reduce. We have, to provide for interest and sinking fund for tho debt, pensions to the disabled, the widowed, and the fatherless. and the war gratuities and the civil liabilities grants. Without an out-of-work donation we should have had social chaos which would have cost ns more in a week 1 linn out-of-work donation lias amounted to in all. W o cannot demobilise completely until wo have got peace, and wo arc nowhere near that yet in Turkey and the Last. As to tho Government staffs, he said that the recent total of -107,000 included all tho postmen and the like, and that some of tho control staffs “saved tho country millions. Behove mo, tho Government is fully alive to the need for economy, and wo shall get it. We have instituted processes which wilt lead to enormous reductions in outgoings. AVe are cutting down as fast as we can, and tho process _ will increase- in rate' as tho cumulative effect of our efforts becomes manifest.”