WHAT IS THE BIGGEST JOB ON EARTH?

Star (Christchurch), Issue 10925, 14 November 1913, Page 1

WHAT IS THE BIGGEST JOB ON EARTH?

RUNNING THE U.S.A. AS A B USINESS PRO POSITION. Under he above attractive title, W. Bayard Hale dives in a recent number of the "World's Work" as fine a bird's-eye view of the compass of American enterprise, and the .scope of its Government, as any plain man in the street could ask for. Listen to his summary of the growth of the United States: : "In 1856.. when Woodrow Wilson was born, the United States were thirty-four; to-day they are fortyeight. _ Then we possessed no outlying territory. To-day, we have Alaska, Porto Rico, tho Panama Canal Zone, the Philippines, Guam, Hawaii and the Tntuila Islands—more than 8000 islands. Our population then was 28 millions; now it is 110 millions. "In 1856 the country possessed 22.000 miles of railroads; to-day 2.50,000. Then, not a telegraph instrument clicked, not a telephone bell tinkled. That year the people of the United States spent seven million dollars for postage stamps; this year we shall spend 250 millions—and stamps are cheaper, too. " But great as has been the growth of the country, the growth in tho size and importance of the Government has been out of all proportion greater.

" Under Franklin Pearce, an attempt to classify the civil service enumerated 722 men and women. Then the total civil establishment of 'the United States numbered about 25,000 people. More than half a million men and women are required to carry on the activities over which President Wilson is chief superintendent 145,000 more to fill the, ranks of the army and navy. The civil salary list under Pierce was twenty millions a year; to-day it is twenty times twenty millions.

"When tho present President was in has cradle, the President of the day answered his own letters. Today the White House staff includes forty .secretaries and clerks. "Tho year iu which Woodrow Wilson was born the expenses of the United States Government amounted to 75,647,171 dollars. In 1912 its cost was 901,297 H7O .dollars. Tho receipts of the Government in 1565 were 80 millions; last year they amounted to 970 millions.

r ' ( Even in the year that Wpodrow "Wilson attained his majority the Government to a voice in which, he then attained was an affair for which Conc;rftss was called on to appropriate, only 325,000.000 dollars Last year it appropriated more than a thousand millions. It was only yesterday, only a; dozen years ago, that the cry. ' a billion; Hollar Congress,' startled the : ■country.:'- N'owdavs a Congress spends two billions (i.e., £-40O.00O..00O). "In a single year of his idministion, Woodrow Wilson will sign bills appropriating more money than had been spent by the Government of the United States from the day of its birth to the day of his own. The War of Independence is estimated to have cost the Colonies and France 200 millions. President Wilson ' will spend that much every two months. "Today the Treasury Department handles more money than does or ever did any other institution on earth. It prints every day a million dollars in paper money and it collects about two millions a day in Customs revenue—not to count the two millions and a half a day collected by the Post Office Department. "That Department, the Post Office, employs 300,000 men and women, and handles one-third of the world's mail. This was the case before the establishment of the parcel .post, which will add enormously to the work of the department. "A generation ago traffic and travel had no interest for the Government. Nowadays, through the Inter-State Commerce Commission, the Government regulates the operation of railroads which carry a hundred million passengers a year, as well as the operation of telephone and telegraph, express, sleeping-car, wireless telegraph, and pipe line companies which anywhere cross State lines. No nation has ever made or dreamed of making such vast alterations in the paths of travel as the United States Government is making in digging the Panama Canal—the greatest engineering work ever undertaken. " Mr Showalter estimates that while it required 100,000 men tweuty years to build the pyramid of Cheops, our Government digs every year at Panama a hole big enough to bury fourteen such pyramids in. He calculates that it took the French as many years to discover that they could not buikl a fifteen-foot canal as it will cost the United States to succeed. ."The United States Government, by the way, possesses the greatest collection of books in the Western Hemisphere, housed in the most magnificent library in the world. '■' It is the tasks newly assumed by the Government that account for this surprising growth in expense and personnel. " To-day the Government scrutinises the organisation and operation of corporations doing inter-state business. It has undertaken to safeguard the health of the people. It carries on exhaustive studies and experiments in the war against disease—disease of man, of animals, and of plants. It provides business of every sort with standards of measurement. It supplies citizens with the correct time. It teaches farmers how to grow bigger and better crops."