Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1905-07-02
NO PAYMENT BY CHECK
Opposition to Secretary
Shaw's Plan.
A BIG WASTE OF TIME
IN GETTING THE MONEY FROM
THE TREASURY.
Does Not Offer Any Protection to the
Government Experiment Will
Work Out Its Own Failure.

tary Shaw's plan of paying department
employees by check Already the comments
of those who will be closely touched by the
change are decidedly against the PROPOSE
ton, and some caustic criticism has been
uttered. According to Mr.. Shaw's critics
there is nothing that can be said in favor
of the plan 1t does not protect the gov
eminent and it wastes time; 1t does not
lessen the temptations of the various de-
rartmental disbursing officers, nor does 1t
offer a guarantee of their honesty in any
way, shape or form These are state
ments that can be heard in almost all the
departments If the officers who have charge
of the payment of the clerks are ques-
toned.
1t is stated that the plan will prove its
own undoing. 1t will not work>out In prac-
tice as it does in theory. There are many
thousand government employees in the Dis
trict. il is stated, who, If all We're paid by
check, would experience the greatest DIM
Guilty in having these checks cashed. be
sides this it is stated. the government Is
fully protected by the bonds of the dis
bursting officers as to the amount of money
handled in the paying-on process. This is
not the fund from which rhere nave peen
defalcations In the past. 1t Is declared. Inc
disbursing officers themselves will welcome
the change as far as it lessons their work.
because they will not have the trouble or
necessity of counting off the money each
month and putting up the envelopes LOT
the hundreds of employees who look to them
for their wages. The check system Will
tighten their labors considerably. But they
are opposed to the change on. the ground
that it does not do what Is intended ana
will work a hardship on the employees.
A Nonsensical Proposition.
At can hardly credit a sound business man
like Secretary Shaw with such nonsen-
steal proposition as the payment by cheek
scheme for ell employees declared an Off
Ger of one of the departments to a Star re-
porter yesterday. THE system is directly
opposed to every system of economy that
has been introduced into the work of the
government and will undoubtedly prove
itself to be a failure if fair trial is ever
made 1t is not a fair trial to pay off one
or two divisions of the Treasury Depart
ment or the Department of Commerce ana
La Dor by check, because the most undesir-
able feature of the system will be its app1-
cation to the entire force at once. DO you
or does Secretary Shaw realize what this
will mean? How are the thousands OF clerks
and employees to get their checks cashed
Our own pay roll mounts in the hundred
thousands every month. How many mer-
chants are going to keep that amount of
cash, or even small portion thereof, on hand
for the benefit of the department clerks? sup
pose-the Interior Department, for instance,
should pay off it's clerks by check today.
They will all get out of the department at !
O clock. The banks will be closed; the
Treasury Department itself Will be closed.
Where will they get their checks cashed?
Advocates of the scheme say their grocers
or dry goods merchants or butchers will
cash them. How many grocers or butchers
are there in Washington who can afford to
cash checks Saturday when the banks
are closed and they cannot get change?
THAT is one phase of it. OF course, it will
not often occur that pay day will come on
Saturday half-holiday. There will be pay
days, a majority of them in the year, that
will fall on business days The clerk gets
away from his office at 4:30 o'clock. Again
he will find the banks closed. The mer-
chants will have deposited their spare
money In the banks and will not be In
position to cash the checks, and even If they
could keep their cash in their tills, how
many of them are there, do you suppose,
that will have money enough to cash all the
checks that are presented to them for pay
ment? Now the logical place for the CASH
ing of all these checks would be the Treas
ury Department would it not? The treas
ury closes at 4:30 o'clock, the same as other
departments, so If the clerk desired to have
his check cashed there he would have to be
allowed to go out Of the Office during the
hours of his service for the government. He
would go to the Treasury Department and
would find hundreds of his fellows waiting
to have their checks cashed. 1t would re-
quire the employment of additional tellers
in the cash room, and If all the clerks, or
even a fourth of them, attempted to get
their checks cashed the same day it would
require the hardest kind of work for the
tellers to pay them in day. Several hours
of the clerks time would be wasted in this
manner in attempting to present his check
to the treasury for payment and the gov
eminent would be out just that much.
The Matter of Protection.
Now as to the protection afforded the
government by the system. Just how does
Secretary Shaw figure out the government
is protected? How many defalcations have
occurred in the government service that are
traceable to a manipulation of the pay
rolls? Not one. The pay rolls cannot be
manipulated with any sort of system OF
checking in vogue In the departments and
/ believe there is a good system of that
sort. The money paid over to the dfsburs-
ing clerks; for the payment of salaries is
receipted for by the persons who draw the
salaries, and copies of these receipts are
forwarded to the treasury. The amount
paid to the department each moth on the
treasury acquisitions is amount that is
called for by the returns of the appointing
division showing the exact number of clerks
employed l do not say the pay rolls
could not be manipulated, but I do say
they are not, and / cannot recall an in
stance when they have been. There have
been heavy defalcations of disbursing off,
GERS, but none of the money taken by
them has been from the pay fund. Every
sale of some of its output. In one depart
ment 1t is one thing and in another some
thing else. In every case OF defalcation
that has been made out against disbHrs-
ing clerk in the past twenty or thirty years
the money misappropriated has been from
the income of the office to which he was
attached from outside sources-from money
which the Office is supposed to pay into the
treasury and not money the treasury pays
to the Office. The Watson defalcation or
embezzlement In the District service, the
Karr embeZzlement in the Smithsonian In
stitution, and others without number that
have occurred have all come from some
of the many sources of revenue of the de-
partments, and are easily covered because
the disbursing officer is not the proper de-
pository of that money and handles it only
a convenience to the head of the de-
partment.
The Disbursing oficer's Bond.
The bond of the disbursing officer covers
only the money he receives from the
treasury and he is supposed to disburse.
1t was never intended, according to my
way OF thinking, that he should be respon-
sible for the revenues of the departments.