The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-02-07
ROTTENNESS IN
 PRINTING OFFICE
Audit System Is Knocked Out
 By MT. Rossiter
.EXTRAVAGANCES AMAZING
Chairman Landis of the Investigating Committee Says He Will Probe the Affairs of the Office
 To the Bottom.

Washington, February 6.-Concurring in the recommendation of Acting Public Printer Rossiter, the President today can celled the contract of the government with the Audit system, and ordered its election from the government printing office at the end of six days. The Audit system is the corporate name of the cost ascertaining method tliat was installed more than a year ago by Public Printer Stillings. Under it's operation the gov ernment has paid about S120,00O for the privilege of calculating the cost of gov ernment printing and binding. Repre- sentative Landis of Indiana, chairman of the joint committee which is investi- gating the government printing office, says that the Audit system as it has been installed and operated in Washing ton, lis a gold brick thinly plated with the genuine stuff"
 We have paid for this brick" said Mir. Landis, and before we throw it out, We are going to extract and retain the value 1t is gilded with I mean you can't run the government printing office with all it's departments and it's 45O0 employees without using some method of cost as- certainment, so if there are any good features in the Audit system, We are going to keep them for We have paid for them many times over'
 Mr Landis is authority for the state ment that the joint investigation com mittee proposes to take the lid entirely off and delve to the bottom of the many charges, some of them definite and distinct, others of public rumor character which evenuated yesterday Tn the suspesion by the President of Public Printer Stillings. and his succession by w. :. Rossiter of the census bureau.
 Among the charges which the joint investigation committee will inquire into. pursuant to the suspension of Public Printer Stiilings is that his ad- ministration has compassed remarkable extravagances. Chairman Landis, who visited the government printing office today to call on MT. Rossiter, found himself ushered into surroundings which q multi millionaire may find. In the public printers office are massive furniture, costly pictures, in apart ments of elegance little in keeping with a printing and binding plant. The committed with the help of MT. Rossi- ter. will endeavor to find out why roughly speaking, it has cost the gov ernment $50 to turn out job whlc commercial houses would do for sl' The committee may inquire into sue reports as these:
 That 45 cents a pound has been pair ouainties of inks worth less than 70 cel a pound; that the storerooms of the g ernment printing office contain at
 present time more paper stock that UT
 other administration was used up in
 a dozen years; that so great was tn pomp with which Public Printer Stil
 surrounded himself that persons hs
 business with him were frequentl.
 uuired to make appointsments a
 ahead and never could gain his pr'
 without running the fire of unif
 lackes and treading a mass of scarlet tape.
 Chairman Landis will announce the time of the next meeting of the investigation committee tomorrow.