Aberdeen herald. [volume] (Aberdeen, Chehalis County, W.T.) 1886-1917, 1911-04-17
Have Made a Splendid Start,
According to Correspondent
Of Golfers Weekly
ECONOMY IS WATCHWORD
Sinecure Positions, Costing
$3.50, 900 Annually, Are Cut
From Expenses Of House

In the current number of Golfers
Weekly, Mark Sullivan. in comment
ing on the new house of congress,
pays that body the following com
pliment for the splendid start it has
made in the direction OF economy
and governmental reform:
When the Democrats. for the first
time in eighteen years won con-
troll of the Lower House of Con-
gress last November, the Republican
politicians and papers pictured and
cartooned the event as sort of bar
barrie dance of the hungry. The COM
ic papers of the period dealt with
the Democratic patriot, after eigh-
teen years of exile, packing his lean
bag, and taking a train for Wash
ingtOn to be in at the pie-cutting. In
the light of all this Republican pro-
phecy, the first official act of the
Democratic Congress is significant;
they abolished ninety-eight offices.
clerkships, and minor positions, at
tached to the Lower House alone.
aggregating about $l50,000 annually
in salaries. This was their own
medicine, to be sure, but it was a
pretty strong dose, nevertheless.
Probably every Democrat in Con-
gress was under pressure from one
or more of his constituents from par
ty workers to whom he is under OBJ
legations, for some of these jobs. The
renunciatiOn was not easy. The dis
appointment to hundreds of place
seekers will make every Democrats
reelection next year just so much
more difficult. There is. therefore,
all the more reason for thoughtful
persons who understand and appre-
ciate economy in government to give
sympathy and practical support to
the party that has accomplished it,.
More Economy
Some of the committees of Con-
gress which were important and use
full several decades agO-for example
the committee on Pacific railroads
when the early transcontinetal lines
were being built with government
subsides-have been obsolete for
nearly a generation Some of these
committees have not held meeting
for many years, but yet they went
on, carrying a full equipment of idle
clerks and providing 50 many places
for Republican heelers-poitical
graft and nothing else. The new
Democratic congress has abolished
six of these useless committees, thus
voluntarily abdicating about sixty
honorary offices for members, and
paid clerkships aggregating nearly
thirty thousand dollars year. These
voluntary sacrifices of power and
patronage are creditable in the high
est degree.
The Biggest Saving
The economies already put in prac-
tise by the Democrats apply merely
to the Lower House itself When
they get around to the executive de-
partments of the government, the Op-
pOrtunities will be incomparably great
er. The new Democratic ways and
means committee, together with the
rules committee and the appropria
tions committed have put in mo-
tiOn machinery which. it is confident
1y believed, will save the govern
ment one hundred and fifty million
dollars a year. To any fair-minded
observer, the most conspicuous i'm
preston of the new order at Wash
ingtOn is the sobriety and inteli-
gence with which the new Democrat
ic majority has approached the re-
sponsiblity of conducting the gov
ernment of the United States.