The Wallace miner. [volume] (Wallace, Idaho) 1907-current, 1918-03-14
in Gle SANS PAYROLL
EMPLOYS $500 CLERKS
GOVERNMENT SENDS OUT 100000
CHECKS TO DEPENDENTS
OF SOLDIERS.


carrying money allotments by soldiers
and sailors and government allowan-
ces too their dependents at home, went
into the mails Saturday. More than
100000 checks have been written and
an extraordinary effort has been made
to have the dependents get their al
Ilowances early in the month.
The average amount of each check
is about $25. and the total monthly
disbursements runs above $12,O00,000.
Usually the allotment from the SOL
diers' pay is about SIS, and the gov
eminent family allowance about SO,
the exact amount being fixed by the
number of dependents
Three shifts of clerks have been at
work. Acres of typists-230O of them
PA hours every day have clattered
away on batteries of typewriters in
several of the largest floor spaces in
Washington Communicated dance
hall above the municipal market, an
abandoned hospital and factory
building recently remodeled.
Urge Speed Always.
/ Regardless of the wholesale guam
tity of documents, each letter and
each check is regarded as distinct
human document, on instructions of
the director of the bureau, William c.
Delaney. Every woman typist and
man sorting clerk has been impressed
with the idea that the welfare of a
soldiers family may depend on the
speed, accuracy and personal interest
shown by the bureaus workers.
So this is the task and the spirit of
one of the governments greatest bu-
reaus, the treasury departments bu-
reau of war risk insurance. Congress
sional criticisms of delays in the dis
trlbution of allotments and allowance
have been met with assurance that
superlative promptness, impossible in
the past because of the disorder fol-
lowing the sudden creation of a new
system to supplant the old pension
plan, will be displayed in the future. .
! The bureau expects to have checks
for March remittances ready for mail
| ing on the morning of April 1 and
by that time much of the vast hui
man machine which has been built for
preparing the paychecks will be
strapped. Machines will do the work
better it is expected, than men and
women
1000 Employed
In the meanwhile, this is the way
the human machine works;
Experts in office management have
devised special schemes of office rou
tine. More than 1000 young men
end girls cannot be managed efficient
ly by haphazard methods. Regular
recreation periods in the middle of the
n crning and afternoon are provided
There is a piano and a graphaphone
ard the girls may dance during the
short recess. The managers say that
they do 80 per cent better work as a
result. There is a lunch room, oper-
ated at cost. The bureau has a super
vising matron, who advises the girl
employees, most of whom have come to
Washington recently for war time en-
ployment on patriotic grounds. She
helps them obtain lodging rooms and
in other ways
Speedy typists are carefully chosen
from the throng, and arranged at the
long work desks in the center of a
group of slower workers. This ar
rangement promotes group speed, and
better office morale, the efficiency
men in charge declare. Blonde GIRLS
nettes, for the bureau management be-
lieves blondes are of more nervous
temperament, and the brunettes pro-
vide a steadying influence.
Checks Signed Individually.
Each check is typed Individually
and a government law provides that
checks must be signed Individually
rather than stamped mechanically.
The signing is big task. Signature
duplicating machines are used, 10
checks being signed by each original
signature of pay clerk.
Even the choice of pay clerks is
lesson in efficiency. Not personality
not training, but length of patronymic
names is the determining factor. Men
with short names work at the signing
machines, for more short names can
be signed daily than long names. This
is the reason the jobs are held by E..
Hibbs, d. Mills, ]. L. Betz, G. A. Ball.
and M. Cox.
Yet with all the efficiency methods
of this big office, it must shortly go
into the discard before the automatic
check writing machines, now being
perfected by M. e. Bailey, the chief
dsbursing clerk. These machines, by
a single operation, will stamp the
check with the name of the payee, the
amount the address, the names of the
soldier, his organization sign and the
serial number of the check.
In addition to this disbursement
work, the bureaus life insurance
business includes the receipt and clas-
sifcation Of 10000 applications daily
from men in camps, for an aggregate
of $500 100000 of insurance. The