Weekly journal-miner., 1920-04-14
WHY TAXES ARE 50 HIGH IS
 EXPLAINED

WASHINGTON. April 7.- There are approximately 250,000 more em- ployes in the service of the federal government today than there were before the war.
 Although the armistice was signed more than 10 months ago, there has been scarcely any reduction in the number of employees carried on the payroll and the people are paying bill lions of dollars i'll taxes to support Q civilian war machine nearly as large as it was during actual hostilities.
 A young woman who came here as a war worker in 1917 recently made a change from one department to an other. Asked how she liked her new position she replied:
 "I like it better than the old one, because there is something to do. I used to spend the whole day idling, now there is enough work to keep me busy during the morning"
 Department heads and bureau chiefs cannot bear to let go the army of clerks under them. It gives them a sense of power to have large force working under them. There is a keen rivalry among the petty officials of all departments to sec who can have the largest retinue of Servitors.
 Senator Shoot has called the mat ter to the attention of the senate. He declared that if all the estimates sub mitted by the various departments were granted by congress the appro- priations would aggregate $5,200,000- O00 for operating the government next year, or more than five times as much as pre-war expenses. That amount does not include interest or the public debt.
 Huge List Grows
 Before the outbreak of the war there were 37,9G8 civil employees of .,he government working in the Dis trict of Columbia. When the armis- ice was declared November Il, 1918, she rolls of the civil servIcc board showed l17,454 civil employees ill the district On February zO last there were over l04OOO clerks and other civil employees here. Since October Jl, 1919, the net reduction in civil employees of the government ill all de partments has been only l7OOO.
 During the war the government erected several hundred acres of tenn porary buildings to house the em- ployes of the various departments whe were induced to come to Wash .ngton as war workers" Those buildings are still being inhabited by he army of workers who have not enough to do to keep them busy even few hours a day. Living conditions IS Washington have not improved since war days, and 1t is still practi- :ally impossible to obtain modest liv- ing quarters at any price that is not exorbitant.
 Before the war there were approxi- mately 500,000 civil employees of the government i'll the entire country Now there are 726,369. The postof- ice department has 291,234; the war department has 100000; the navy de- partment, 101,422; the treasury de partment, 71,070; the department of agriculture, 20,484.
 Congress, which is now struggling with the appropriation bills, is trying to lop off $l,000,0C0,000 from the es- inmates of administrative officers of the government If it succeeds, it will force the administration to drop 25,- 200 employees from the payrolls on June 30.
 Representative Good, chairman of the appropriation committee, said:
 "Twenty-five per cent of the en- ployes in the District of Columbia could be dropped from the rolls today without iniuring the service, and that would leave the, remaining clerks op- erating on something like an 80 per cent efficiency basis. The efficiency of the clerks is a good deal like the ef- ficiency of the men in the navy yards, whose uperintendents have informed Us is around GO per cent. 1 am in formed that in many of the depart- mentS work done one month is de stroyed the next month An official sets group of clerks working on a job and they work at it for a month I Then he comes back and looks it over. The next day he reports the work to another official, who says: You can destroy that; we will not use it, and so the under official comes ! back and starts them at something else"
 Civil Service Has Lobby
 Congress is the only source that can i give impetus to the removal of the . dead weight from the government | payroll. How far it will go remains to be seen, for the civil service per sonuel in Washington maintains au efficient lobby, which is on the job . all the time, and it's energies are de- voted to two objectives-inCreased . pay and prevention of decapitation. It IS the old human struggle of men and women working with all their power and energy to keep what they have got without giving much thought to the larger economic question of what it costs the people to maintain them in comparative idleness.
 In order to pay this years payroll the secretary of the treasury will have to issue at least $5,000,000000 more short time certificates next summer. That will bring the total of such cer- Liticates outstanding up tO S7G00, ,0OO,-t poo. The only alternative is to have congress authorize the issuance of Oug term bonds to take up the deficit Senator Norris declared in the senate