, 1922-07-19
Strong for Econon1u

REPRESENTATIVE William r. Wood, of In
Ii diana, the new chairman of the Republican con
gressional committee, who will have direction of
the campaign this year to elect a Republican house,
enjoys a reputation in Washington second only to
that of General Dawes as a "scrapper" for reduced
expenditures in the various government depart
ments and the introduction of business methods in
the routine of the administrative office.
Mr.. Wood has been a member of the appropria-
tons committee of the house of representatives for
the last three congresses and for the last two con-
crosses has been chairman of the subcommittee in
charge of the Legislative, executive and judicial de-
partments. He is now at the head of the sub or
ganization of the appropriations committee, which
has complete charge of all appropriations for the
% independent offices of the government, including
the war finance corporation, the shipping board,
the veterans bureau, the federal trade commission,
the interstate commerce commission and others.
The annual appropriation for these departments
is in round numbers nearly $500, 900, 1000.
Representative Wood came to the congress we'll
equipped for this work as he served IS years in the
Indiana state senate, the majority of which time he
was a member of the COMMITTEES which had charge
of all appropriations for the state of Indiana. He
is a lawyer of great ability and is particularly
strong in examination of witnesses. 1t is in this ca
pacity that he has upon several occasions brought
disaster to the extrayagant claims of bureaucrats
in Washington who appeared before the house com
mittee on appropriations to defend their requests
for immense sums of money. Upon every occasion
these bureau chiefs found Mr.. Wood was thorough
" posted regarding not only the functions of their
bureau but possessed of surprisingly acurate in
formation as to how their bureaus might be oper-
@@@S 1o'AR Aoh - slAAt
appropriated. 1t was very embarrassing for bu-
reau chiefs after they had delivered a carefully pre-
pared and very flowery statement as to the i'm
portanee of their work and the tremendous amount
of money that was necessary for the conduct of
their office to have their pretensions puctured and
their figures riddled by Mr.. Wood on cross-exami-
nation of their statement.
These occurrences were very frequent under the
Wilson administration, at which time waste, ex-
travagance, padded payrolls, inefficient and useless
employees and other gross evils characterized the
executive agencies. 1t was during the cross-exam-
1nation of one of the Democratic bureau chiefs that
MIR. Wood brought out the fact that in the bureau
they had three sets of watchmen, the first set TO
watch the building, the second set to watch the
watchmen, and the third set to check up on the
watchmen, who watched the watchmen. AS a re-
suit of Representative Woods caustic EXPOSE. two
sets were dispensed with and the first set was re.
duced in numbers.
Representative Wood has been a successful cham
pion OF the measure for the establishment of an in
dependent purchasing agency for the government,
which he declares, would result in the saying of
hundreds of thousands of dollars yearly, and also
1or the measure providing for the transfer of en-
1orcement of prohibition act to the department of
justice. Both these measures are now in the hands
OF the coordination committee which is to decide
what changes shall be made in the departmental or.
Ganization.