Evening star., 1925-04-13

On the budget directors desk in
Washington there is pasteboard
box half filled with exceedingly snort
pencil stubs. They were turned IN
by his clerks under the rule that the
stub OF the old pencil must be handed
in before a new one is given out
They constitute Exhibit in the Cool
idge economy program.
At the Navy Department and the
Shipping Board Government purchas-
! ing agents are now engaged in crack
| ing into numerous small contracts
| the annual fuel oil requirements OF
| those two great consumers. They
| run to 100000 barrels year. Not
| so long ago they were let in bulk
! Prices jumped in expectation of sc
/ huge an order, and the Governments
/ itself had to pay more. Now the
! numerous small orders no longer un-
settle prices, and the Government
| sa yes money. Exhibit B in the econ
omy program.
1 over at the Naval Hospital in
| Washington Government engineers
| have put to work a great quantity
! of exhaust steam. For years this
steam wasted Itself in evaporation
| Now it helps to heat the hospital in
| Winter, and, through a refrigerating
apparatus, to cool II in Summer. The
result is saving. Exhibit c.
In the great building housing the
Veterans Bureau a group of profes-
sional savers have linked into a
single unified system thousands OF
miles of government-owned telegraph
wires. Formerly these wires. used
| only by a few departments, were idle
much of the time. Now they are used
by all departments and have replaced
TO great extent the use of Western
Union and Postal facilities. The re-
i suit? Savings running into thou
sands of dollars monthly, in tele-
graph tolls for government messages
| Put II down as Exhibit ID.
Discount on Hotel Bills.
Throughout the United States there
are, perhaps. 200 hotels frequently
used by Government employees trav-
cling on official business. Thanks to
| a corps of professional money-savers
! at Washington, these hotels now give
| Government employees a discount OF
| from 10 to 25 per cent. The result
| is a considerable saving to the Gov
ernment and also TO the employees
! Exhibit L.
Quickly the alphabet is exhausted
We run lightly down to y, Y. q and
| back again, starting With double A.
Again the alphabet is exhausted
And again and again it will be ex-
| hausted in listing the economy ex-
hibits. Indeed. one could use the
| Greek alphab bet, the Russian, the Cal
nese, in Identifying individual econ
| omies put into effect as a part oi
| the drive toward further tax reduc-
| tion at Washington.
| Put into effect by whonG-Coolidge
| Certainly not: the President never
| heard of a tenth of them. To tote each
| individual economy to the White House
and lay it on the doorstep would not
mark it as the Presidents baby. Not
/ one in fifty originated with Calvin
! Coolidge-not one in hundred. Most o.
them would seem strangely unfamiliar
/ to him
. But all Of them bear the brand o
| the thing he likes-economy in runnina
! the Government affairs. And all o
! them, down to the last often-uset
! paper clip, are children. grandchildren
or great-grandchildren of a single idea
That idea was adopted by the Harding
Coolidge administration. 1t hasn't beel
adopted four years as yet but it ha
been more than prolific.