Evening star., 1925-09-17
Article ".

High on the list of Federal savings
at Washington during the fiscal year
1925 stand the accomplishments OF
Andrew W. Mellon, of which little has
been published. The Secretary of the
Treasury has been a hard-worklng
. .teammate Of Calvin Coolidge in the
latter's economy drive, and. w!thal,
q self-effacing, one. He employs no
press agent. He has worked and SAID
nothing publicly about what he was
doing, but the record. now being writ
ten for the Bureau of the Budget, 1s
eloquent OF his 1925 economies.
Take, for instance, the public debt
service, that branch of his department
which records all transactions relating
to the national debt. During the past
fiscal year Mr.. Mellon has reorgan-
lied the public debt service from top
to bottom. Yet no peep Of the work
has been heard: and none would be
heard now, in all likelihood, We're 1t
not for the record of 1925 economies
which is being made up. Here is
what the record says about that par
ticular saving:
There was reduction Of 557 in the
personnel of the public debt service
during the year. The salaries of these
people totaled $s1S, ,056.60. This re-
'duction was made possible by a de-
crease in work, by the consolidation
of Office units, and by the discontin-
uance of the numerical system of re-
cording coupons,
Savings Big and Small.
That is all, and the story picks up
the next incident. Just a few COM
monplace lines to tell of a job whose
magnitude would have occasioned Ma
| tion-wide comment had it been made
public while the work was being done.
Incidentally, the next incident men
| toned in the record tells of the thor
oughness of the job of economy per
formed in that branch of the Treas
| ury. The record reads:
"A saving of S512 was made by re-
moving dead files from file cases and
using the cases for current files"
In the same conversational way,
| one passes on Mr.. Melons second
| big saving, an economy of which no
estimate is made. Here 1t Is:
AN examination of the records Of
| the division of deposits shows that
balances maintained with general ma
tional bank depositaries have been
maintained, on the average, at a con-
| siderably lower figure than during the
preceding fiscal year.
This constitutes a direct saving in
the expenditure Of Government funds.
inasmuch as depositary banks pay
| interest on daily balances at the rate
! Of only per cent per annum, while
the Government is borrowing to meet
| its own requirements at high rates OF
| interest"
Hundreds Of millions Of dollars are
deposited annually by the Government
| in national banks. Apparently the
| Scotch blood in Secretary Melons
veins rebelled at borrowing at per
cent and depositing at per cent. The
result means many thousands of ad-
ditional dollars that taxpayers would
| not have had to their credit otherwise.
A third thing: for years the Treas
| ury has been using whole linen paper
| for its securities. Experiment showed
that paper consisting of rs per cent
| linen would answer the purpose just
as we'll The lower linen content was
adopted.
'"The consequent saving" says the
report, was S4S,670 during the year. ;"
Size Of Paper Counts.
Even this saving did not satisfy.
The Secretary and his subordinates
experimented further with the distinc-
tive paper. The report says:
by modifying the specifications for
distinctive paper for United States se-
curities 30 AZ to permit delivery of
per cent in single sheets instead of
double-shset size. q reduction in the