The Republican., 1935-11-21

OAAS VI C4iC ICoJlllS LLllliSS dDOul
the Federal pay roll is the difficulty of
! getting accurate information about it.
To some extent this has always been
the case. 1t is very much more so in
this Administration.
| %*#
For one thing, new jobs are created
so fast and the numbers multiply so
rapidly that no figures are final for
more than a few months. For exam
pie, the latest Civil Service Commits
sion figures-those for July-show
77O,128 persons on the pay roll. Com
parable figures for the Hoover and
I Coolidge regimes are as follows:
Coolidge, June 80, 1928. =. 54O,867
Hoover, June 80, 1882. ... $685. 1876
Thus, it seems on the surface that
in the two and half years of the
Roosevelt New Deal Administration
186,932 persons have been added to
the Federal pay roll.
That, however, is nothing like the
whole story. Those were merely the
figures up to the close of the last ses-
sion of Congress. At that session an
immense Administration legislative
program, every item of which meant
new jobs, was enacted. Many new
boards and commissioned salaried
were created. Chief among these are
the Wagner Labor Board, the Social
Security Commission, the Coal Con-
troll Commission and various others.
These boards and commissions, in ad-
dition to their members, of course,
are provided with paid secretaries,
press agents, stenographers, clerks
and office force.
And then there is the new Works
Progress administration, equipped
with four billions of dollars. There is
no way of estimating the number it
will ultimately put on the pay roll,
but it is already very large. For eX-
ample, one section of it, to which is
allocated $25O,0O0,000 for the year, is
the Rural Rehabilitation Administra-
ton. Another section is the so-called
National Youth Administration.
These are new agencies which are
not yet fully organized. Their pay roll
is not included in the July figures be-
cause they did not then exist. The eff
fort to man them is being rapidly
pushed. In a short while, it has been
authoritatively stated, the IRA will
have a force in the field of more than
1900 and a headquarters staff of
2,OOO How many NYA will emplay
is mere guess.
However, it seems conservative to
state that when the various agencies
authorized at the last session are fully
the total number of Federal
employees directly paid out of the
Treasury will exceed 800,000-well
over 100000 more than there were on
March 4, 1933-an increase, in fact, of
more than thirty-fve per cent. Nor
does this include the 110,500 County
Control committeeman created under
the AAA, and who are in every es-
sential Federal officeholders, though
not counted as such for the sole rea-
son that they are paid their $4 and SIS
per diem not out Of the Treasury but
out of the processing tax on food
which in the last analysis is a tax on
the consumer of food-to-wit, every
body.
To the average citizen these would
seem to be stunning facts, When, and
if, they thoroughly soak into the pub
lie mind it may be rather difficult for
a President seeking reelection on his
record adequately to eXplain-partic-
ularly a President so solemnly pledged
to cut the expenses of the govern
ment, wipe out the Federal boards and
commissions, which he had denounced,
and avert the great dangers of a
swollen pay roll and an enlarged Fed
eral bureaucracy, to which he had
pointed.