7
They know the business value of com
petence. They cannot afford waste and
inefficiency. O f all employed persons in
the U. S. today, one in every nine is on
a public payroll; yet less than half of
them are selected by any sort of merit
system. The majority are political ap
pointees selected because they helped
get out the vote and not because they
are fit for the job assigned to them.
Taxes and Patronage
So long as the government payroll
is open to political appointees the num
ber of unneeded public servants con
tinues to grow. This is a principal cause
of rising taxes. Five billion dollars an
nually spent on public payrolls! Today
the tax on a package of cigarettes is
from 6 x/i cents to 8 cents; 2 cents on a
bottle of beer; 4 cents on a movie; from
3 to 5 cents on a gallon of gasoline; $25
on the average automobile; 11 cents on
a deck of cards. Taxes on business fran
chises, income and profits are steadily
rising. Government reaches deeper and
deeper into the pockets of its citizens.
O ut of every penny of taxes a large
part goes to pay unnecessary salaries to
workers who, because of lack of skill,
training or control, are unable or un
willing to do half a day’s work. The ar
guments on the score of righteousness,
competitive opportunity, and career
service are compelling enough in theory.
But theory is one thing, and dollars and
cents another. The business value of the
merit system, established by case his
tories, is provable in terms of dollars
and cents.
Cincinnati vs. St. Louis
Clarence Dykstra reports that it. took
only 615 policement costing $1,000,000
employed under the merit system, to
police 72 square miles of Cincinnati.
But in St. Louis it took 2,000 cops cost
ing $5,000,000 to police 64 square miles
of St. Louis. Cincinnati has a merit sys
tem, but St. Louis has a spoils system
masquerading as a '‘merit system.” It
would need more than the tax on the
sale of 150,000 automobiles annually to
pay for the differnce in cost in St.
Louis.
More Work, Fewer Workers
Scientific tests for speed and accur
acy in sorting mail enabled the Post
Office Department to handle more mail
with fewer clerks. The merit system for
these positions alone has saved the
United States in salaries—n o t to men
tion speed of dispatch—over $60,000 a
year to date— enough money to pay the
postage for mailing 6,000,000 pam
phlets.
A Million Dollars Lost in Three Months
After a year of effective merit sys
tem administration in the State of
Michigan, the political machine recently
gained ascendency at the polls over the
administration of Governor Murphy. A
large number of positions which had
been in the classified service were
promptly excepted therefrom and filled
by political appointees. Payrolls for the
first three months of the new adminis
tration exceeded those paid out during
the Murphy administration for the same
period by approximately one million dol
lars. The citizens of Michigan rose up
in arms and demanded the merit system
f>ack!
Wage Scale Compared
In Philadelphia, county officials are
not under the merit system but city
officials are. The county employes re
ceive an average of $1.11 per day more
than the city employes and do exactly
the same kinds of work under civil ser
vice law. A survey made by a body of
experts in municipal affairs has declared
that adjustment of county salaries and
abolition of unnecessary county offices
will save the taxpayer $7,500,000 in
four years.
(C ont’nued on page 27)