OCR Text |
Show SEEN-' HEARD around the National Capital h By CARTER FIELDiSB5a Washington. A phase of the economy econ-omy program of Budget Director Lew-Is Lew-Is Douglas which seems slated for the discard, since so many senators and members of the house have gone back home, Is that of forcing the retirement of all government employees who have been on the pay roll for thirty years. The protests against this plan began pouring into Washington some time back. At first they only came from people who were then over the thirty-year thirty-year period or rapidly approaching it. Government employees who still had a few years to go before attaining thirty thir-ty years' service assumed that the ruling rul-ing would be changed before it ever had a chance to hit them. But time has passed and the ruling has not been changed. Beginning about a month before adjournment, the protest mail on this point began to reach such a flood tide that it appeared ap-peared to be organized. Employees not only in Washington but in virtually vir-tually every post office, custom house, Internal revenue bureau and what-not In the country clamored to their senators sen-ators and members of the house for mandatory action by congress to force Douglas to desist. It is quite likely that if there had not been such a hectic rush to adjourn, something of the kind would have materialized. But adjournment was reached without with-out action and then the senators and representatives for the most part went home. In short, they got back where employees fearing the retirement act could get at them. And they heard plenty. The employees attacked the plan of course because they are personally Interested In-terested in changing it. But they also make an attack on two other grounds. Many of them in the customs offices and internal revenue bureaus, et cetera, entered the service when they were very young thousands of them as young as eighteen or nineteen. Under Un-der the Douglas plan they would be retired when only forty-eight to fifty years old. They point out that many of them have fixed obligations. Some are buying houses. Some are paying high insurance premiums. Very many are supporting families. The cut in salaries was not so bad. The 15 per 'cent bothered them, but did not cripple crip-ple them. But a reduction to a pension basis, coming on the heels of what to them has been a tough time due to the cut, and coming just as the cut is being be-ing partially restored, would leave them . high and dry. No Real Efficiency These old employees point out that there Is no real efficiency in the plan, although the government saves the difference dif-ference between the retiring salaries and the salaries of clerks just entering enter-ing the service. This is more than offset, off-set, they say, by the much greater efficiency, ef-ficiency, due to long experience, of the older employees. They make their chief drive with respect to clerks who would be retired around fifty to fifty-five. fifty-five. No serious argument is made against retiring employees whose efficiency effi-ciency has been lessened by advancing years. The government makes the small net saving of the difference between the two classes of salaries. It does not have to pay the pensions. These come out of the retirement fund. And right here lies one of the real grievances of all federal employees against the measure whether they be in danger of early retirement or not. The point is that this plan by wholesale whole-sale retirement of large numbers of employees would cut heavily into this retirement fund. The employees charge that in two or three years it would entirely use up this back-log built up by deducting from each pay check of federal employees over long years during dur-ing which they have looked forward to retirement. The original retirement plan was very carefully figured on life insurance statistics. The amount to be taken from each employee was calculated roughly on the idea of employees being retired when well up in the sixties. Also the probable length of life during which the pensions would be drawn. The Douglas plan knocks all this galley-west. Campaign "Punch" Sugar and whisky are the prime Ingredients In-gredients for a good punch. They have been used lavishly in the punch the Republican candidates intend to force upon their Democratic opponents In the Middle and Far West during the coming fall elections. Some of this campaign brew exploded explod-ed while being bottled in the closing days of the Seventy-third congress. There would have been more suds on the floor had it not been for the strict limitations on debate imposed in the house during the last days. The bottling of this punch has been in the hands, of former Republican Representative John C. Schaffer of Wisconsin, who was defeated for reelection re-election in the 1932 Democratic landslide, land-slide, but who will run for congress this fall either for the senate against La Follette. or as representative from his Milwaukee district. All summer the former congressman I has been assiduously working with ! business and corporation directories : tying certain officials in the present administration up with Cuban sugar companies and domestic distilleries j through Interlocking directorates and direct connections. Joined with the Wisconsin politician j are Incumbent representatives from sugar beet and grain states of the West. Mr. Schafer'g Washington work has been done in their offices. Just how potent this Schufer brew will be remains to be determined. Checking Up Fares Some curious results are expected to flow from the analysis of actual transportation trans-portation ticket sales now being conducted con-ducted Jointly by the office of RailroaJ "Czar" Eastman and NRA This Is part of an Investigation to determine the comparative volume of passenger travel by railroad busses, boats and airplanes. Returns are now coming In from a questionnaire sent to the railroads and work will soon start on replies from the air and water lines. The broad purpose of the investigation investiga-tion Is to determine what could be done to Increase the total volume of passenger traffic by common carriers regardless of which gets the business. Also to Improve service and at the same time increase the profit or cut the loss from passenger operation. Any knowledge of where passengers come from and where they go is now concealed effectively in the gross figures fig-ures on operations by the transportation transporta-tion companies. Some of the records of individual ticket sales have revealed re-vealed surprising blind spots in patronage pa-tronage between points where excellent excel-lent service has been maintained. For example, a check of ticket sales out of Cleveland by a nationwide bus system disclosed not a single passenger passen-ger traveling to New England by bus. Again, a railroad in Maine did not sell a single ticket last summer to the Chicago Chi-cago fair, although this railroad spent considerable money advertising the attractions at-tractions of the fair to people of the Pine Tree state. One of the southern railroads did not sell one ticket to any point west of Chicago, although that railroad spent a great deal of money seeking to influence people living liv-ing along its lines to take trips to Yellowstone and Yosemite. It is believed by IOC officials that the money now being spent for advertising adver-tising by railroads and possibly by airplanes, air-planes, boats and busses might result In a great deal more cash entering the treasuries of these companies if the advertising were more intelligently done. May Cause Hardship Failure of the senate to heed the pleas of Senator Robert J. Bulkley of Ohio in the closing hours for passage of his amendments to the federal reserve re-serve act, was the biggest disappointment disappoint-ment of the whole session of congress so far as the treasury, comptroller of the currency and banking fraternity are concerned. The administration officials of-ficials had very ardently urged the adopting of these amendments but they were caught in a jam. A peculiar phase of the situation is that no one was really opposed to them. Some casual references were made to their being written in Wall Street, and that sort of thing, but a canvass of the senators afterwards disclosed dis-closed that this was just idle chatter and that no one really meant it Senator Sen-ator Bulkley is confident that they will be adopted in January, but in the meantime, according to the comptroller's comptrol-ler's office, considerable hardship may be caused, and quite unnecessarily, by their failure. For example, one of the amendments, amend-ments, changing the banking act of 1933, was to permit orderly liquidation liquida-tion of the assets and securities of securities companies affiliated with banks, which are members of the federal fed-eral reserve system, when such companies com-panies are placed in formal liquidation and are transacting no other business. Its purpose was to prevent such companies com-panies dumping their assets on the market in a rush to dissolve before the date fixed in the law. Such dumping would not only result in sharp sacrifices sacri-fices on the part of the stockholders of the companies because the effect of the dumping would force down the price below what it should be, but in addition the effect on the whole market mar-ket would be bad. Would Hit Stockholders For example, such a security company com-pany affiliated with a member bank and anxious to close out on the day fixed by the 1933 law, might own a very large block of some widely held stock. This whole block being dumped on the market at once would force the price down. The stockholders of the security company would take an unnecessary un-necessary loss. But in addition, every owner of that stock would see his assets as-sets dwindle. If he had the stock up as collateral at the bank, his loan might be called. And all just because of a drastic provision of law which everybody ev-erybody concerned, from the comptroller comptrol-ler of the currency down, wanted to change. Another of these amendments cleared up a provision of the 1933 act, which has been interpreted as preventing pre-venting non-member banks from dealing deal-ing in United States government bonds state and municipal bonds as welL The law was aimed at preventing banks from having security affiliates. No one intended to prevent these banks from buying or selling government govern-ment bonds. There were a dozen other amendments, amend-ments, all more or less important to limited groups, and none of a character charac-ter really controversial. Yet they all went by the board In the last rush. One little one, failure of which Is very annoying locally in a number of Instances, In-stances, involved small bond Issues, as for instance, of clubs. Existing law would permit only a hundred-thousand-dollar limit on purchases of total Issues Is-sues by one corporation. The Bulkley amendment would have raised this limit lim-it to a million dollars. Copyrliht. WOT Serrlc. |