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Show I j Washington Comment j July 1st was moving day for i some 18,000 federal employes i here. They left their offices Fri- day night to return to work for ' new agencies Saturday morning, but is was mostly "on paper". That is, the shift, made precisely at midnight, was a "paper transfer" in pursuance of the president's two reorganization plans. Except in a very few instances, the employes em-ployes returned to the same desks and resumed the same work under the same immediate superiors. The results, therefore, while sym-j sym-j bolic, are practically negligible. But the shift has created some amusing by-products, as, for instance, in-stance, in the case of the commerce com-merce building, the heraldic shields of which announce that it houses the bureaus of census, navigation, coast and geodetic survey, mines, aeronautics, foreign and domestic commerce, steamboat inspection, fisheries, lighthouse, and patent office. Agency shifts have scattered scat-tered mines, aeronautics, foreign commerce, steamboat inspection, fisheries, and light house, to other I buildings around town, and the harassed seeker-after-information feels that he's playing the old game of "button, button, who's got the button" before he succeeds in tracking a department to its lair. The New Deal seems to take exquisite ex-quisite and gleeful delight in bewildering be-wildering us with its whimsies, so it must ibe having many a chuckle at our expense with this latest governmental caprice. Just to keep the record straight, we give you the treasury department's depart-ment's latest quotations as it clos-ed clos-ed its books on the fiscal year of 1939. It reports that the government govern-ment has spent $9,268,338,030, the largest peace-time outlay in the history of the nation. The national nation-al debt has climbed in the last 12 months to a new peak of $40,439,-532,411. $40,439,-532,411. Expenditures were $3,-600,514,404 $3,-600,514,404 more than the treasury trea-sury collected. In the previous fiscal year only $7,691,287,108 was spent, in contrast to the nine billion-odd dollars of the present year. The deficit, the third highest high-est of any peace-time fiscal year, compared with a deficit of $1,449,-625,881 $1,449,-625,881 last year, but was $472,-000,000 $472,-000,000 less than the amount Mr. Roosevelt predicted in his annual message to congress. |