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Show MULTIFARIOUS COMMISSIONS (San Francisco Chronicle.) Whatever olse they are, there will be none to deny that every one of our appointed state boards and commissions commis-sions are political machines whose members spend prodigious amounts of time paid for by the taxpayers, to say nothing of the cost of "official" trips so planned as to put tho right man In the right place when needed and all to promote the political fortunes of the appointing power. Few realize what these commissions cost. It appears that the railroad commission alone cost the people of the state $670,000 for the last fiscal year. Its main work is in settling quarrels quar-rels between localities and industries and In furnishing Investors with in-1 formation which they would otherwise other-wise have to pay for themselves or go without. Why should tho taxpayers pay nearly near-ly three-quarters of a million dollars a year for those purposes? The number of individuals who get any benefit whatever from the operations opera-tions of the railroad commission is infinitesimal. in-finitesimal. They do not affect the price which consumers pay for anything. any-thing. They do very little, except gather data for investors, which would not get done if there were no such commission, and probably get done just as well. And, like all the other commissions, it is a hotbed of politics. It does not pay the people to tax themselves so heavily to accomplish such work as the commission does. And, even if there were pecuniary gain, it would be far outweighed by the moral injury involved in supporting support-ing such a powerful personal political machine at the taxpayers' expense. Six hundred and seventy thousand dollars dol-lars a year is a lot of money to spend for such a purpose. Doubtless, the railroad commission costs the people more than any other single commission, but all the others measure up to the full limit of their opportunities. We have a government govern-ment of commissions and by commissions commis-sions and for commissions. The railroad rail-road commission is merely the most costly of the lot. t All that is necessary or desirable to be accomplished by all these commis-sions commis-sions can be done at a vastly smaller cost to the taxpayers. no |