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Show An aeroplane has just crossed the Atlantic from Liverpool to New York, without mishap. It came over in the Mauretania. Frankfort, Germany, now has a "Hunienlebenversicherungge-sellschaft," "Hunienlebenversicherungge-sellschaft," or in plain English a company for insuring dogs. We can readily understand that anyone living there and possessing a dog of any value would have to have it insured to prevent it from being metamorphosed into "frankfurters." A dog in New York state, according to the papers, has committed suicide. Things in that commonwealth must be as rotten as its leading lead-ing citizens, in their political speeches, say if they make even the dogs court death. Things are still looking Rooseveltish in Ohio. Mrs. W. G. Clark of Cleveland has just presented her third set of triplets to her country, coun-try, and this does not count four pairs of twins she has had. She was herself the only girl in a family of 21 children. No wonder Cleveland grows so fast. I PRUNING DOWN FEDERAL EXPENSES. Frederick A. Cleveland is the man to whom Uncle Sam has given the task of finding and stopping the leaks in the treasury. .He is now on the job, and is drawing $27.78 a day. It seems he has been running over to New York and Philadelphia to stop minor leaks in those cities ar.d getting money for it, and Comptroller Tracewell of the treasury has had to rule that for every day he is thus off he is to be "docked" that $27.78 out of his federal pay. The course of reasoning rea-soning seems to be that economy should begin at home, and that where an expert is called in to sit on the salaries of government clerks, he may properly be required to take a sample of his own medicine. Mr. Cleveland is not theorizing about federal economies; he has taken off his coat and is going right into the dark and devious labyrinth laby-rinth of government methods, with only the official red-tape to serve him for a clue. He is finding queer things at every turn, and in due time his report will tell congress and the country all about them. He discovered for one thing that Uncle Sam, in the treasury department, de-partment, has sometimes three and four high-priced clerks to check and re-check accounts, according to the custom of half a century ago, while the big business corporations of today have only one check-up in such cases. Mr. Cleveland is learning these things by going from clerk to clerk, sitting down beside them and having them tell him exactly what they are doing. He has already found that in some instances clerks have long been doing work that did not count. One man who has been drawing $2,200 for going through certain motions has at his recommendation been dropped to $900. A number of others have been found to be purely supernumerary and ornamental. They have been putting in their time diligently, and it wa3 not their fault that Uncle Sam did not find profitable work for them to do. The matter will be submitted sub-mitted to congress, and doubtless other work, which is of some value to the country, will be given to these employes. There is much quaking among the clerks, for they know not where the ax may fall. Some of them are as nervous over the present investigation as boya in school who have been in mischief when they should have been studying. But President Taft has spoken reassuringly reassur-ingly to them. No one will lose his job, he saysunless the case is flagrant. Nevertheless dread and uncertainty prevail, for there seems to be no doubt that many of the cases are "flagrant." |