Jasper County Democrat, Volume 15, Number 75, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 December 1912 — Page 2 Advertisements Column 2 [ADVERTISEMENT]

IW HKMSS SYSIQLOF GOVERNMENT! r i FOR .INNfACITIES

PUBLISHED BY THE BUSINESS SYSTEM OF GOVERNMENT STATE COMMITTEE OF THE INDIANA FEDERATED COMMERCIAL CLUBS.

SERIAL NO. 5. Efficiency in Local Government. When efficiency of - local government Is spoken of there is meant that ALL the things which OUGHT to be done SHALL be done at the TIME and in the MANNER they SHOULD be don*. Efficiency means all that can be imagined of official honesty, public economy and civic progress. No interests that touch the people are more in need of Efficiency than the government of the cities. City rule is not a question of dividends for a few stockholders. It is a matter of the welfare of the community; the spending of funds to which the entire tax-paying body of the citizenship has contributed. This welfare should be conserved with all industry and wisdom, all honesty and faithfulness. This money should be spent with all fidelity to each taxpayer’s right to a just share of the proceeds of taxation. If government fail in its obligation of efficiency, the people suffer and their community is retarded. The grade of efficiency that is applied to local government is the greatest factor in the civic and, in the long run, in the material progress of the city. It determines the cost of maintaining the city, the standard of maintenance and the degree of its people’s well-being. The activities of government never cease. The consequences of its good or bad works are perpetual. The cost of its shortcomings is always operating and always piling up. The grafter is not always grafting. The official who raids the treasury is not always looting. But inefficiency, wherever It performs, is constant in its work and everlasting in Its effect. The penalty of it remains a cumulative tax upon the people for all time. It is a law of economics as well as of physics that losses by waste can never be made up. The people of the cities should understand this. Waste of one sort and another by the inefficiencies of government deprives them of the things they should have but do not get. Splendid systems of parks and driveways, of public playgrounds and open places, of cleanliness and sanitation, or whatever the city’s unsupplied needs may be, could all be procured and maintained by what is wasted through the inefficiencies of government. When the cities of America prescribe efficiency as one of the first principles of municipal rule all the practical problems of city management will have been put in the way of solution. The Business System of Government for- Indiana Cities proposes to wipe out inefficiency by abolishing parties and party politics in city afTairs and establishing the administration of municipal government by experts.

i City as a Business Institution. The American city of today is a big financial and industrial corporation. Why not manage it as such? It collects and disburses immense sums of money each year. It employs hundreds and in some cases thousands of men. It manufactures and it builds, it creates and it constructs. It expends vast amounts for materials. It pays out other vasts amounts in wages. It is ever employing, always buying, constantly selling. This is business. Why not treat it as such? All the work so done, all the transactions so made, all that is bought and all that is sold, every cent taken in and every cent paid out are on the public account. To the last penny the money that passes in these affairs belongs to the people. For each dollar taken why not give a dollar’s worth? This money in great part comes from the classes of people who can feel the loss of it and it is spent for what these same classes of people greatly need. Why should they be cheated a third to a half because the men chosen to handle it do know how to buy and how to sell, how to spend and how to save, how to manage and how to make one hundred cents go the full span of a dollar? The people expose themselves to these consequences. They do not seek the capable and the expert; they do not insist that their business shall be transacted on a business basis. In choosing men to collect and disburse all this money, to plan and execute all these affairs of the municipal business, they do not unite to choose men of known fitness or tested capacity, but divide and choose men according to the political parties to which they belong. Sometimes “we guess they’re all right,” and at other times “we hope they’ll -do;” but no measures are taken to make sure of it. Why not have done with that sort of folly? A business corporation is maintained to make money for its stockholder. To do so it must be well managed. A municipal corporation is maintained to render certain Indispensable services and to provide certain imperative necessaries to.tbe people who live under it. To do this in such manner that all shall get in due portion what they need and what Is their right to have, the city should be well managed. Is it? Why should the city corporation, instituted to meet the necessities of an orderly and regulated society, to raise the standard of living, to make human beings better and happier, be worse managed than a business corporation instituted merely to make money for a few persons? The Business System of Government for Indiana Cities takes the hu-

For further information address - . BUSINESS SYSTEM COMMITTEE, 1 Fort Wayne, Ind. I