It is highly important that the Borah Committee print in its record the list of large contributors. It will be valuable for future reference and for the present information of the public. A preliminary analysis of the contributions of $1,000 and over up to October 15 showed that a very high proportion was given by officers and directors of large corporations and banks. Examination of part of the list of contributors giving between $100 and $1,000 indicated a similar situation there. Let the whole record be made available. The stamp of Big Business will be found to be on it.

The Biggest Business engineered the collecting machinery. The chairman of the Contributors Committee, with 50 or 60 sub-committees in New York City alone, was Guy Emerson, vice president of the Bankers Trust Company, a big New York bank in which several of the partners in J. P. Morgan & Co. are directors.

The testimony shows that Richard V. Scandret, Jr., a newhew of Dwight Morrow, partner in J. P. Morgan & Co., at the request of Mr. Emerson, arranged to have William V. Hodges accept the treasurership of the Republican National Committee. Mr. Scandret continued in the campaign as Western organizer of the Contributors Committee.

W. L. Mellon, nephew of Secretary Mellon, was in charge of collections in the Pittsburgh district, and E. T. Stotesbury, chief Philadelphia partner of J. P. Morgan, was chairman of the Executive Committee of the Ways and Means Committee of the Republican National Committee for Pennsylvania, of which Joseph R. Grundy was chairman-treasurer and active head.

There can be no question of the public value of the publication of the list of big givers, so that an analysis can be made of the industrial and financial groups who were willing to back their gratitude or their hopes for the future with hard cash. Their group interests have been or are to be before the Government. What were their contributions to the successful ticket?

"Spent in the West"

HE pre-election testimony of the Republican campaign officials before the Borah Committee, led the New York Times to say, "More than twothirds of the amount raised has been spent in the West."

Joseph R. Grundy, Republican collector in Pennsylvania, wrote in a circular:

"Pennsylvanians! Because you have enjoyed much you must contribute liberally in substance and energy. Our State is secure, but we must see to it that Coolidge electors and Republican Congressmen are chosen in debatable territory. What are you going to do in this emergency?"

In the years between elections a generous share of the money the whole country pays for commodities and services apparently finds its way into the pockets of Republican citizens of Eastern States in dividends and interest payments.

We have yet to see the man who doubts the causal connection between this fact and the westward remigration of a portion of this money in the critical campaign weeks when Western votes are to affect the country's economic and financial policies.

Republicanism in the West was either unable or without desire to contribute much to its own salvation. From Western States with about one-fourth of the electoral vote came perhaps one-twentieth of the fund. On the other hand, out of the East and Central North came probably 80 to 90 per cent of the reported money. New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois alone will no doubt account for at least twothirds of the fund, though they cast but one-fourth the electoral ballots.

Paramount to every other opportunity of the Borah Committee in this situation is its opportunity to bring in a comprehensive plan of legislative remedy.

An immediate question for the Committee will be how to rewrite the corrupt practices legislation and close the great gaps which obviously now permit obscurity and wholesale evasion. But it is time to begin consideration of the proposal to remove the whole nauseating subject from partisan politics and make it a clean public function.

All efforts in the past Congress to enact bills to strengthen the statutes on corrupt practices were unavailing. Senator Borah was outstanding in advocacy of such legislation. His "rider" for this purpose on the Postal Salary Increase Bill failed with President Coolidge's veto of this measure last June in the dying days of the session.

Now Borah and his Committee have a notable opportunity.

TH

HE budget for 1926, which President Coolidge will submit at the opening of Congress, is worthy of careful study. We print the summary table of estimated appropriations and, for comparison with these expenditures, the total estimated receipts and the resulting surplus expected. These figures will prove valuable for reference in many connections. They are for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1926, all Government financial figures being by fiscal periods ending June 30, rather than by calendar years.

Congress will give much of its time in the coming short session to considering these budget proposals for appropriations to the various departments, bureaus and commissions. Judging by what this same Congress did to the budget of last year, it will not change the proposals very materially in the total.

The receipts for 1926 as estimated in the budget are primarily based, for the present, at least, on the operation of the tariff, and of the revenue law which was passed last Spring in lieu of the Mellon plan and which was the subject of an article in the May Searchlight.

Whether the amount of revenue received in 1926 will equal, fall short of, or exceed the budget expectations will depend on business conditions. If the much discussed plan for further tax reduction along the lines of Mellon policy is postponed till the regular meeting of the newly elected 69th Congress in December, 1925, there will probably be little time in which any resulting tax revision could affect the receipts of the fiscal year of 1926.

The summary table of proposed appropriations for 1926 also carries comparative figures for 1925. On the hasty adjournment of Congress last June, the second deficiency bill and the bill to adjust compensation of employees in certain of the field services failed of enactment; consequently the budget table shows the supplemental estimates for these deficiencies alongside the actual appropriations already made for 1925 and thus reaches a total for 1925 comparable with the 1926 estimates.

Every reader should examine the appropriations and reach his own judgments on them. The most essential points to consider are the total amount, the amounts devoted to the different agencies in relation to the comparative importance of the functions of those agencies for the national welfare, the amounts paid on the principal of the public debt and in interest.

From President Coolidge's message to Congress we select certain passages which should be before the reader in his study of the budget.

As to items for the national defense, the President's message says:

"For the national defense the estimates amount to $549,000,000, which is $29,000,000 less than the amount available

this current fiscal year. These figures do not include nonmilitary items of the War and Navy Departments. This reduction is made in accordance with my belief that we can have adequate national defense with a more modest outlay of the taxpayers' money. Further study may point the way to additional reduction without weakening our national defense, but rather perfecting it. This nation is at peace with the world. We no longer have international competition in naval construction of major units. We are concerned primarily with maintaining adequate preparedness. We should have adequate preparedness in 1926 within the limits of the amount recommended.

"Aside from the important factor of training personnel our national defense is largely an industrial problem. Today the outstanding weakness in the industrial situation as it affects national defense is the inadequacy of facilities to supply air service needs. The airplane industry in this country at the present time is dependent almost entirely upon Government business. To strengthen this industry is to strengthen our national defense. For the air service of the Army and Navy, and the Air Mail Service, the estimates, including contract authorizations, amount to $38,945,000. This contemplates an expenditure with the industries of $18,287,000 for the procurement of airplanes, engines and accessories. The remaining $20,658,000 is for maintenance, operation, experimentation and research. The amount of $38,945,000, however, does not include all that will be available for this service in 1926. Amounts contributing to the air service carried in other estimates, and usable war supplies, will make a total availability conservatively estimated at $65,000,000.

"The amount requested for national defense includes $50,118,000 for the Army and Navy Reserves, National Guard, Citizens' Military Training Camps, and other civilian training activities."

Regarding the "bonus" or adjusted compensation for veterans, the message explains:

"There is included in these estimates $50,000,000 to be set aside in the adjusted service certificate fund established under the World War adjusted compensation act of May 19, 1924. This is for the second payment to the fund to be made January 1, 1926. For the first payment, due January 1, 1925, $100,000,000 is included in the deficiency bill now under consideration by Congress."

As to Federal aid to States, it says:

"For Federal aid to States the estimates provide in excess of $109,000,000. These subsidies are prescribed by law. I am convinced that the broadening of this field of activity is detrimental both to Federal and State Governments. Efficiency of Federal operations is impaired as their scope is unduly enlarged. Efficiency of State governments is impaired as they relinquish and turn over to the Federal Government responsibilities which are rightfully theirs. I am opposed to any expansion of these subsidies. My conviction is they can be curtailed with benefit to both the Federal and State governments."

The Executive objection to expansion of Federal aid to States would apparently apply to the proposed plan for Federal aid for public school education, which has long been fought for by the American Education Association and the American Legion.

This proposal, which has been before several Congresses, is best known to the country as the SmithTowner bill, later the Towner-Sterling bill, and still later the Reed-Sterling bill. The measure seeks the creation of a separate Federal Department of Education, and proposes an authorization of $100,000,000 to match an equal sum to be provided by the States. A major aim of this expenditure is the improvement of rural education. The argument given by

those favoring the bill as a reason for Federal aid is that income from many nation-wide businesses is drawn from particular States to national metropolitan centers where it is not taxable by those States but by other States and by the Federal Government.

The budget figures on the public debt and the interest payments draw this explanation from the President:

"The gross public debt was reduced $1,098,894,375 during the fiscal year ended June 30, 1924, and stood at $21,250,812,989 on the latter date. This reduction was accomplished

through (1) the application of the sinking fund and other public debt retirements required to be made from ordinary receipts, aggregating $457,999,750; (2) a reduction in the general fund balance of $135,527,639; and (3) the use of the entire surplus of $505,366,986. The annual interest charges on the debt represented by this reduction are equivalent to over $45,000,000.

"The total reduction in the debt since the high point of $26,594,000,000 on August 31, 1919, amounted to $5,343,000,000 at the close of the last fiscal year. This total reduction has effected a saving in interest amounting to approximately $225,000,000 annually, a saving which equals nearly one-third of the total annual pre-war expenditures of the Government.

"The fixed-debt charges are included in the regular Budget of the Government under a definite plan worked out soon after the close of the war for the gradual retirement of the public debt, and must be met before the Budget can balance. The most important of these fixed-debt charges is the cumulative sinking fund provided in the Victory Liberty Loan act. Retirements through this fund during the past fiscal year were about $296,000,000. The next items in size among the fixed-debt charges are the retirements of securities received from foreign governments under debt settlements and the purchases and retirements of securities from foreign repayments."

One frequently hears or reads of the expensiveness of Government commissions. There has been a welldefined and successful propaganda for several years to place in our minds the idea that great economies could be effected if we did not have so many "useless and meddlesome commissions and boards." Usually the argument is applied to commissions like the Federal Trade, the Tariff, and Interstate Commerce, which have a regulative or investigatory power.

How little these commissions add to the national tax burden is seen if we bring together the items for all of them in the 1926 synopsis of estimates:

Interstate Commerce Commission... $4,913,500 Civil Service Commission..

Federal Trade Commission.

Housing Corporation....

997,375

950,000

743,915

Tariff Commission...

...

721,500

This $9,195,445 for all the commissions and boards listed is only a trifle over one-half of one per cent of the total ordinary operating expenses of the Government. (We, of course, omit the Veterans' Bureau; also the Federal Vocational Education Board and Federal Employees' Compensation Commission, whose expenditures are only in part administrative.)

Taking the Federal Trade Commission and the Tariff Commission the budget proposes for both combined a sum less than one-tenth of one per cent of the total.

Last year, then Chairman Thompson, of the Federal Trade Commission, pleaded for $1,200,000 for that body to cover clearly needed work. It was

given $1,010,000. This year the budget cuts it to $950,000.

The whole sum asked for this vital agency last year could be doubled to the great advantage of the public. Such a doubling could be recouped by a reduction of only 5 per cent in the Shipping Board appropriation; or by paring less than 1 per cent from the Department of Agriculture; or by reducing the $549,000,000 for defense against other nations by about one-fifth of one per cent.

Considering the immediate and constant need of the people of the United States for defense against domestic monopolies, $2,400,000 would not seem excessive for the Trade Commission's work. And a mere shaving transferred from the foreign defense fund would provide for it.

A concrete way to illustrate to oneself roughly the proportionate expenditures proposed for the different Government purposes in 1926, is to lump together those for past and future wars (the $549,000,000 national defense appropriations, those for the Veterans' Bureau and for the public debt payments, since they are practically all due to war) and over against this to put expenditures for all other purposes. This method is rough, but it will do for one's private judgment till the experts figure the exact amounts, taking account of all detailed items.

When you have worked out the two percentages— war and nonwar-take a dollar bill and measure off on it the part that goes for war. What is left of the dollar bill will be no great cause for worry to taxpayers.

Statement of the Ownership, Management, Circulation, etc., Required by the Act of Congress of August 24, 1912, of The Searchlight on Congress, Published Monthly at Washington, D. C., for October 1, 1924.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA,

City of Washington, ss.:

Before me, a notary public in and for the District aforesaid, personally appeared Dora B. Haines, who, having been duly sworn according to law, deposes and says that she is the business manager of The Searchlight on Congress and that the following is, to the best of her knowledge and belief, a true statement of the ownership, maangement, etc., of the aforesaid publication for the date shown in the above caption, required by the act of August 24, 1912, embodied in section 443, Postal Laws and Regulations, printed on the reverse side of this form, to wit:

1. That the names and addresses of the publisher, editor, managing editor, and business manager are:

Publisher, The Searchlight Publishing Co., Inc., Washington, D. C.
Editor, Lynn Haines, Washington, D. C.

Managing Editor, None.

Business Manager, Dora B. Haines, Washington, D. C.

2. That the owners are: The Searchlight Publishing Co., Inc., Washington, D. C.; Lynn Haines, Washington, D. C.; Dora B. Haines, Washington, D. C.

3. That the known bondholders, mortgagees, and other security holders owning or holding 1 per cent or more of total amount of bonds, mortgages, or other securities are: None.

4. That the two paragraphs next above, giving the names of the owners, stockholders and security holders, if any, contain not only the list of stockholders and security holders as they appear upon the books of the company, but also, in cases where the stockholder or security holder appears upon the books of the company as trustee or in any other fiduciary relation, the name of the person or corporation for whom such trustee is acting, is given; also that the said two paragraphs contain statements embracing the affiant's full knowledge and belief as to the circumstances and conditions under which stockholders and security holders who do not appear upon the books of the company as trustees, hold stock and securities in a capacity other than that of a bona fide owner; and this affiant has no reason to believe that any other person, association, or corporation has any interest, direct or indirect, in the said stock, bonds or other securities than as so stated by her. DORA B. HAINES, Business Manager. Sworn to and subscribed before me this 6th day of October, 1924. [SEAL] VERNON D. SMITH, Notary Public, D. C.

(My commission expires October 18, 1924.)