Evening Star Newspaper, November 13, 1921, Page 22

TACKLES BIG JOB AFFECTING - || ALL EMPLOYES OF UNCLE SAM ‘When President Harding got tired of ‘waiting for Congress to reclassify the work and pay of government employes and get them working under a fair competitive merit system, and issued an executive order that this should be done at once, he selected Herbert D. Brown, chief of the United States:bureau of efficiency, to carry out his instructions. This man Brown is now the patriarch among those who have been studying for years the problems of government personnei, having worked with Presi- dent Roosevelt on civil service reforms, and having devoted his entire time for the last twenty years to these subjects. ‘While viewing the government workshop with the intent of devising ways to get the most economic efficiency, he has also viewed it from the human side, consid- ering the lives of the men and women and their families, satisfied that Uncle Sam will get his work done better by well paid employes, content and happy in being able to bring up their families consistent with American standards of living, and protected arainst old age and the proverblal “rainy day.” Affects Hundreds of Thousands. The job that Mr. Brown has tackled in accordance with President Harding's directions ‘is one that directly affects the lives of hundreds of thousands of persons. (1) Reclassification compre- hends upward of 200,000 men and women in their dally work—every one except the employes of the government whose compensation is fixed by wage boards, such as owployes of navy yards and arsenals- (®) The merit system, which he has been directed to setsup, applies at present only in the National ‘apital, but directly concerns more than 00 'government workers. (3) In supplying the Senate and House appro- priations committees with comparative figures showing how much the propored reclassification. will .cost, as compared with the regular departmental estimates and as compared with the alternative budget of Director Dawes, it is expected Mr. Brown's new salary schedules will be used by Congress as a basis for absorbing, after July 1 next, the $240 bonus now pald to the government ‘workers to meet the high cost of living, and give the government employes a new basic salary 4 to 6 per cent higher than they are now getting, including the bonus. ‘Mr. Brown brings to his position an inheritance of the best American colonial traditions and ancestry. the zeal and progressiveness of pioneer forebears, and unequaled familjarity with the government service—from within. His ancestors can be trace ‘back to the early days of the Ma: chusetts colony, whence they pion ed to Vermont and thence to Ohh In the days before the great w was opened up by railroads, Brown's parents went down the Oh river in a steamboxt to St. Louis and up the Mississippi river in another steamboat to Keokuk, fowa, and then settling at Fort Madison, then an Indian trading post. He was born on a farm. At the age of eighteen young Brown went to Kansas City and got a job a8 clerk in what was then the largest Jaw office in the young west. Next he essayed to make his fortune by ®oing to Mexico with the Guggenheims. After several years he came to Wash- ington on a visit and picked up a job on a fleld party, under the geological survey. He had always been Interested in the arithmetic of insurance, and while in Washington saw in the newspapers an announcement of a meeting at ‘which government employes were to consider plans for a retirement tem. They were declaring that would not cost the government any thing. He soon figured out that was not scientific. They proposed flat deductions from lari to pay an- based on length meant that the young men would have to pay mare than their annuities were worth to pay pensions to the old men. He attended the conference and mixed in with the leaders of the government empldyes. He decided to. -try and work out an improvement on the pro- posed_retirement scheme. Friends in Congress. At that time he made the ac- al‘llnucn and won the friendship of epresentative James A. Tawney, then chairman ‘of the House appro- priations committee, and Representa- tive Frederick H. Gillett, now Speaker. Then he was chosen by the census . bureau to assist in formulating plans for handling mining_statistics that were being collected. He thought that the methods being followed for tabulating the returns were cumber- some and involved too long a process. so he studied ways and means for zetting results with less labor. In this way he came into close contact with Dr. S. N. D. North, then director HERBERT D. BROWN. backed him on .the retirement prob- {lem, and for several years he spent his days working on methods in t.h.l census office and nights making cal- culations on pensions for the mem- |bers of the appropriations commit- tee. Just about this time the bureau of Ycorporations was started, and Mr.! Brown, ‘already recognized as an el-l ficiency expert on. government ma- chinery and processes, 8 emp|oyed] {as an examiner by Jameés R. Garfield, | first commissioner of the bureau of corporations. Then he was assigned to the oil investigations under K. Dana Durand. He discovered the sys- tem by which the Standard Oil Com- pany had been able to outdistance its rivals through the use of open pub- lished tariffs. The result of this work was embodled in the bureau’s first re- port on the oil {nvestigation. The dis- closure of how they used the open published tariffs effectively resulted in a complete overhauling of the freight ra!;a on petroleum and petroleum prod- ucts. Served on Keep Commission. Presideny Roosevelt, along about 1904; established his committee on de- partmental methods—known as the Keep commission, named after Charles Keep, then assistant secretary of the | Treasury. who was chairman. Brown was on that committee and his work was concerred chiefly with questions of retirement, hours of work, sick and an- nual leave and all problems concern- ing personnel. Arthur P. Davis, now director of the reclamation service, was then chairman of the subcommit- tee on personnel problems. The Keep commission, through lack of funds to employ experts outside of |the government service, was com- iposed of men selected from within the service. The committee covered al- most every phase of government pro- cedure, published a large number of excellent repairs, and many of its recommendations were put into opera- ion, with great benefit to the govern- ment. Roosevelt backed the Keep commis- {sion to'the limit. -It took up the ques- tion of government salaries and -made eclassifying the govern- e. Its report on reclassifi- the first of its kind pre- pared anywhere in this country, and very little of importance has been jadded by any emne since that date. It recommended a simple tlassificatio very similar to' thé one which h now been worked out by the bureau of efficiency under the direction of Senators Smoot, Warren and Curtis and Representative Wood of Indiana, and that is now generally spoken of as the Wood-Smoot plan. = When the joint congressional com- mission on reclassification was es- tablished Mr. Brown tried to persuade it to adopt the principles developed by the Keep commission, but it did not see fit to accept them. When it was found that the joint come mission's report could not be ap- plied to the government service the bureau of efficiency was directed by the leaders in the Senate and House committees on appropriations to de- velop a simple classification that Con- gress could adopt, and naturally Mr. rown turned to the Keep commis- a report HALF-PRICE SALE " Convenient Terms: If Desired ELECTRIC AND GAS FIXTURES 12 We Bave You Half $26.00 All These Fixtures Wired Complete Gas Bowl Fixtures, $7.90 3 We Have a Limited Quantity at These Prices, So Come Early MANUFACTURERS OF FIXTURES—MAIL ORDERS SOLICITED PENN ELECTRIC AND GAS SUPPLY CO. 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