from the purchase of city supplies. Even Waite himself cannot change this. One of the first requisitions to go through this department was one for newspaper space to advertise for city bids and to publish reports of routine city business, commission board proceedings, and assessment ordinances. By ordinance, the old city council had fixed the rate for such advertising at one dollar for the first insertion of each item and fifty cents for the second. It further stipulated that all items be inserted in three papers. The requisition for the 1914 advertising bore the same conditions. Undecided as to what to do, the purchasing agent brought the document to Waite. service that will afford a saving that will pay the salaries of Waite and the entire set of department heads for a year to come. The first week's saving was eightysix dollars in routine business announcements alone. By leaving out assessment notices, the total amount saved on this one apparently insignificant action will be between thirty-five and forty thousand dollars a year. They assumed control during the great flood and showed the city what an efficient government would mean. Waite looked the requisition over and wrinkled his forehead. He has a peculiar way of doing this when he is thinking out a new plan or idea. "Bring me the last half dozen issues of the city papers," he said. He looked them over. They all looked alike to him. A moment's conversation over the telephone with the advertising manager of a business house who used all of the Dayton newspapers verified his own conclusions. One insertion in any one paper would secure all the publicity for city announcements that was necessary. He called the city solicitor. Assessment notices were served personally and the law did not require that they be advertised. Their advertisement had been a plum offered to the newspapers in bygone days. Waite habitually uses a long blue pencil in going over his ordinary papers and in a moment the advertising requisition had been cut to specify It is not in cutting down ex JOHN H. PATTERSON penditure alone that Dayton's new city manager is proving his worth. There are times when the most economical thing is the possession of the ability to expend large sums wisely. An illustration of this is his supervision over the welfare department. in This department is unique city government in that it makes clean cut recognition of the duty that the city owes to its people to provide in a direct way for their welfare. It is a separate department devoted to furthering the individual happiness of the citizens of Dayton. It provides for the time when the city will conduct dance halls, when it will give more attention to its playgrounds and parks, and will definitely take some part in improving the living conditions of Dayton. Waite's appointee in this department is a minister named Garland who has been fighting in his shirt sleeves for good government for the past ten years and who is the friend of every hopeless and homeless man in Dayton. Garland wanted an efficient head for the board of health but hesitated to seek the man he desired because he feared that the city could not pay the salary that would be sure to be asked. Finally, DEMOCRACY CHOOSES AN AUTOCRAT fearing that it could not be done, he came to Waite. "Whom do you want?" asked the city manager. Garland named one of the city's leading physicians. "If you think that he is the best man, pay what you will need to get him to give his whole time to the job. The greatest asset that we possess as a city is our health. And by the way, have you found quarters for your department yet? [The City Hall is too crowded to house all the city departments.] How much would a floor in the Cappel Building cost?" "More than a hundred dollars a month, and that is too much," replied Garland. "How long before your department can fill it ?" "We can use all the space as soon as we get organized.' "Well then, get it," was the emphatic reply. Under the old plan of government, such a proceeding, settled by Manager Waite in a few moments, would have taken weeks of manipulating in the city council. Even in such an emergency as that which followed the flood, a Democratic city council refused to appoint a Republican as head of the Board of Health even after he had been declared 19 by Major Rhoadas of the U. S. Army to be the best man in Dayton for the job. A proposition such as securing quarters for the welfare department would have been made the object of months of logrolling. Another plan which Manager Waite has under way is typical of what any businesslike city executive could secure. This plan will not only save money but will carry out in a practical way a reform which has been one of the crying needs of this country for many years. Manager Waite proposes to abolish the city workhouse, with its contract-labor system, and replace it with a prison farm. The workhouse is now located in a central part of the city on property whose rental will more than maintain a farm. In addition to the actual saving, city offenders will be given an opportunity to build up both their minds and their bodies and return to citizenship far more benefited than is possible after a sojourn in the present workhouse. . By moving the city jail to the city limits and leasing the ground upon which it stands-within a stone's throw of the busiest street in Dayton-more than sufficient income can be secured to maintain the jail. Such a thing should have been done years ago. It remained for Henry W. Waite to show the people of Dayton the actual "By moving the city jail to the city limits and leasing the plan for doing it. and "the latest creation from Paris" for the sateen laborer's cap, is Miss Margaret Ingels of Lexington, Kentucky, who is doing what is a part of the required work for the degree of mechanical engineer. Miss Ingels entered Kentucky State University, in the fall of 1912, to study architecture, but, as she expressed it, thought she "might as well take it all" while she was about it. She was in a class in woodwork in her fresh FUNDAMENTALS She is learning them that she may be a good architect and she is shying at nothing. But nevertheless she is purely feminine. man year, and her instructors say that she turned out some of the very best work in the class. She has also I worked in the foundry. Miss Ingels refuses all proffers of assistance from her chivalrous classmates and "roughs it" with the rest of them. At the first glance her presence among the grimy young workers is incongruous, but after one watches the ease and apparent lack of self-consciousness with which she goes about her work, she seems not out of place after all. She is not fighting for woman's rights --she is simply an energetic woman of to day. SOME The Heart of the Mine By BERTON BRALEY OMETIMES my heartbeats, calm and slow, The rhythmic pulsing of my blood Is like the steady throb and thud All night and day, all night and day, Where, at the shaft, there formed the line The pumps below would thump and sob, But up on top was just the throb Of huge compressors never still And singing endlessly this song, "Be strong, be strong, be strong, be strong!” And strong we were, who formed the line Of miners going down the mine! So now, afar from stope and drift, Of miners going down the mine! Comes swiftly then to me once more By George H. Cushing In "Wireless' Fate" Mr. Cushing presents to us in condensed form another "Looking Backward." He does not, however, treat of socialism, as did the author of that famous work. Instead his central theme is wireless and the extraordinary effect it will have first upon finance and, secondarily, upon government in the latter's efforts to solve a new trust problem. In this article we are carried forward in five stages to a period somewhere beyond the year 1930. It is a most unusual combination of science and business affairs-an article that is bound to stimulate thought and to provoke discussion. The photos of wireless here used are, of course, types, and have no relation to Mr. Cushing's imaginary system.Editor's Note. ARLY in the year nineteen hundred and fourteen, an inventor, who had perfected a method of transmitting telegraph messages without wires, began in the United States to operate a series of stations which, communicating with one another, would send a message around the world. This was a new thing. The Americans, being rich and loving new things, opened their purses and loaned the Italian a sum exceeding five millions of dollars. This money was loaned freely-America took great pride in being the home of such an enterprise-but it was given first into the hands of the money lenders, who were to collect the interest and profit. WHAT WILL HAPPEN WHEN THE TENTACLES AT THE TOP OF THESE TOWERS |