best to become efficient. Waite has been hired to run the government along the same lines of economy and efficiency that any business man expects in the conduct of private business and he is using every legitimate means to do it.

Again, as in Kelley's case, he is not overlooking the powerful personal factor. Efficiency is the first word, and loyalty is the second. Waite wants no one in a city job who is not putting his heart and soul into doing the best possible kind of work. By keeping the old employes in office and educating them up to his own standards of service, he is bound, in time, to secure a city government that will rival the best organized private corporations.

All the chief heads of departments are new officials. Nowhere in the old city government could be found men of the ability and character to assume the responsibility of building up new departments of their own. In his selection, Waite was absolutely non-partisan. A month after they had been appointed, he told me that he did not know what their political views were. He brought the director of city service from Cincinnati; to select the others he went over the

directors. It can make plans and lay out policies but the city manager is entrusted with carrying them out. For instance, the commission can decide to pave a certain street. With the passing of the ordinance the commission's power is over. Waite buys the materials and puts the job through. The commission can decide to purchase the street car lines and run them as a public utility, but Waite appoints the man who will directly operate them.

Waite is paid twelve thousand five hundred dollars per year, but holds office for no stated term. He is subject to recall by the commission in case his work does not meet the standard set by that body and he can be recalled by the people just as can the commissioners.

This provision secures a high degree of responsiveness in the actual government of the city. Waite has recognized this from the very beginning and has endeavored to bring the government closer to the people than ever before. The Dayton City Hall is to be the house. of the people, in a true sense.

A melting snow in the early days of January left the streets covered with slush. Someone called up the manager's office.

"Why can't you get a hose from the fire department and wash the streets?" Waite was asked. In the days of the old government in Dayton, such a request would have been referred to the commissioner of streets or to the fire department. Mr. Citizen would probably have never heard of it again.

Not so today in Dayton. The next morning at four o'clock a gang of men were on the street with a hose and when business began the streets were as clean as on a summer's day.

As far as the big policy of the city government is concerned, such a thing is a mere detail, but it is significant of a quality which Waite is building into the Dayton government and which the old council government did not possess. While Dayton's government gives the city manager almost an empire of control and power, it shears him of all the divine rights of politics and makes him as dependent upon the people whom he serves as was the old officeholder upon the board of aldermen. He sits at the head of a mighty corporation of stockholders, holders of the privilege of citizenship, and his fitness is judged by the dividends of service that he declares.

In building up the city government of Dayton into this potent machine of service, he is stopping at no superficial point. He is striking out the rotting fibre of Dayton's old government with a strong hand that is guided only by the instincts of good business. There is no

he wanted were not kept, because no one had ever asked for them before.

During the next half hour Waite gave an exhibition of the value of the services of a trained business executive in running a city. He showed in detail how the form of government which he represents in Dayton can fulfill the ideal that every business man knows should be attained in municipal administration. He reached down into the uttermost depths of the old city accounting system and held it up for inspection in the light of modern business methods and efficiency. He found that no check was kept on city material. He found no cost records for city repairs and construction work. The requirements to be met in paying out the city money were loose in the extreme. He found no definite city pay roll-no way of checking labor performed-no way of even checking the work of department heads. As far as the city records were concerned, there was absolutely no agency to make sure that any man who received city pay was

doing city work. Vouchers covering day labor were made out from the boss's time book alone. There was not the crudest rudiment of system or certainty in the keeping of all the city's business

records.

The greater the task, the greater the need for immediate action, and Waite did not return to his desk until the auditor had been given exceedingly definite instructions for the construction of a new accounting system that would make the records of all departments of the city's business so open and clear that any citizen at any time could know just how much each item of the city's business is costing.

One of the greatest savings that will be furnished under the new system will be in the handling and purchasing of supplies. City material and property will be listed and inventoried on exactly the same principles that the private business checks its property. Purchases will be made under similarly careful direction. The new Dayton charter provides

for a purchasing agent, and all materials used by the city will be purchased through this office. Bids are secured on everything-steam rollers, office supplies, a gang of men, or a carload of cementand the purchasing agent must buy in the open market, subject only to the considerations of price, quality, and service.

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 sec

ond. 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.

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.

This department is unique in 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,

"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

"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."

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 plan for doing it.