BUSINESS

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MONG the most interesting and important of the changes proposed by the charter revision bill are those dealing with the structure of the executive departments. Although these changes are comparatively few, they cover nearly all the points where improvements can be effected in the absence of constitutional revision and go a long way toward bringing the framework of our city government into line with modern municipal practice. Let us consider them briefly.

Purchasing Put in Its Proper Place

The bill abolishes the department of supplies and vests its functions in a purchasing agent appointed by the mayor under civil service rules. The present department of supplies is a misfit. Created to do the city's purchasing, an important but after all not a major job, it nevertheless was placed on an equality with the other departments. The inconsistency of classing the head of the purchasing service with the heads of such departments as public safety and public works is apparent and is removed by the new bill. A supplementary bill extends the unified purchasing system to the "county" departments by making the city purchasing agent ex officio purchas

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"A plural council is as valuable a guarantee of salvation in Philadelphia as a plural marriage in Utah."

-Zueblin.

ORGANIZATION that requires money for its support can remain successful unless it keeps its expenses within its income.

The householder who does not do this, eats up his resources or goes into debt. The commercial enterprise that does not do it, courts failure. The lodge, or church, or city government, that does not do it, imposes unnecessary burdens on its members, and loses its power to render the service to which they are entitled.

It would seem that the very first thing to be accomplished in adjusting Father Penn's purse strings would be to enable him to keep track of his revenue and expense, and correlate them so that he can keep his expense within his revenueseeing to it, of course, that his revenue is sufficient to meet the cost of the service which he wants to render.

Yet the financial legislation under which he has operated since 1879 does not set up a standard of revenue and expense. It sets up a standard of receipts and disbursements—that is, cash received and cash paid out.

Finance Deals with More than Cash

Now, cash has no fixed relation whatever to a person's, or a city's, financial position. A man can have thousands of dollars in the bank and still be