Baltimore Evening Sun (16 June 1911): 6.

The common impression that all job-holders in the City Hall are grossly overpaid is not very well supported by City Librarian Coyle’s invaluable little Municipal Handbook. This shows that for every high-salaried man in the hall there are half a dozen low-salaried men, and that the wages paid to many of the latter are actually below those paid to all reasonably efficient men in private employment.

Consider, for example, the office of the Department of Parks. Here one finds two clerks getting $12 a week and one getting but $9.35. The only men in the office who gets more than $18 is the secretary of the board. In the City Collector’s office there in another $12 man; in the City Solicitor’s office there is one at $12.50. In the City Library and Water Department and under the City Engineer, the Commissioners for Opening Streets, the Public Bath Commission, the Liquor License Board and the Sewerage Commission there are plenty of clerks and stenographers at $14 and $15. Of the Building Inspector’s office assistants not half get more than $18 a week, which is $2 less than the city pays its policemen.

Inexcusable unfairness is shown in the distribution of salaries. The stenographers in the City Hall, who work pretty steadily from 9 to 4 o’clock, get, as a rule, $12 a week. The two sergeants-at-arms of the City Council, who do no useful work whatever, set $16. In the office of the Sewerage Commission there is an office boy at $5 a week. The two so-called pages of the City Council, doing exactly the same work one day a week, instead of six, get $14. The average clerk in the hall, taking one with another, gets about $18. The subordinate clerks of the City Council, whose labors are chiefly theoretical, get $23.

But it is in the Departments of Education, Parks and Charities that the worst wages are paid. More than half of the school teachers of Baltimore, I believe. still get $12 a week or less. This was fair enough in the old days, but now that school teaching is a respectable profession, requiring long preparation and constant study, it is fair no longer. Under the Park Board there are gardeners—a skilled trade—getting $12 a week, which is exactly the wage paid to unskilled laborers on the streets. Nine of the 16 square keepers are paid the same; the rest get $14. Two of the keepers of public comfort stations got $8.75. Twelve others get $10, but their jobs last but six months a year.

In the Health Department the standard wage seems to be $18 a week. This is paid to health wardens, clerks and inspectors alike. But the five disinfectors—very important officers—get but $16, and in the laboratory there is actually an assistant who gets $180 a year!

At Bayview Asylum, following the hospital custom, wretched wages are paid. Here, true enough, board and lodging are usually added; but certainly $3.70 a week is no princely salary for an attendant of the insane, even with free board and lodging. Yet five of the attendants at Bayview get that salary—and 10 others got $3.45. The Municipal Handbook also shows a clerk at $2.30, but this must be a misprint. There is, however, actually a pathologist at 96 cents a week. Young doctors seek such jobs for the sake of the experience. In few hospitals do the members of the resident staffs receive more than a few dollars a week.

And yet, despite all this parsimony, the city’s office expenses are very high. The reason therefor lies in the fact that there are, besides the underpaid employes who really work, many overpaid officials who do little work, or no work at all. There are, for example, three Commissioners for Opening Streets, at $1,800 a year apiece, and an office force costing $10,000 a year. One man at #2,000 could probably do the work of the Commissioners just as well as they do it, and much of their technical and office work might be done, at less expense, by the force of the City Engineer.

Again, there are three Election Supervisors, at $2,500 a year apiece. Their actual work occupies them about two months in the year. It might be done just as well by one man at $2,000. Their “general counsel,” who gets $1,200, supplies them with advice which might just as well come from the City Solicitor or the Attorney-General—and at no cost. The Police Department also has a lawyer. He gets $2,000 a year. The advice he gives probably costs about 16 cents a word. The Liquor License Commissioners also have a lawyer, whose wages are $1,200. These three lawyers cost the city $4,400 a year. An additional Assistant City Solicitor would do their work for $2,500—and have plenty of spare time for defending damage suits and practicing the clarinet.

In the courts thousands of dollars are wasted every year upon excessive salaries and useless officials. Each of the 27 bailifffs gets $30 a week, there are dozens of clerks at $20, $25 and $30, and even mere watchmen get $18 and, in one case at least, $20. The three judges of the Orphans’ Court labor by ths day at $9 a day apiece—and you may be sure that they do not take too many holidays. They cost the city, taken together, about $8,500 a year. One judge at $5,000 might very well do their work.

But even in the courts there are stray job-holders who are ill-paid. In the City Court there In one asaistant clerk who gets but $14 a week. In Circuit Court No. 2 there is a man who gets but $10, and the first branch of the same court actually has an employe who gets but $8.

The court clerks, who are elected officials, all get $3,500 a year and their chief assistants, who actually do the work, get from $1,800 to $2,300. An inquiry into doings in the Courthouse would probably show that the average court clerk devotes no more than three hours a day to the city’s business. No doubt a reorganization of the whole system would result in cutting down the present force of job-holders by 26 per cent. and in cutting down expenses by from 40 to 75 per cent.

Bulletin from the bedside of the typhoid vaccination movement:

The patient passed a bad night and complains of severe paias in the neck. Pulse, 22; temperature, 100.3. A favorable turn is possible, but the chances seem to be against it. John J. Balderdash, M. D., Ferdinand Bleeder, M. D., Emmanuel M. Camomile, M.D.

A best-seller is a novel that is easier to sell than to read.

Swat the fly! Boil your drinking water! Throw a rose into the harbor! Watch the City Council!