Dollar Doctors

Charles Gates Dawes went to Santo Domingo a month ago as a Chicago banker and onetime U. S. Budget Director to devise a budgetary and accounting system for that diminutive republic. When he returned last week to Manhattan aboard the S. S. San Lorenzo he was the newly-appointed Ambassador to the Court of St. James's. Retiring Ambassador Alanson Bigelow Houghton, who also returned to the U. S. last week, predicted a "happy and successful term" for Ambassador Dawes.

When Mr. Dawes removed his pipe to speak, his words were still those of a dollar doctor, a caustic budgetarian. In words scarcely those of a diplomatist, he announced loudly enough for every foreign country to hear him, that if the Dominican Republic adopted his commission's recommendations it would be the first independent nation to have a thoroughly modern and scientific budget system.

This was meant partly as a crack across the knuckles for U. S. Comptroller General John Raymond McCarl, who, as chief of the General Accounting Office, stands at the outgoing end of the U. S. budget system. Never a harmonious team, the Messrs. Dawes and McCarl took hold of the newborn budget and accounting system simultaneously in 1921. -Said General Dawes: "The Comptroller General . . . has thus far failed in carrying out the accounting purpose of our present law. We have in the U. S., therefore, only the old-fashioned and entirely inadequate cash accounting system."

In Washington Comptroller McCarl bit but held his tongue. The most officially unpopular man in the Government, he is hardened to abuse.

The Dawes statement, a characteristic one, also registered acutely upon several other consciousnesses. Many a U. S. economist had ministered to the wilting financial systems of other nations before Budgetarian Dawes went to Santo Domingo.

Since the War, U. S. financial physicians have gone to the far corners of the earth to stabilize the peso, sucre, zloty, pengo, gourde, piaster, cordoba. Some of them have stepped out of their college classrooms to put their fiscal theories into practice. Some have served only as expert diagnosticians, leaving behind a financial prescription for the country to cure itself. Others have remained at the bedside through long painful years, playing nurse as well as doctor.

Greatest of U. S. financial doctors are:

Owen D. Young. Principal author of the Dawes Plan, he has served Europe as the all-wise financial consultant on reparations. Great has been his work; small has been his talk (see p. 23).

Seymour Parker Gilbert. Agent General of the Reparations Commission in Germany, he has been, in effect, the house physician for European money matters. Collecting from Germany, disbursing to the Allies, he has watched Germany's financial temperature and heartbeat for three years, advising here, criticising there, until he considered his patient ready to enter another consultation for new treatments. His chief reward for his work will be more work. He is to be adopted by the House of Morgan.

Edwin Walter Kemmerer. Eleven nations have heard this mild-mannered Princeton professor's advice on reconstructing their financial systems. Chile was so proud of its Kemmerer treatments that its Consul General in New York made a public protest last week against General Dawes' ''mis-statement" on comparative budget methods. Poland, Chile, Ecuador and Colombia have all decorated Prof. Kemmerer -but all the decorations repose in a shabby black box as "millinery" which Prof. Kemmerer declines to wear.

One of his most spectacular feats was saving Colombia from economic disaster. He presented his financial plan to that republic but before it could be put into operation, a large bank slumped toward ruin, threatening panic. Prof. Kemmerer had the Colombian President declare a two-day holiday, which was followed by Sunday and Colombia's Independence Day. In 96 hours Prof. Kemmerer established a new national bank, had bank notes printed, arranged for a gold reserve by the sale of Colombian bonds in New York.

He has just sailed for China to prepare a financial prescription for the Nationalist Government at Nanking.

Jeremiah Smith Jr. This Boston bachelor and Harvard lawyer, once secretary to the late Justice Horace Gray of the U. S. Supreme Court, heard the League of Nations pronounce financial doom on Hungary. He hurried to Budapest. For two years he worked unceasingly. The pengo was steadied; the budget was balanced; international credit was established--all thanks to Mr. Smith. When he started back to Boston, the Hungarian Government offered him $100,000 as a fee for his professional services. He declined.

Arthur Chester Millspaugh. For five years Dr. Millspaugh wrestled with the finances of Persia, often desperate at that nation's easy-going dishonesty. As Administrator General of Persian Finances he poured krans into the Shah's treasury. Then he went to Haiti as economic adviser and collector general of finances. When he departed a few months ago, Haiti declared its fiscal condition was so good that it no longer needed a money-doctor.

William Wilson Cumberland. From the Peace Conference this economist went first to Armenia, then to Turkey, jacking up state treasuries en route. He served as Peru's superintendent of customs and later as governor of its Reserve Bank. He helped Haiti over financial bumps and then made a survey of Nicaraguan finances which, if adopted, would pave the way for a twelve-million-dollar loan.

Charles Schuveldt Dewey. Once an assistant secretary of the U. S. Treasury, he is today Poland's economic adviser and director of its bank of issue. Under his direction, Poland has prospered.

Henry Parker Willis. As a professor of economics, he gave expert advice on framing the Federal Reserve Act, was first president of the Philippine National Bank, rehabilitated the finances of the Irish Free State.

* General Dawes' successor as Director of the Budget, Brig. Gen. Herbert Mayhew Lord, last week announced his retirement from federal service. Director Dawes gave the budget system a dramatic start the first year (1921-22). Director Lord made it a routine success, founded the Woodpeckers' Club, kept 50,000 U. S. employes in Washington pecking away at wastefulness. On June i he will join Arthur S. Klecman & Co., Manhattan Investment Bankers.