End of the Cumul

What he had promised, last week Premier "Gastounet" Doumergue tried to do. Making full use of the extraordinary powers granted him by Parliament in February he drew up 14 emergency decree laws to balance the French budget, sent them to President Lebrun for signature. With them went a note:

"The stability of our financial situation has at present become indispensable to order in France and to order in Europe. If Parliament had not authorized exceptional powers to adopt these decrees it would have meant either bankruptcy or inflation and troubles which would be bound to follow. Inflation only postpones trouble and leads also to bankruptcy, which in turn generates social disorders and political convulsions of all sorts."

All Frenchmen subscribe to those sentiments, but all were startled at the text of the 14 decrees. To slash government expenditures Premier Doumergue was preparing to retire one out of every ten government employes and to cut all Federal salaries. Politically it was playing with dynamite. In France with a population of 42,000,000 there are nearly as many non-military government employes as all the non-military Federal plus all the State employes in the U. S.* One Frenchman in 53 works for the Government. By lowering the compulsory retirement age. approximately 85,000 of these will be removed from the rolls.

Another of M. Doumergue's decrees will trim salaries on a sliding scale. There will be a 20% cut for President Lebrun, 15% for the Cabinet. 10% for all salaries over 100,000 francs. Even 12,000-francers will lose 5% of their small wage. The Cumul will be abolished, the system whereby one employe holds several posts and draws pay for each, nor can anyone be appointed to a government post in future who already draws a pension. Veterans' pensions will be cut. Politicians waited nervously to see how the public would react to these decrees. By & large it was orderly, but in Paris 1,600 employes of the Central Telegraph office staged a brief protest strike.

*There are 800,000 French civil employes. Permanent U. S. Federal employes, 520,572: full and part-time State employes, 359,000 (in 1926).

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