Paper Tiger

The U.S. Government requires the business community to file no fewer than 5,455 different reports during the year on a variety of subjects, ranging from employment to industrial inventories. Small businessmen complain that they sometimes have to pay the accountants who handle their forms more than they make themselves, and some big businessmen spend as much as $300,000 a year just answering Defense Department questionnaires. In a single year, one Midwestern farm-products company handled 173 different federal forms, ranging in frequency of filing from daily to annually, and finally turned in a total of 37,683 reports that involved 48,285 man-hours of work.

When they looked out from under this mountain of paperwork and saw the President of the U.S. turning off unnecessary lights in the White House, a lot of businessmen decided that he was the kind of man who would understand their problem. So they began deluging him with letters asking that the Government also try to economize on the forms and questionnaires that they must deal with (sometimes under pain of stiff penalties). They read their man right. President Johnson has declared war on excessive paperwork for businessmen, promising to simplify reports and eliminate them when possible. The first progress report is expected to reach the White House shortly after June 1, and by year's end Johnson hopes to announce sweeping changes. Last week, in fact, Government agencies were busy turning out reams of reports on how to eliminate unnecessary paperwork.

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