In June, 1904, Mr. Shackleton409 intervened in the House of Commons on behalf of some men in the Liverpool Post Office, whose grievance was that an interval of 15 minutes, given as “an act of grace,” had been reduced to 10 minutes.410

In July, 1905, Mr. James O’Connor, M. P. for Wicklow, intervened in a similar matter on behalf of the men at the London West Central District Office.411

Before the Royal Commission on Civil Establishments, 1888, Sir Lyon Playfair was asked whether it would not be better to replace by boy clerks the “writers” employed in the past. Sir Lyon replied: “I think that would be better for the civil service and better for the boy clerks themselves. Of course, regard should be had to the writers who are employed now, and the change should be made by not taking on more, and not by dispensing with those that are now employed.” A moment before, Sir Lyon Playfair had been asked: “The writers are now a very large and very important body in the public service, are they not?” He had replied: “Yes, and they make you feel their largeness and importance by Parliamentary pressure.”412 Sir Lyon Playfair had been Chairman of the Royal Commission on the Civil Service which had sat from 1875 to 1876; and he had been the author of the Playfair Reorganization of the civil service in 1876.

Before the Committee on Civil Services Expenditure, 1873, Mr. W. E. Baxter, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, said: “…but I may say at once in regard to the matter of the travelling expenses of county court judges, that I think the whole thing has hitherto been in such an unsatisfactory state that it would be very difficult to defend the action of the Treasury in various matters connected with it.” Thereupon Mr. West, a Member of the Committee, queried: “Acting in accordance with that view last year, the Chancellor of the Exchequer endeavored to reform the system as to existing judges and as to future judges, did he not…? Is that reform being now pursued with regard to the existing judges?” The Financial Secretary to the Treasury replied: “Not in regard to existing judges. I have always been of opinion that it is very difficult to go back upon arrangements which have been made in the past, however injurious to the public service and uneconomical they may have been, and that it would be better for economists [persons desiring to effect economy] to direct their attention to preventing new arrangements of a similar character.”413

The thoroughly unbusinesslike spirit of the postal employees is illustrated still further in the following “grievance” laid before the Tweedmouth Committee by the official representatives of the postal employees, who spoke, not as individuals, but as the instructed representatives of their respective classes of public servants.

Mr. G. McDonald presented the grievance of the “news distributors,” who “are the picked men of the Telegraph Service, chosen on the ground of exceptional merit.” He complained that there was not sufficient opportunity for promotion, since [the automatic] promotion was limited to postmasterships worth from $1,000 to $1,250 a year, and there were not enough postmasterships of that kind. Mr. McDonald admitted that men under 35 years “by competitive examination,” could rise out of the class of News Distributors to surveyors’ clerkships; but he argued that since such promotion was attained by competitive examination, “it must be credited to the man himself who wins his position, and I therefore beg to suggest that it cannot count as promotion in the ordinary sense.”414

Another grievance of the News Distributors was that they were not “treated and classed” as Major Division Clerks, though they were paid on the scale of such clerks. They were compelled to work 48 hours a week, whereas Major Division Clerks worked only 39 hours a week.415

Mr. Alfred Boulden presented the telegraphists’ grievances as to pensions. He demanded that retirement on pension should be optional at the age of fifty; and that if a man died in harness, such deduction as had been made from his salary toward the pension fund, should be paid to his heir-at-law. Mr. H. C. Fischer, Controller London Central Telegraph Office, replied that “optional retirement at 50 years of age would result in the more healthy members of the staff retiring at that age, and seeking other employment to add to their income, leaving the less healthy and less useful persons to hang on in the service as long as they could.”416

Mr. A. W. North presented another grievance, namely, that a female telegraph clerk can become a female superintendent in 21 years, whereas a male telegraph clerk can reach the corresponding position only after 27 years of service.417

Mr. J R. Lickfold appeared as the representative of the postal employees to demand that in the case of an employee having failed to appear for duty, the Department should accept without any inquiry whatever the medical certificate of any physician. At this time it was the practice of the Department to doubt the genuineness of the illness and the bona fides of a medical certificate only in case “the man had a bad record for frequent short sick absences,” “though it was a well known fact that private [physicians’ as distinguished from departmental physicians’] certificates could be obtained for 12 cents without even the doctor seeing the patient, but on a mere statement of his symptoms from somebody else.” In support of this request, Mr. Lickfold, as the instructed representative of the postal employees, could make no better argument than to cite the dismissal, early in 1894, of two railway Post Office sorters, W—— and J——. In the evidence in rebuttal, Mr. J. C. Badcock, Controller London Postal Service, gave the following account of the episode in question. W—— and J—— were absent from duty from January 8 to 11 inclusive. On January 10 they sent in medical certificates dated the 8th, but the date of one of the certificates had apparently been changed from the 9th. W——’s landlady testified that W—— and J—— had returned to W——’s lodgings on the 8th, shortly after the departure of the mail train, saying that they had missed the mail, but saying nothing of illness. She added that both men had been repeatedly at W——’s lodgings on the 8th and 9th. Both W—— and J—— were absent from their lodgings during the greater part of the three days from the 8th to the 10th. The Post Office inspector found J—— in bed on the night of the 10th. J—— told him he had not seen W—— since the 6th, gave evasive answers, and contradicted himself. The inspector also found W—— on the night of the 10th, and gave an equally unfavorable report upon W——’s answers. On the 11th, the Departmental Medical Officer found both men in W——’s room, and reported there was no reason why both men should not have been on duty from the 8th to the 10th.

Mr. Spencer Walpole, Permanent Secretary of the Post Office and a Member of the Committee, said to the witness: “Have you any doubt that the Department would not have taken the extreme course of dismissing any of its servants on the divided opinion of two medical men, if there had been no previous cases against them…? These men are described as deliberate malingerers?” The Chairman of the Committee added: “Do you not think it would be wise that before bringing forward a particular case of this sort, you should inform yourself thoroughly as to the nature of the case, and as to the character of the men to whom you refer?”418

A very large portion of the evidence presented before the Tweedmouth Committee, which evidence covered upward of a thousand closely printed folio pages, affords a melancholy comment upon the theory which is rapidly spreading from the German Universities over the English speaking countries, to wit, that the extension of the functions of the State to the inclusion of business enterprises automatically creates a public spirit which strengthens the hands of the political leaders in charge of the State, even to the point of enabling those leaders to reject the improper demands made upon them by organized bodies of voters, and to administer the State’s business ventures with an eye single to the welfare of the community as a whole, particularly the long-run interest of the taxpayers. The so-called Norfolk-Hanbury compromise, the appointment and Report of the Bradford Committee, and the appointment, in 1906, of the Select Committee on Post Office Servants—the last act not having the support, by speech or by vote, of a single man of first rate importance in the House of Commons—are melancholy instances of what that most discerning of statesmen, the late Marquis of Salisbury, used to call “the visible helplessness of Governments.”

CHAPTER XVIII
The House of Commons Stands For Extravagance

Before proceeding to the subject proper of this chapter, it is desirable to say a word about the organization and the work of the Treasury.419

The Treasury consists of the First Lord of the Treasury, who is almost invariably the Prime Minister; the Chancellor of the Exchequer; and three Junior Lords of the Treasury. “The Treasury is pre-eminently a superintending and controlling office, and has properly no administrative functions.” Its duty is to reduce to, and maintain at, the minimum compatible with efficiency, the expenditures of the several Departments of State.

The Treasury has three Secretaries: the Financial Secretary, the Parliamentary, or Patronage Secretary, and the Permanent Secretary. The Financial Secretary, after the Chancellor of the Exchequer, is the political head and conductor of the Treasury. He is one of the hardest worked officers of the Government. His duties were well described, recently, by Mr. Austen Chamberlain, in the course of a brief sketch of his official career. Said Mr. Chamberlain: “From the Admiralty he was transferred to the position of Financial Secretary to the Treasury, where, as his chief explained to him, he was in the position of an old poacher promoted to be gamekeeper, and his first duty was to unlearn the habits of five years and save money where previously it had been his pleasure to spend it.” The Parliamentary, or Patronage Secretary is the principal Government Whip. “He is a very useful and important functionary. His services are indispensable to the Leader of the House of Commons in the control of the House and the management of public business.” “It devolves upon him, under the direction of the Leader of the House, ‘to facilitate, by mutual understanding, the conduct of public business,’ and ‘the management of the House of Commons, a position which requires consummate knowledge of human nature, the most amiable flexibility, and complete self-control.’” As “Whipper-in,” the Parliamentary Secretary is generally assisted by two of the Junior Lords of the Treasury, who are, at the same time, Government Whips. “Those useful functionaries are expected to gather the greatest number of their own party into every division [of the House of Commons], and by persuasion, promises, explanation, and every available expedient, to bring their men from all quarters to the aid of the Government upon any emergency. It is also their business to conciliate the discontented and doubtful among the ministerial supporters, and to keep every one, as far as possible, in good humor.” “An estimate of the importance of the duties which would naturally devolve upon these functionaries—from the increasing interference of the House of Commons in matters of detail, and the necessity for the continual supervision of some Member of the Government conversant with every description of parliamentary business, in order to make sure that the business is done in conformity to the views entertained by the House—induced Sir Charles Wood,420 to declare, in 1850, that the reduction of the number of Junior Lords from four to three was a very doubtful advantage.”

The Financial Secretary and the Parliamentary Secretary are political officers, that is, they sit in the House of Commons, and they change with every change in the Government. The Permanent Secretary, on the other hand, is a non-political officer, or civil servant, who retains office through the successive changes of Government, and secures the continuity of the office. He is the official head of the Department, and of the whole civil service.

The foregoing facts make it clear that for the purposes of this present discussion, one can cite no more authoritative personages than the several Secretaries of the Treasury.

The Select Committee on National Expenditure, 1902, took a great deal of evidence on the effect of the intervention of the House of Commons in the administrative details of the several Departments of State, particularly on the impairment of the power of the Treasury to control the expenditure of the several Departments.

The most important witness was Lord Welby, who, as Mr. Welby, had entered the Treasury in 1856; had been Head of the Finance Department from 1871 to 1885; and had been Permanent Secretary from 1885 to 1894. Lord Welby said that in theory the Treasury had full power of control over the expenditures of the several Departments, but that in practice that power of control was limited by the state of public opinion as reflected in the House of Commons. As soon as the Treasury became aware that it had not public opinion at its back, that fact “would have a certain influence on many of its decisions.” Then again, as soon as the other Departments of State became aware that the Treasury was not supported by public opinion, the authority of the Treasury over those Departments was impaired. “If an idea gets abroad that the House of Commons does not care about economy, you will not find your servants economical.” Lord Welby then went on to say that in all the political parties in the House of Commons, “the old spirit of economy had been very much weakened.” He put the change of public opinion at about the middle of the seventies, or, perhaps, rather later, say, in the eighties. Previous to that change the influence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer had been “paramount, or very powerful, in the Cabinet.” But with the change in public opinion, “the effective power of control in the Chancellor of the Exchequer had been proportionately diminished.” Lord Welby concluded: “I constantly hear it said now by people of great weight that economy is impossible, that you cannot get the House of Commons to pay attention [to counsels of economy]…. The main object [to be striven after], I think, is that there should be some correlation both in the minds of the Government of the day and in the minds of the House of Commons between resources and expenditure; I think that ought to exist, but I do not think it does exist at present. I see no evidence of it.”421

Mr. Hayes Fisher,422 a Member of the Committee, and Financial Secretary to the Treasury, in 1902 to 1903, replied to Lord Welby: “But is not the business of the Treasury, and the main business of the Treasury, to check that expenditure and keep it within reasonable bounds, outside of questions of policy?” Lord Welby replied: “Quite so; but might I venture to ask the honorable Member, who occupies one of the most important posts in the Government, whether he would not be glad of support in the House of Commons?” “Most certainly we should on many occasions,” was the answer.

Sir George H. Murray,423 Permanent Secretary to the Post Office, was called as a witness because “in the official posts he had held, particularly as Private Secretary to the late Prime Minister, Mr. Gladstone, he had had frequent opportunities for observation not only of the reasons for expenditure, but of the control exercised over it in Parliament.” He said: “…But I think the whole attitude of the House itself toward the public service and toward expenditure generally, has undergone a very material change in the present generation…. Of course, the House to this day, in the abstract and in theory, is very strongly in favor of economy, but I am bound to say that in practice Members, both in their corporate capacity and, still more, in their individual capacity, are more disposed to use their influence with the Executive Government in order to increase expenditure than to reduce it…. That is the policy of the House—to spend more money than it did, to criticize expenditure less closely than it did, and to urge the Executive Government to increase expenditure instead of the reverse.”424

Sir Ralph H. Knox,425 who had been in the War Office from 1856 to 1901, and who, for forty years, had listened to the discussions in Parliament of the Estimates of Expenditure, said: “…The mass of speeches that are made in Supply before the House of Commons, are speeches made on behalf of those who have grievances, their friends or constituents, or those with whom they work, or in whom they are particularly interested. If you take speech after speech, you find they are simply to the effect: ‘we want more’—and they get more…. In former days there were more Members who were willing to get up with some pertinence and some knowledge to criticize those proposals. But I cannot say there has been any very great tendency in that direction when details are being discussed…. What I want, is [someone] to nip in the bud, new proposals which are made by Members of Parliament very often on behalf of their constituents. A Member, for instance, represents what I should call a labor borough; he gets up and proposes that the pay of every man employed in certain [Government] factories or dockyards should be increased by so much a week, what I want is somebody to get up and say: ‘That is not the view of the country, you must not accept that;’ but instead of that the matter goes sub silentio, and the Government, which is naturally interested in economy and in keeping the expenditure down, is induced to think if there is any feeling in the House at all, it is in favor of doubling everybody’s pay.” Sir R. H. Knox said he desired more opposition to unwarranted proposals, “because I know what extreme weight is attached to the speeches in Supply by the Minister in charge of a Department, and by the Department itself; but if they find that there is not a single man interested in economy when the details of the Estimates are discussed, it places them in an exceedingly difficult position.”426

Sir Edward Hamilton, Assistant Secretary to the Treasury since 1894, said that the Treasury could depend less than formerly upon the support of the House of Commons, and that often-times the tendency of the debates in the House was to weaken the hands of the Treasury.427 Sir Edward Hamilton had entered the Treasury in 1870; had served as Private Secretary to Mr. Lowe, Chancellor of the Exchequer, in 1872-73; and as Private Secretary to Mr. Gladstone, First Lord of the Treasury, in 1880 to 1885. He had been made successively Principal Clerk of the Finance Division in 1885; Assistant Financial Secretary in 1892; and Assistant Secretary in 1894. In 1902 he was made Permanent Financial Secretary.

Mr. Austen Chamberlain, a member of the Select Committee, asked Mr. R. Chalmers,428 a Principal Clerk at the Treasury: “Is it within your experience as an official of the Treasury that Ministers of other Departments not infrequently represent, as the reason for allowing expenditure, the strong pressure that has been put upon them in the House of Commons?” “Yes; I have seen repeated instances of that.” “And their inability to resist that pressure for another year?” “Yes.”429

Sir John Eldon Gorst, M. P., a man of large experience of the Public Service, said he had no doubt that in all offices there were officers who had ceased to have anything to do; and that was particularly true of the Education Department, where there was much reading of newspapers, and much literary composition. He had “even heard of rooms where Ping Pong was played, there being nothing else to do at the moment.” Sir John Eldon Gorst continued: “The Treasury has power to make an inquiry into every Office, it could institute an inquiry to see whether the office was or was not economically managed, but so far as I know that power never has been exercised. It would be very difficult indeed for the Parliamentary Head of a Department to call in the Treasury for such an investigation. It would make the Parliamentary head extremely unpopular. The only person who, in my opinion, as things are, can really influence the expenses of an office, is the Civil Service head…. But although the Civil Service head of the office has a very great motive to make his office efficient, because his own credit and his own future depend on the efficiency of his office, he has comparatively little motive for economy. Parliament certainly does not thank him; I do not know whether the Treasury thanks him very much; certainly his colleagues do not thank him; … and the natural disposition of a man to let well enough alone renders him reluctant to take upon himself the extremely ungrateful task of making his office, not only an efficient one, but also an economical one. I think anybody who has any experience of mercantile offices, such as a great insurance office, or anything of that kind, would be struck directly with the different atmosphere which prevails in a mercantile office and a Government office…. I have no hesitation in saying that any large insurance company, or any large commercial office of any kind, is worked far more efficiently and far more economically than the best of the Departments of His Majesty’s Government.”430

Sir John Eldon Gorst’s statement that he knew of no instance of the Treasury exercising its power of instituting an inquiry conducted by Treasury officers, into the administration of a Department of State, recalls to mind some testimony given by Sir R. E. Welby, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, before the Royal Commission on Civil Establishments, 1888. Mr. Cleghorn, a Member of that Commission, asked Sir R. E. Welby: “Is there anybody at the Treasury, for instance, who could say to the Board of Trade, or any other particular Department: ‘You have too many clerks, you must reduce them by ten?’ Is there anybody at the Treasury with sufficient power and knowledge of the work to be in a position to say that, and to take the responsibility of it?” Sir R. E. Welby replied: “No.” Thereupon Mr. R. W. Hanbury, another Member of the Commission, asked: “There is not?” Once more the answer was: “No.”431

Again, in 1876, before the Select Committee on Post Office Telegraph Departments, Mr. Julian Goldsmid, a Member of the Committee, asked Mr. S. A. Blackwood, Financial Secretary to the Post Office: “You would not like, perhaps, to give the reasons for that enormous overmanning which existed in some of the [telegraph] offices [in 1873 to 1875]?” Mr. Blackwood replied: “I am not acquainted with the reasons myself.”432

Sir Ralph H. Knox, in the course of his testimony, had quoted Mr. Bagehot’s statement: “If you want to raise a certain cheer in the House of Commons, make a general panegyric on economy; if you want to invite a sure defeat, propose a particular saving.” He had continued: “I should like to add, ‘If you want to lose popularity, oppose the proposals for increase.’ There ought to be some Members in the House of Commons who would undertake that line.”