NOTE. I wish at the commencement of each of these articles to remove a possible cause of misapprehension. It is necessary,

in the course of them, to say hard things of members of the present Government ; but that is because the present Government has been in office for a number of years beyond which, in order to keep the illustrations of bureaucratic methods up to date, it has not been thought desirable to travel. Criticisms involving the acts of Ministers are not to be interpreted as in any sense a party attack, and it is not suggested that had the Opposition been in office, its members would have done better.-E. E. W.

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ET me press home my point one stage farther, if my readers will forgive me proceeding upon the method of "the house that Jack built." First, we considered the evidence of bureaucratic incapacity and wastefulness in the case of the Meat Contracts in the South African war. That showed our Government at work under high pressure and emergency. Then came the Remount scandals, showing the same thing in another Department, but showing also inefficient organisation in ordinary times as well as in the time of emergency. Following them we looked at the Cordite scandals, which displayed the bureaucracy at work in normal times, and blundering without any excuse of pressure. These various exhibitions leave little scope for the Governmental

apologist, and drive him back upon the suggestion that the Government only goes wrong when it has in hand the allocation of special contracts; they do not prove, he may say, anything amiss with the great routine organisation of the Government. But how if in this matter also the Government can be accused of wastefulness? An examination of Governmental expenditure under the head of Stationery and Printing will prove this last accusation also.

In the nature of the case the printing and stationery bills for the public service must needs run into money. Paper is cheap and printing is not dear; but when the work is done on a very large scale, one must be prepared for a considerable aggregate bill. But I doubt if the ordinary man of business is quite prepared to hear that the Government's bill, after deducting £90,000 on account of appropriations in aid (obtained from the sale of Government publications, etc.), amounts to no less than £784,000 a year. That is an enormous figure, and notwithstanding the obvious great extent of Governmental printing and stationery wants, it requires a lot of justifying. Let my readers try to imagine the quantities of printing and stationery work which they could get for £784,000, and I shall be surprised if their imagination does not soon begin to gasp.

Moreover, the amount is growing all the time. Take only the three latest years for

comparison. For the year ended March, 1901, the original vote asked for the Stationery Department was £600,060 (more than £20,000 in advance of the original vote for the previous year). Later in the Session the Government asked for a supplementary vote of £110,000. In the Estimates of other Departments provision for stationery and printing charges was also taken to the amount of £12,932. This gives us a total vote of £800,165, practically the whole of which, as the final expenditure returns show, was spent.

Deduct appro

priations in aid-£90,105-and you get a total cost to the country in that year of £722,992.

In the following year, that ended March, 1902, the original vote was £648,037 (a big advance, you will see, upon the previous year); yet the Government had to come for a supplementary vote of £98,000, and the stationery and printing provision taken in other Estimates was £13,603. Thus, allowing for the appropriations in aid-£90,255you have a net total for the year of £759,640.

For the year ending March, 1903, the Government has estimated an expenditure of £860,400 for the Stationery and Printing Department, and £14,181 provision in other Estimates. Deducting £90,255 appropriations in aid, there remains a net sum for the current year of £784,326. For this year there is no supplementary vote. When defending the original vote in the House of Commons, Mr. Austen Chamberlain described it as "a serious effort to obtain a more correct estimate." It may have been more correct, but it represents, notwithstanding, not only an enormous sum in itself, but an increase of £61,334 over the amount expended upon stationery and printing two years previously. If this ratio of increase proceeds, we shall soon be wanting an amount equal to the entire ordinary revenue of a moderate-sized State to defray the cost of our stationery and printing.

Now, can such tremendous figures for such a comparatively minor item of national expenditure be justified? Waste and extravagance have been admitted by Ministers and officials themselves. It was admitted by the Minister in charge when, upon the discussion of the 1902-3 vote in the House of Commons, Mr. Austen Chamberlain said: "There was no doubt a certain amount of waste, but he and the Controller of the Stationery Department did their best to check the expenditure." And if one examines the accounts for the past two years, it is easy to trace further admissions of extravagance and unnecessary expenditure. In the detailed Estimates one comes across asterisks prefixed to particular salaries, referring the reader to a note to the effect that "this post and its duties will be reconsidered on a vacancy." Remarks of this kind may be taken as evidence of a desire to practise economy; but all the same, and particularly when one bears in mind what a very small amount of work is considered in bureaucratic circles to justify a salaried appointment, one cannot but see in these statements an uneasy conscience as to existing expenditure, and one is prompted to inquire whether these tentative efforts after economy really represent the sum of what might and should be done in that direction.

Take first the matter of salaries. In the year 1899-1900 the salary list for the Stationery Office establishment amounted to £30,164; in 1900-1 to £30,755; in 1901–2 to £31,632; and in 1902-3 to £32,900. This does not look as if the efforts after economy in salaries had achieved very tan

gible results. It is impossible, unless one is actually in the Office, or has very intimate relations with it, to know whether every man on the staff does regularly the day's work which alone justifies his appointment, but the easy ways of Government offices are notorious; and the salary list itself, particularly when viewed in the light of the frequent notes about reconsidering posts on a vacancy, to which I have already referred, suggests the practicability of further economy, if not in the number of the men employed, at all events in the salaries which they receive. Remember the conditions of Government service its permanency, its generous pensions, the easy regularity of the work, the usually modest demand which it makes upon the mental powers of those engaged in it, the generally agreeable character of the position—and it must be admitted that Government service ought certainly not to be paid at higher rates than the same class of work would be paid for outside the service. I should be sorry to be thought to advocate starvation rates of pay, and it is often the wisest economy to pay generously in order to get the right man; but this principle can have only an occasional application to the routine work of a Government office.

Let us look at some of the posts in the Stationery Office and the salaries attached to them. The Controller has £1,200 a year and a house allowance of £300 a year, and he is at present aided by an assistant controller at £750 a year, whose post, we learn from the Estimates, is to be reconsidered upon a vacancy. Going a little way down the list we come to a storekeeper, who is paid £550 a year, which seems at least ample. Among the numerous clerks is one batch of five whose united salaries amount to £2,100 a year. There are three examiners of printers' accounts, whose united salaries come to £1,102; one examiner of binders' accounts, who is paid £238 a year. There are twenty-four second-division clerks, whose united salaries amount to nearly £4,000. The year before there were only twenty-two of these clerks; two years previously only nineteen. Then there is an examiner of paper at £500 a year; two assistant examiners of paper, whose combined salaries amount to £582; an examiner of binding, with a maximum salary of £450; an assistant examiner of binding, whose maximum is £300; two extra assistant examiners of binding, whose maximum salaries are £200 each. There are twenty porters paid from

30s. to 36s. a week-the rate which is paid outside for skilled artisans. Then there are numerous extra allowances given to clerks for doing work. The gentleman, for example, who acts as private secretary to the Controller has £50 extra beyond his office. salary, and so on. One cannot place one's finger upon any one of these or similar posts in the Office and say positively that it is unnecessary or over-paid, but the general impression which is undoubtedly made is that more might be done in the direction of economy, and that several hundreds, if not thousands, might be saved in this Office alone. And it is fair to assume that the Stationery Office is not organised upon a different plan from the many other and larger departments of the Civil Service, and in that case the total amount which might be saved in salaries would amount to a very large sum.

With regard to the Stationery bill, it may be that it is now of reasonable proportions; but the following circumstance is worth bearing in mind. A few years ago Sir Howard Vincent stirred up the Government in connection with the Stationery Department's practice of buying a large proportion of its goods abroad. This action was taken not on behalf of economy, but for the sake of home industry. The result of the agitation was that Mr. Hanbury, then Secretary to the Treasury, ordered the Stationery Office to place its orders at home instead of abroad. This change not only had the result (which should always be attempted by Government Departments) of encouraging native industry, but it also resulted in reducing the Stationery bill by a sum estimated at £50,000 a year. Here, then, we have the Stationery Department convicted of having wasted the country's money for the purpose of discouraging the country's trade; and it is fair to assume that it would have gone on doing so but for an outside agitation. Again, as in the exposition of all these Governmental scandals, one wonders how many similar things there are behind which circumstances have not yet dragged into light. It is difficult to follow the Ministerial apologists in their contention that the scandals which have been made public are the only scandals which exist.

Let us now consider the Printing bill. The readiness with which Ministers are at all times prepared to grant printed returns upon any subject which may interest a member of Parliament is by some accounted for upon

;

Everyone who is on the list for receiving Government publications must, until the impression is dulled by constant repetition, be startled at the flood of printed matter which daily pours forth from the Government printers, and it is usual to fling at least ninetenths of the stuff straightway into the waste-paper basket. Such treatment, however, of any particular publication does not of course prove the publication to be useless a document which may be absolutely without interest to one man may be of interest and importance to others, and to a sufficient number to justify publication; one therefore needs to examine the documents themselves. But a complete overhauling, even of one year's Government publications, would be really too stupendous a task, and we must content ourselves with one or two random selections.

Let us begin with Ministerial testimony. In the discussion in the House of Commons of the Stationery and Printing vote for 1903, Mr. Austen Chamberlain, who was in charge of the vote, "complained of the constant pressure exercised by the House on Ministers to supply returns, and said that much of the expenditure was money thrown away. One return which had been asked for, in respect of Voluntary Schools, cost. £1,500, and that return was necessarily inaccurate owing to the absence of information at the disposal of the Departments out of which to compile it correctly." I think the taxpayer will say it is all very well to make the complaint; but why was the Government so weak or so careless of the public purse entrusted to its charge as to give the return? And the country would be justified in demanding of the person responsible for giving the order that he should refund the money out of his private pocket. If a system of surcharge upon Ministers and officials were adopted, after the manner of the Local Government Board's system of surcharge in the case of unjustified expenditure by local bodies, this waste of taxpayers' money might soon be brought within modest proportions.

Now for one or two more examples. Before me are two volumes (8 and 9 of a series) published under the auspices of the Board of Education. An idea of the bulk of these volumes may be gathered from the fact that these two out of the series are together nearly three inches thick. One contains 621 pages and the other 703 pages. I assume the other volumes are of like proportions. They are entitled "Special

Reports on Educational Subjects," and are compiled by various writers, who, we learn, are alone responsible for the opinions they express." Their opinions are many, and occupy much space in the setting forth. The point is, Does the public desire these opinions, and especially at the cost which their collation and publication involve? The volumes are marked with prices-2s. 7d. and 3s. 2d. respectively-but the customers. who pay these sums must be microscopically few and nowhere nearly sufficient to defray the cost, much the greater part of which falls directly upon the taxpayer. I open

volume 8 at random, and find, at page 323, a long quotation from one of Matthew Arnold's works regarding some debate in the Netherlands in 1857 on the subject of religious education. I open again at page 337, and find the beginning of a chronological table of political events in the Netherlands from 1780 onwards. At page 113 I find a series of literary criticisms, the product of Mr. J. G. Legg and Mr. M. E. Sadler. Here the reader learns that Tegner "revived for his compatriots the old Scandinavian poetry"; that another poet, Geijer, is also "the greatest of Swedish historians," and that he and Tegner are " peculiarly representative of the culture and liberal opinions of their day and country." One also learns with relief that Bishop J. O. Wallin, "the compiler of the Swedish official Psalter," is "a powerful religious poet. Yet somehow

one would rather see these valuable appreciations in the more widely read columns of, say, the Athenæum; and one cannot avoid the reflection that, though Civil Service young men are noted for their industry in turning their leisure office hours to good account by writing for the papers and magazines, yet it is the proprietors of the papers and magazines who pay them for their valuable criticisms; it is novel to learn that the Government also pays for literary pronouncements. I would suggest that periodicals are the proper place for discussions of this character, and that if editors do not want them, it is not quite right to make the country pay for their publication.

In the same volume I find an article by Mr. S. R. Hart upon the teaching of languages in secondary day schools, which surely would be more appropriately left to the editor of a magazine, who would have. judged whether there was a market for this particular contribution.

Towards the end of the volume I come across accounts of three school journeys in

Yorkshire. One of these interesting jaunts. Was made to Roche Abbey, Sandbeck, and Furbeck, by boys from the Thornhill Board School, Rotherham School Board (N.D.). The account begins: "The longwished-for day arrived with a clear sky and a light breeze, an ideal day for a country ramble." The boys seemed to have enjoyed themselves. They happened against a market cross in the course of their rambles, and apparently quite an animated discussion arose over the meaning of the cross, for it appears that a contested explanation "brought forth mention of other crosses, as for instance, Charing Cross, Holy Cross, and Weeping Cross." All this, of course, was edifying to young boys, but we begin to blush for their edification when we read: "On one of the old houses near the Cross there is a sign to be seen, in the form of a shield let into the wall, and on which" (oh ! for the Board School grammar) "is the following inscription: Come early to-morrow for good ale, and you shall have it for nothing.' Now, why on earth is this sort of school magazine matter reproduced at considerable length and great cost in an official Government publication?

Leaving this problem, I pick up another official document. It is a portentous Blue Book of 358 pages; its title is as follows: "Correspondence relating to the Removal of Mr. A. P. Pennell from the Indian Civil Service." Mr. Pennell, it appears from the opening document, signed by Lord Curzon and others, was suspended from his office of District and Sessions Judge of Noakhali, in Bengal, for not referring to the High Court for the confirmation of a sentence of death he had passed upon a native whom he found guilty of murder. In consequence of this omission Mr. Pennell was suspended, and the Government of India justified the action taken by surveying Mr. Pennell's general career, with unflattering results. This official letter occupies seven and a half pages, and surely if, in deference to the opinion of friends at home and in justification of the Indian High Court's action, it was necessary to publish this report, the matter might have ended there, without printing in full the mass of correspondence, newspaper articles (such as one informing us that " Kankabathi was a dear girl who had gone to the middle of the river in a boat to drown herself "), witnesses' depositions, and a host of ordinary court documents connected with the case, which occupy the rest of the 358 long pages. The dossier of these documents might have