The Press. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1913.

Press, Volume XLIX, Issue 14761, 3 September 1913, Page 8

The Press. WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 1913.

THE PUBLIC SERVICE. Tho first report of tho Public Service Commissioners, a siimmary of which we print on another page of this issue, ■will be soon to be a document of uncommon interest and of much importance Against the loud and persistent assertions of the "Liberals," both before and after their fall from power, that the Service has not suffered from tho operations of the political wire-pullers there has always been the most powerful of all arguments: the public's actual knowledge of "stuffing" and jobber} , . What tho public never, wo think, fully appreciated, was the fact that tho old system made inevitable ■ a great deal of waste and inefficiency. Part of the waste and inefficiency was due, of course, to the failure of the "Liberal" Wdmaiistpataone to set a paramount vahio on merit. A still greater part sprang from the impossibility that tho Ministerial head of any Department should find the time, even it ho had tho inclination, to pay any attention whatever to the working of tho Department. Tho result has been that for yearns the Departments have all driftod along each in its own rut. The Commissioners do not hesitate to say so in plain terms. Tho Service as a •whole, when they took charge, was not in an efficient condition. Xhero was little or no co-operation between the Departments, and especially between the Treasury and tho other branches of the Service. Tho Treasury apparently made no attempt to exercise its full power over the accounting . methods of the Departments, and this for a reason which the Commissioners point out. Now and then the Treasury issued some direction to a Department to amend its methods, and that Department promptly invoked its Ministerial head to tell the Treasury, in effect, to mind its own business. The absurd multiplication of independent departments has been productive of much weakness. The main departments, with few exceptions, failed to exercise "oven " & casual control" over the so-oaUed subordinate departments, and one of the results is cited by the Commissioners.

Tho Advertising Department, which, under Sir J. G. Ward and subsequently under Mr G. W. Russell, was frankly run as a means of punishing Reform newspapers and rewarding many wretched little sheets of the "right " colour," has actually had an imposing staff of sis persons, whose salaries havo totalled £1200 a year. By the simple act of transferring this "department" to the Department of Internal Affairs the Commissioners havo saved over £400 a year. It is less a proof of the ability and energy of tho Commissioners than of the glaring weaknesses of the old system that tho re-adjustments which havo been made already secure a saving of nearly £50,000 a. year, or a sum equal to t-he interest on the capital sum of a million and a quarter sterling. It is not proposed to dispense with the services of any official who is capable of doing good work, but wo suppose that our "Liberal" friends will not bo satisfied with that. They havo for so long supported the doctrine that the service should bo the dumping ground for incompetent poople of tho "right colour" that they will probably claim that even the superfluous incapables should be tenderly cherished. The public will bo pleased to know that according to the heads of Departments there is now an enthusiasm for tho new order amongst tho member's of tho service. As the Commissioners point out, the new system offers advantages to the Civil Servants in addition to securing a really comprehensive and watchful guardianship of tho economy and efficiency which chiefly interest the public at large. The co-ordination of departments opens the way to an interchange of officers between departments, which obviously widens tho avenues of promotion for capablo men. Merit, moreover, is now assigned a value never allowed to it before. Wo shall return to the report on another occasion, but in tho meantime we may conclude by noting here, as a weakness extremely characteristic of a system kept under political control by one party for twenty years, and indicative of the inw portance that a change should be made, tho extraordinary conservatism and devotion to obsolete methods v.hichliavo surprised tho Commissioners in their investigations.