The Hawera Star MONDAY. JANUARY 4, 1926. THE COST OF GOVERNMENT.

Hawera Star, Volume XLV, 4 January 1926, Page 4

The Hawera Star

MONDAY. JANUARY 4, 1926. THE COST OF GOVERNMENT.

Delivered every evening by 5 o’clock in Hawera, Manaia, Normacby, Okaiawa, Eltham, Mangatokl, Kaponga, Alton. Hurleyville, Patea. Waveriey. Mokoia. Whafcamara. Ohangal. Meremere. Fraser Hoad. and 4 rarnta

It takes seventv-ninc thousand people to run this country, and they get eighteen million pounds annually for the job. This is the information convoyed in a special section of the 1926 Year Rook, which gives the results of a census of the employees of the State and of loeal governing bodies as at the end of March last. Similar figures were compiled ten years ago, and published in the. 1915 number of the Year Book. These showed! sixty .thousand, employees, with a.n annual remuneration, of about eight million pounds. The total arrived at in 1915, however, could be regarded as approximate only, estimates having to be made in respect of certain groups of employees for which definite figures were not available. The Government Statistician does not' claim absolute' accuracy for his returns on this occasion, either, but. estimation, has had to be resorted to in a, much smaller percentage of eases than in 1915. Considering that the total population of the Dominion has increased by more than twenty-five per cent, in the last ten years, an’d bearing in mind the creation of several .new departments and sub-departments in the Civil Service in the same period, the increase from 60,000 to 79,000 in the total of State and, local body employees is not out of reason, although we hope that it will not be found necessary always to increase administrative staffs in the same proportion as the population lias grown. Tt is the enormous jump in the salary and wages total which, just for a. moment, is .staggering. From £8,000,009 to £15,000,000 Phew! But the position is not nearly so bad as it looks. The present staff, if employed in 1915, would have absorbed £11,000.000; and an increase of sevenelevenths —j list over, sixty per cent. — is no more than must, be expected in view of the altered value of money. Tt. has to be remembered that the period under notice covers, practically the whole of the war inflation. On the hustings a couple of months ago. critics of the Government were making a great song about the increased eost of administration. They were mostly using comparisons of the £8,000,000

-218,000,000 lypp, conveniently overlooking the increase in business (and consequently of staff) and the slump in the value of money. There is cause for reflection, however, in the position disclosed by a comparison of administrative costs and values of exports in 1915 and again in 1925. While the one has no particular connection with the other, the fact remains that, whereas ten vear,9 ago we ran the country at a cost of less than one-third *f the value of our exports, the cost last year was very definitely more than a third. The value of exports in 1924-25 was almost exactly twice that of 1914-15; the increase in the cost of administration was approximately 112 per cent.