Government Servants in France

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 43, 24 October 1907, Page 33

Government Servants in France

One of the reasons advanced for the facility with which the French Government has been able to impose its laws against religion on the nation, is that it has filled every office with its frier" ds, and as the army of officials and their relations comprise a large percentage of the voters, the atheistic rulers of the country are always sure, not only of a solid vote from those dependent upon them-, but also of their active support in the propaganda of their doctrines amongst the great body of electors. According to the ' New York Sun ' there are 650,000 paid, and about 463,000 unpaid officials in France. About one person in twonty-six of the adult population, holds a public office. There is a plague cf offices and officeholding throughoat the country. The people have an officeholding craze. Public employment appeals to French vanity, and the pension appeals, to French thrift. A man "who once gets his toes in a public office will never die of starvation. So the young people are deserting the productive occupations to look for small jobs under the Government. The boys want to be clerks or even ushers in place of taking up trades, and the girls are deserting dressmaking an!d millinery to become teachers or telephone girls or typewriters in public offices. S"tate schools are turning out regiments of young people annually especially crammed to pass the civil service examinations. The Senators and Deputies are besieged by hordes of applicants flourishing their ' brevets ' or certificates of qualification. . All sorts of wires, social and political, are pulled. The pressure is „ so great "that new offices are constantly invented to make places, and supernumerary clerks and typewriters and so on are daily added to offices, already overcrowded. In some departments the force is so large that some of the employees — the ones who have (the strongest pull — only come in once a week to brush the dust off the hat and overcoat that they keep hanging in the offices. If a chief by any accident comes in and asks for them, the other clerks — the ones who do the work— suavely reply that ' Mr. So-and-So is somewhere in the building ; there are his hat and coat.' Nine times out of ten this ends the incident ; but if the chief shows a real desire to see the absentee a friend sends a messenger to find him. In 1846 there were 262, 0D0 p,aid officials in the country and 461,000 unpaid ones. These figures grew • in 1358 to 340,000 paid and 489,000 unpaid. In 1873 there were 341,000 paid and 459,000 unpaid. In 1896 the paid functionaries numbered 582,000, and the unpaid ones 462,500. The present figure of 650,000 paid employees shows an increase of nearly threefold in a/b- " out -sixty years, yefr iii that time the population of France has made hardly any progress. The financial burden is enormous. The 262,000 employees in 1846 drew altogether about £14,000,000 from the public treasury. The 650,000 of to-day receive! £39,000,000 -in salaries and fees. , Besides this sum more than £8,000,000 are paid out annually in civilpensions. By. far Tthe greater part' -of the money . is paid . out to persons in. the medium grades. Next comes the claiss of v low-priced employees — watchmen, office boys, ushers, and" the like. One-third of all -the public employees receive salaries less than £4 a year. One-half receive from that sum up to £200. There are altogether only 1460' public officials whose compensation amounts to £600 a year or .over. It will be seen that "Che extravagance of the system is not in the. units of pay. Ti is in the multiplication of unnecessary salaries. Strange stories are told of the results of thus overmanning the service. Many a public servant earns his pay and his pension holding down a chair in a boulevard cafe. Lately it was discovered that there were .three Governors for the Islands" of St. Pierre and Miguelon, whose pay absorbed half tlie revenue of th"c islands. The administrator of another colony, arawing from £280 to £320 in fees, it was found, had never been in the colony.