Hugo Richard Meyer

“ There is no body of intelligent and disinterested public opinion to which can appeal for support the Member of Parliament who is pressed to violate the public interest, but wishes to resist the pressure. The policy of State intervention and State ownership does not create automatically that eternal vigilance which is the price not only of liberty but also of good government. One may go further, and say that the verdict of British experience is that it is more difficult to safeguard and promote the public interest under the policy of State intervention than under the policy of laissez-faire. ”

“ I will attack him on his weak side when he comes up for re-election, and then I will use my power? I will bring organized pressure to bear throughout the constituencies, and I will make this bargain: that if he will not vote for an increase in my pay, or diminish my duties, then I will not give him my vote.’ We have done away with personal and individual bribery, but there is still a worse form of bribery, and that is when a man asks a candidate to buy his vote out of the public purse. There are three great things which distinguish our permanent public service. ”

“ It is no doubt true that objections on the score of favoritism may arise in the application of such a rule in public departments, and the intervention of Members of Parliament also presents an obvious difficulty, but we think that such constant vigilance, tact, and resolution as may fairly be expected on the part of heads of branches and of offices, will meet these objections, and we believe that the certain advantages of promotion by merit to the most deserving men, and therefore to the public service, are so great as to be sure, in the long run, to command public support. ”

“ W. S. Jevons, came to consider what the popularization of the telegraphs had cost the taxpayers, he could not refrain from adding that a large part of the increased use made of the telegraphs was of such a nature that the State could have no motive for encouraging it. “Men have been known to telegraph for a pocket handkerchief,” was his closing comment. Mr. Jevons had been an ardent advocate of nationalization. Had he lived to witness the corruption of politics produced by the public ownership of the telegraphs, his disillusionment would have been even more complete. ”

“ Before the Royal Commission of 1888, Lord Welby [then Sir Welby] , Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, was asked: “But you would hardly plead the interference of Members of Parliament as a justification for not getting rid of an unworthy servant, would you?” Lord Welby, who had been in the Treasury since 1856, replied: “It is not a good reason, but as a matter of fact it is powerful. The House of Commons are our masters.”
In the hands of a commercial company, the telegraphs in the United Kingdom would yield a handsome return even upon their present cost to the Government. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ In that respect all of us in the Postal Service stand in a unique position, from top to bottom our men are certain as long as they conduct themselves reasonably well to retain their maximum pay down to the last day they remain in the Service, and whatever their class may be, whether postmen, or sorting clerks, or telegraphists, or officers of higher grade, they continue, failing misconduct, to rise to the maximum pay of their class, quite regardless of whether they are worth the higher pay that they get from year to year. ”

“ Herman queried: “When you speak of the pressure put upon you by Members of Parliament for the increase of pay to classes, and the other points that you named, I suppose that you mean that it is partly party pressure, and that you are more subject to it at the present time than you would be if a Conservative Government were in power?” Mr. Baxter replied: “In my experience it has very little to do with party; men from all quarters of the House are at me from week to week.” “Do you mean to say that men opposed to you in political principles apply to you for that sort of thing now?” ”

“ Instead of purifying politics, public ownership has corrupted them. It has given a great impetus to class bribery, a form of corruption far more insidious than individual bribery. With one exception, wherever the public ownership of the telegraphs has affected the pocket-book interests of any considerable body of voters, the good-will of those voters has been gained at the expense of the public purse. The only exception has been the policy pursued toward the owners of the telephone patents ”

“ The British public, needless to say, still is waiting for the man, or men, who shall take upon themselves the invidious but honorable task of stemming the tide to extravagant expenditure, which, in Great Britain, as elsewhere, is the besetting sin of popular government. The British people still are waiting, though, since 1870, they have vastly increased the functions of the Government by nationalizing a great branch of industry, and therefore are more than ever in need of persons who shall emulate the late Joseph Hume. ”

“ In the course of a protest against the Postmaster General being a Member of the House of Lords, Sir H. H. Fowler287 recently said: “No man who has sat in the House of Commons for 10 years can be ignorant of the fact that there is a tone in the House; that there are occasions in the House when, in dealing with votes [of Supply] and administrative questions, a Minister is required, who, with his finger on the pulse of the House, can sweep away the red tape limits and deal with the questions at once on broad general public grounds.” ”

“ The Postmaster General is not a mere executive officer with a single aim: the efficient administration of his Department. He is first of all an important Minister, that is, one of the aids of the Prime Minister in keeping intact the party following. He must know to a nicety how any given administrative act in the Post Office will affect his party’s standing, first in Parliament, and then among the constituents of the Members of Parliament. It is true that no British Postmaster General would convert the Post Office into a political engine for promoting the interests of his party ”

“ With the rest of the Government employees they have been permitted to establish the doctrine that once a man has landed himself on the State’s pay-roll, he has “something very nearly approaching to a freehold of provision for life,” irrespective of his fitness and his amenableness to discipline, and no matter what labor-saving machines may be invented, or how much business may fall off. ”

“ From whatever viewpoint one examines the outcome of the nationalization of the telegraphs, one finds invariably that experience proves the unsoundness of the doctrine that the extension of the functions of the State [Pg 391] to the inclusion of the conduct of business ventures will purify politics and make the citizen take a more intelligent as well as a more active part in public affairs. Class bribery has been the outcome, wherever the State as the owner of the telegraphs has come in conflict with the pocket-book interest of the citizen. ”

“ There is, probably, no interest in the Kingdom which is so cordially disliked by the press, which, when united, is stronger than any interest, and which has suffered for years under the shortcomings of the private companies. The real discussion in Parliament, should there be any, will turn upon a very different point, and it will be not a little interesting to observe how far the current of opinion on the subject of State interference with private enterprise, has really ebbed within the last few years. ”

“ Hunt, Chancellor of the Exchequer, to wit, that telegraphing ought to be made so cheap that the illiterate man who could not write a letter would send a telegram. Dr. Cameron argued that “instead of maintaining a price which was prohibitory not only to the working classes but also to the middle classes, they ought to take every means to encourage telegraphy. They ought to educate the rising generation to it; and he would suggest to the Government that the composing of telegrams would form a useful part of the education in our board schools.” ”

“ Advice from men of practical and business experience would help me, the Minister in this matter. Therefore, I propose to take such advice—of men as free from any kind of political and electoral pressure, as they should be free from any departmental influence. I should suggest a body of five to report for my advice and information on the wages paid in the Post Office Department to the four great classes of employees, the letter sorters and the telegraphists in London, and the letter sorters and the telegraphists in the provinces. ”

“ He might mention that all classes of all communities, of all professions, all trades, all combinations of individuals, such as anti-vaccinationists and so forth, had invariably used their utmost pressure in defense of their [Pg 12] interests and views upon members of the House....”
The problem of government in every country—irrespectively of the form which the political institutions may take in any given country—is to avoid class legislation, and to make it impossible for any one class to exploit the others. ”

“ Gladstone’s apprehensions were well-founded; that the civil servants have become a class by themselves, with interests so widely divergent from the interests of the rest of the community that they do not distribute their allegiance between the two great political parties on the merits of the respective policies of those parties, as do an equal number of voters taken at random. ”

“ The surplus revenue [above the interest on the debt outstanding] earned up to the present time had been so small that it was impossible by sacrificing it to confer any substantial advantage upon the public. But the telegraph revenue was increasing; and it appeared to him that they had now arrived at a point where a remission of taxation must be made in the shape of extra facilities [i. e., reduced charges] for the public, or the vicious principle of the taxation of telegrams for the purpose of revenue must be affirmed. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Whether they were going to emerge into a new state of things in which class influence would be weaker he knew not; but that class influence had been in many things evil and a scandal to them, especially for the last fifteen or twenty years; and he was fearful of its increase in consequence of the possession of the franchise, through the power which men who, as members of a regular service, were already organized, might bring to bear on Members of Parliament. What, he asked, was the Civil Service of this country? ”

“ Everyone knows that a great organized body like the Post Office Service has in its power to put great pressure upon Members, but I earnestly urge upon honorable Gentlemen that unless we take our courage in both hands, and say that, although most desirous that all legitimate grievances shall be dealt with, we cannot permit the Government as a great employer of labor to have this kind of pressure put upon it, I think the future of the public service is in peril. ”