THE WASTE OF PUBLIC MONEY. matter of fact, not much
relevance to the question put to him.
The main charge against the Government is that, instead of reducing civil expenditure in order to help to meet the enormous expenditure which must be incurred on behalf of the Navy and the Army, they have allowed the cost of the Civil Services to increase even more rapidly than it was doing in time of peace. Especially is this the case since the Ministry of which Mr. Asquith was the head was replaced by the present Cabinet. In the current year Mr. Bonar Law's Budget Estimates provided for an addition of no less than £5,560,000 to the cost of the civil Departments as compared with the Estimates for the previous year. This huge increase marks an absolute reversal of the policy deliberately adopted by Parliament in the earlier years of the war. In the year 1915-16, when Mr. McKenna was at the Exchequer, a serious attempt was made to keep down the Civil Service Estimates. Not nearly enough was done, but at any rate expansion was prevented. Since then there has been a perfect orgy of extravagance. Moreover, the figure above quoted takes no account what- ever of the additional items of expenditure of a civil character chargeable to Votes on Account instead of to Departmental Estimates. Prominent among these items are the new expenditures to which the country has been committed by the policy of the Food Controller and by the policy of those persons who are responsible for fixing the wages of munitioners. Lord Rhondda and the War Cabinet between them have committed the country to an expenditure of £40,000,000 a year in order to provide an artificially cheap loaf for a popu- lation which in the main is better off than it has ever been in the history of the nation. They have likewise committed the country to an expenditure of about £5,000,000 a year as a result of confusion made some nine months ago between the words " maximum " and " minimum " in fixing the price of potatoes. Equally, if not more, serious is the expen- diture thrown upon the nation by the reckless manner in which wages have been raised under pressure from Labour organizations. If the men concerned had been receiving low wages, such for example as those paid before the war to agricultural labourers, the case for an increase would have been very strong indeed ; but as a matter of fact the demand for increased wages has primarily come from workpeople already in enjoyment of substantially good wages. It has come too not so much from men employed by the much- abused private capitalist as from those employed directly or indirectly by the State—from miners, from railway workers, and from munitioners. This fact is important, for it is a complete answer to the Socialist pretence that the workman only wishes to prevent himself from being robbed by the capitalist.
What we are really faced with is a conspiracy by some of the better-paid manual workers of the country to obtain abnormally high wages for themselves at the expense of the rest of the community. The weapon employed is the threat to cease work, and so prevent production which is of vital importance to the nation. As far as can be gathered, no serious effort has been made on the part of the Government to check this conspiracy. Indeed, the only prominent protest made against it was contained in the recent speech of Sir Auckland Geddes on man-power. The additional expenditure thrown upon the nation in order to meet the demands of these privileged classes cannot be precisely ascertained, but it may well be found to exceed £100,000,000 a year. The money to meet this cost has all to be borrowed, thus adding to the post-war expenditure of the nation. In addition, the very grave evil is created that large classes of the popu- lation, who have grown accustomed during war time to a higher scale of living than they ever knew in time of peace, will find it extremely difficult to go back to their old scale when the restoration of peace conditions will also involve the restoration of industries to a commercial basis dependent upon world prices. With the injustice which has been created it is unnecessary to deal. On the one hand are large bodies of working men who have gone to fight for their country under conditions of intense physical discomfort and in almost daily risk of their lives ; on the other hand are the men who have been fortunate enough, through age or favouritism, to be able to stay at home, and who have now been placed by the Government in a position of prosperity which they had never known before.
Lastly, there is the question of the needless multiplication of new Government offices at an enormous expense for accom- modation and for staff. Our present overgrown bureaucracy is a scandal which is apparently notorious to every one in the country except to the members of the War Cabinet- There is hardly any one who does not hear from friends inside Government offices of the hideous waste of public time and public money which is daily going on. Yet, as far as can be gathered, no effort of any kind has been made by the Government to put a stop to this waste. In makifig this statement we are fully aware that a new Committee has been announced which is to consider the-staffing of Govern- ment offices. But we are convinced that unless a complete change of policy is adopted by the War Cabinet itself, the fate of this new Committee will be identical with the fate of the other Committees on economy that have preceded it. After several months of inquiry this new Committee will write a Report which will be printed at the public expense and nothing more will be heard of it. The plain truth is that the War Cabinet, so far as it can be judged by its action and its inaction, is either indifferent to the waste of public money, or has not the courage to take a firm stand against extravagance and jobbery. Consider, for example, the particular case commented upon in the second Report of the Select Committee on National Expenditure and referred to at the time in our own columns—namely, the appointment of an official of the London County Council who had been receiving £450 a year to a new job in the Employment Department of the Ministry of Labour at £700 a year. Although the Committee in their Report on the Employment Department scathingly remark that " the tendency of the officials is to increase the work of the Department without due consider- ation as to whether such work is necessary," Mr. Bonar Law in his printed reply defends this particular appointment which the Committee condemn, says that it is to be per- manent, and gives no hint whatever of any intention of cutting down the enormous staff that this new Department has built up. It may be added that this Department, whose uselessness is equally recognized by Trade Unionists and by employers, is to an appreciable extent staffed by men of military age, especially in its higher ranks, and there is as yet no evidence that these men are to be called upon to serve in the field. Similar considerations apply to the expenditure incurred by' the National Insurance Department. A great deal of this expenditure could be swept away by means of reforms in the scheme of national insurance which would be generally welcomed. But the official organization is so strongly entrenched that apparently no one has the courage to touch it.
Ultimately the trouble we are up against is this, that the vested interest of persons who have succeeded in obtaining posts under the Government is so strong and direct that their opposition to reform outweighs the interest of the general body of the nation which provides the money. This may be set down as one of the fundamental distinctions between public and private employment. The private employer has a direct and personal interest in economy. The public employer is a diffused entity embracing the whole nation, and where any interest is diffused it cannot be brought to bear with sufficient precision to oppose the influence of interests that are individual. The result is that under the Socialist pretence of preventing the individual capitalist from robbing the working man we are setting up a system under which the individual bureaucrat robs the whole nation. Probably if the voters in this country or in any other country were cross-examined on the question of public expenditure, the majority of them would show by their answers that they had not the least conception that part of that expenditure had to come directly or indirectly out of their own pockets. Their minds are confused with the idea that in some mys- terious manner the national Exchequer provides the money, and they do not trouble to think that the public Exchequer must be replenished out of private pockets. But this wide- spread mental confusion affords no excuse for the attitude of indifference deliberately adopted by responsible statesmen. It is their duty to deal with facts, not to allow their policy to be guided by foolish fancies, however widespread those fancies may be.
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