Civil Servants' Pay The mass demonstration of Civil Servants at
the Albert Hall on -Tuesday cannot be regarded as without significance. The charges made against the Government need not be true, and indeed sortie in particular, as that the Government deliberately encourages the rise in prices, are obviously false. But some of the facts quoted appear to demand serious enquiry. Thus the General Secretary of the Post Office Engineering Union stated that thousands of civil servants receive less than 57s. 3d. a week, which Mr. Seebohm Rowntree found to be the minimum figure consistent with the maintenance of physical fitness for a family of five. The specific demand was that the National Whitley Council should initiate negotiations for increases of pay thronghout the Civil Seryice to compensate for the rising cost of living. Though the meeting was not representative of Civil Servants as a whole, but only of one association, it is to be hoped that the representations made will receive the attention they deserve. For nothing could be more dangerous to the working of an administrative machine than dissatis- faction among its wOriers ; and when that machine is the administration of a nation of which its citizens are highly proud, such complaints assume an even more serious significance.
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