SCOPE OF THE INQUIRY

The story of the British State Telegraphs divides itself into two parts: the purchase of the telegraphs, in 1870, from the companies that had established the industry of telegraphy; and the subsequent conduct of the business of telegraphy by the Government. The first part is covered by Chapters II to VI; the second part by the remaining chapters. Both parts contain a record of fact and experience that should be of service to the American public at the present moment, when there is before them the proposal to embark upon the policy of the municipal ownership and operation of the so-called municipal public service industries. The second part, however, will interest a wider body of readers than the first part; for it deals with a question that is of profound interest and importance at all times—the problem of a large body of civil servants in a Democracy.

Chapters II to VI tell of the demand of the British Chambers of Commerce, under the leadership of the Chamber of Commerce of Edinburgh, for lower charges on telegraphic messages; the appointment by the Government of Mr. Scudamore, Second Secretary of the Post Office, to report upon the relative merits of private telegraphs and State telegraphs; the character of the report submitted by Mr. Scudamore; and the reasons why that report—upon which rested the whole argument for nationalization—was not adequately considered either by the Select Committee of the House of Commons, to whom the Bill for the purchase of the telegraphs was referred, or by the House of Commons itself. The principal reason was that the agitation carried on by the Chambers of Commerce and the newspaper press1 proved so successful that both political parties committed themselves to nationalization before Mr. Scudamore’s report had been submitted to searching criticism. Under the circumstances, the Disraeli Ministry was unwilling to go into the general election of 1868 without having made substantial progress toward the nationalization of the telegraphs. In order to remove opposition to its Bill in the House of Commons, the Disraeli Ministry conceded practically everything asked by the telegraph companies, the railway companies and the newspaper press.2 The result was that the Government paid a high price absolutely for the telegraphs. Whether the price was too high, relatively speaking, is difficult to say. In the first place, the price paid—about $40,000,000—was well within the sum which the Government had said it could afford to pay, to wit, $40,000,000 to $50,000,000. In the second place, the Government acquired an industry “ready-made,” with an established staff of highly trained men educated in the school of competition—the only school that thus far has proved itself capable of bringing out the highest efficiency that is in men. In the second place, the Government acquired the sole right to transmit messages by electricity—a right which subsequent events have proved to cover all future inventions, such as the transmission of messages by means of the telephone and of wireless telegraphy. Finally, in spite of the wastefulness that characterized the Government’s operation of the telegraphs from the day the telegraphs were taken over, the Telegraph Department in the year 1880-81 became able to earn more than the interest upon the large capital invested in the telegraphs. But from that year on the Government not only became more and more wasteful, but also lost control over the charges made to the public for the transmission of messages. It is instructive to note, in this latter connection, that the control over the rates to be charged to the public was taken out of the hands of the Government by Dr. Cameron, who represented in the House of Commons the people of Glasgow, and that another Scotch city, Edinburgh, had initiated and maintained the campaign for the nationalization of the telegraphs.

One of the most extraordinary of the astounding incidents of the campaign and negotiations that resulted in the purchase of the telegraphs, was the fact that in the debates in the House of Commons was not even raised the question of the possibility of complications and dangers arising out of the multiplication of the civil servants. That fact is the more remarkable, since the leaders of both political parties at the time apprehended so much danger from the existing civil servants that they refused to take active steps to enfranchise the civil servants employed in the so-called revenue departments—the customs, inland revenue and Post Office departments—who had been disfranchised since the close of the Eighteenth Century. The Bill of 1868, which gave the franchise to the civil servants in question, was a Private Bill, introduced by Mr. Monk, a private Member of the House of Commons; and it was carried against the protest of the Disraeli Ministry, and without the active support of the leading men in the Opposition.

In the debates upon Mr. Monk’s Bill, Mr. Gladstone, sitting in Opposition, said he was not afraid that either political party ever would try to use the votes of the civil servants for the purpose of promoting its political fortunes, “but he owned that he had some apprehension of what might be called class influence in the House of Commons, which in his opinion was the great reproach of the Reformed Parliament, as he believed history would record. 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 [since the Reform of Parliament]; 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.”

Chapters VII and following show that Mr. 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 civil servants have organized themselves in great civil service unions, for the purpose of promoting their class interests by bringing pressure to bear upon the House of Commons. At the parliamentary elections they tend to vote solidly for the candidate who promises them most. In one constituency they will vote for the Liberal candidate, in another for the Conservative candidate.

Thus far neither Party appears to have made an open or definite alliance with the civil servants. But in the recent years in which the Conservative Party was in power, and year after year denied—“on principle” of public policy—certain requests of the civil servants, the rank and file, as well as some of the minor leaders of the Liberal, or Opposition Party, evinced a strong tendency to vote rather solidly in the House of Commons in support of those demands of the civil servants.3 At the same time the chiefs of the Liberal, or Opposition Party, refrained from the debate as well as from the vote. It may be that the Opposition Party discipline was not strong enough to enable the Opposition chiefs to prevent the votes on the momentous issue raised in the House of Commons by the civil servants from becoming for all practical purposes Party votes; or, it may be that the Liberal Party leaders did not deem it expedient to seek to control the voting of their followers. Be that as it may, the fact remains that the Conservative Ministry that was in power, repeatedly called in vain upon the House of Commons to take out of the field of Party politics the issue raised by the civil servants in the period from 1890 to 1905. The Conservative Ministry year after year denied the request of the Post Office employees for a House of Commons Select Committee on the pay and position of the Post Office employees. On the other hand, the support of that request came steadily from the Liberal Opposition. In the General Election of January, 1906, the Post Office employees threw their weight overwhelmingly on the side of the Liberal Party; and immediately after the opening of the new Parliament, the newly established Liberal Government announced that it would give the Post Office employees the House of Commons Select Committee which the late Conservative Ministry had “on principle” of public policy refused to grant.

Shortly after the General Election of January, 1906, the President of the Postal Telegraph Clerks’ Association, a powerful political organization, stated that nearly 450 of the 670 Members of the House of Commons had pledged themselves, in the course of the campaign, to vote for a House of Commons Select Committee. At about the same time, Lord Balcarres, a Conservative whip in the late Balfour ministry, speaking of the 281 members who entered Parliament for the first time in 1906, said “he thought he was fairly accurate when he said that they had given pretty specific pledges upon this matter [of a Select Committee] to those who had sent them to the House.” Sir Acland-Hood, chief whip in the late Balfour Ministry, added: “…nearly the whole of the supporters of the then [1905] Government voted against the appointment of the Select Committee [in July, 1905]. No doubt many of them suffered for it at the general election; they either lost their seats or had their majorities reduced in consequence of the vote.” And the new Prime Minister, Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman, spoke of the “retroactive effect of old promises extracted in moments of agony from candidates at the general election.” And finally, at the annual conference of the Postal Telegraph Clerks’ Association, held in March, 1906, Mr. R. S. Davis, the representative of the Metropolitan London Telegraph Clerks, said: “The new Postmaster General had made concessions which had almost taken them [the postal clerks] off their feet by the rapidity with which one had succeeded another and the manner in which they were granted.”

Chapters XIV to XVII describe the efforts made by the civil servants to secure exemption from the ordinary vicissitudes of life, as well as exemption from the necessity of submitting to those standards of efficiency and those rules of discipline which prevail in private employment. They show the hopelessly unbusinesslike spirit of the rank and file of the public servants, a spirit fostered by the practice of members of the House of Commons intervening, from the floor of the House as well as behind the scenes, on behalf of public servants who have not been promoted, have been disciplined or dismissed, or, have failed to persuade the executive officers to observe one or more of the peculiar claims of “implied contract” and “vested right” which make the British public service so attractive to those men whose object in life is not to secure full and untrammeled scope for their abilities and ambitions, but a haven of refuge from the ordinary vicissitudes of life. Members of the House of Commons intervene, in the manner indicated, in mere matters of detail of administration, because they have not the courage to refuse to obey the behests of the political leaders of the civil service unions; they do not so interfere from the mere desire to promote their political fortunes by championing the interests of a class. They recognize the fact that the art of government is the art of log-rolling, of effecting the best compromise possible, under the given conditions of political intelligence and public spirit, between the interests of a class and the interests of the country as a whole. Their views were forcibly expressed, on a recent occasion, by Captain Norton, who long has been one of the most aggressive champions in the House of Commons, of the civil servants, and who, at present, is a Junior Lord of the Treasury, in the Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman Liberal Ministry. Said Captain Norton: “As regarded what had been said about undue influence [being exercised by the civil servants], his contention was that so long as the postal officials … were allowed to maintain a vote, they had precisely the same rights as all other voters in the country to exercise their fullest influence in the defense of their rights, privileges and interests. 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 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. Some of us—who are old-fashioned and at present in the minority—believe that the solution of that problem is to be found only in the upbuilding of the character and the intelligence of the individual citizen. Others believe that it is to be found largely, if not mainly, in extending the functions of the State and the City. To the writer, the experience of Great Britain under the experiment of the extension of the functions of the State and the City, seems to teach once more the essential soundness of the doctrine that the nation that seeks refuge from the ills that appear under the policy of laissez-faire, seeks refuge from such ills in the apparently easy, and therefore tempting, device of merely changing the form of its political institutions and political ideals, will but change the form of the ills from which it suffers.