Leading Articles in the Reviews. 



445 



"THE PLUMS FOR OUR FRIENDS." 



A MEMBER of Parliament, who is of the same 

 opinion as the late John Bright, that the Public 

 Service is a gigantic system of outdoor relief 

 for the sons of the aristocracy, tells in 

 London how the best Civil Service posts are 

 filled. Open competition is a mere farce. Be- 

 tween 1906 and 1910 there were 473 candidates 

 successful in the Class i examination, and of 

 these 247 had come from Oxford and 142 from 

 Cambridge. The scheme of examination for the 

 Class I has been deliberately framed so as to 

 give an advantage to the candidate from Oxford 

 or Cambridge. Instances are as common as 

 leaves in autumn of men in this select class 

 jumping £'300 to ;i^500 a year at one step after 

 a few years' service. A young man with three 

 years' service, then receiving a salary of £^260, 

 was recently transferred to another office, to a 

 post just made, at ;^500 a year. Immediately 

 after he married the daughter of a highly placed 

 public official. A few other instances may be 

 given to show the way in which fortune favours 

 these young men who enter the Civil Service 

 with the advantage of belonging to the exclusive 

 set. The Treasury is a small department. Out 

 of twenty-six Higher Division clerks serving in 

 that office, no fewer than fifteen have, within the 

 last eight years, had .'special promotion, and in 

 every case the promotion sent up the salary at 

 one step by about ;i£^40o a year. One of these, 

 by no means an exceptional case, is that of a 

 young man of invariably immaculate attire, with 

 the most perfect Oxford manner and indis- 

 pensable monocle, who entered the service about 

 thirteen years ago. Commencing at ;^200 a 

 year, in six years he had reached ;£^320. He 

 was then promoted to a post carrying a salary 

 of ;£.70o rising to ^"900. Later he was advanced 

 to another post, and his present salary is 

 ;6'>'50- I he office of private secretary is in- 

 tended to serve a double purpose. It provides 

 an excuse for giving a few hundreds, or it may 

 be only a modest hundred or so, to some junior 

 Higher Division clerk, and it is a stepping- 

 stone to a rapid promotion to some higher well- 

 paid post. The Prime Minister has one private 

 secret.iry at ^500, one at ;^3oo, and one at 

 ;£'ioo; ihc Chancellor of the Exchequer has one 

 ^\ £300^ one at ;^2oo, one at ;^ioo; the 

 Financial .Secretary one at ;i{;"i5o; the Parlia- 

 mentary Secretary one at ^300, and one at 

 ;^ioo; the Permanent Secretary one at ;;^IS0. 

 These posts are usually held by Higher Division 

 clerks, who are paid their usual salaries, and 

 receive these allowances in addition, though 

 they arc taken away from I heir ordinary duties 

 to serve as private secretaries. A short term 

 as a private secretary is usually rewarded by 



promotion to a very valuable post. One of the 

 present Chancellor's private secretaries was 

 appointed from that position to a post in India 

 3' ^5>ooo a year, an increase of over 500 per 

 cent, in his wages. The present Permanent 

 Secretary of a Government Department was 

 private secretary to a former President of the 

 Board of Trade, and from this post he was 

 appointed to the position he holds to-day, the 

 salary of which is ;!<^i,SOO a year. Last month 

 the present President of this Board (Mr. Runci- 

 man) announced that he intended to promote 

 the clerk who was acting as his private secre- 

 tary to the post of Assistant Secretary to the 

 Board, a position carrying a salary of ^800, 

 rising to ;^i,ooo. A former Chairman of the 

 Board of Inland Revenue had as private secre- 

 tary a young clerk whom he made a Principal 

 Clerk, with only about five years' service. 

 When this Chairman was appointed High Com- 

 missioner of South .Africa, he made the young 

 man Treasurer of the Province at a salary of 

 j£^2,ooo. This young man had been at Balliol 

 College, which was the college of his patron. 



After retailing numerous other instances of 

 favouritism, the author of this paper remarks 

 that there is supposed to be a chance for the 

 promotion of the Second Division clerk to the 

 Higher Division, but in practice this chance is 

 very remote. There are over 3,000 Second 

 Division clerks serving in Government offices, 

 and in the last eighteen years there have been 

 seventy-three promotions, and these have been 

 confined to a small number of offices. Good 

 care is taken that the pickings at the top are 

 preserved for the superior caste. 



AMERICAN COMMENT ON 

 LLOYD GEORGEISM. 



In the North American Review Mr. Charles 

 Johnston tries to scare the American farmer with 

 the awful results that would follow from the 

 adoption of Socialism. He goes on : — 



The mention of England brings me inevitably to 

 Ihe plans of Mr. Lloyil George, which have already 

 made such revolutionary progress there. It is not my 

 purpose here to discuss whether these reforms do more 

 good or harm, liut I wish to point out, what is more 

 to the purpose in the present discussion, th.it thev are 

 extremely costly. Note the impaired credit of England, 

 as evidenced by the relentless fall of Consolid.-ited 

 Government Slock, Ihc so called Consols. Ear above 

 par before the South African War; now down in the 

 seventies, and still falling. Note also Ihe increasing 

 difficulty of the struggle to keep up the battleship 

 strength of the nation, in the face of Germany's naval 

 programme. These are signs of the limes, that all may 

 read. 



Thai Socialistic plans like those of Mr. Lloyd George 

 must of necessity be cosily, in the long run ruinously 

 costly, is almost a logical necessity. 



