The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 1911. HOLLOW PROMISES.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1274, 1 November 1911, Page 4

The Dominion. WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 1911. HOLLOW PROMISES.

♦ Another proof comes to-day, in a telegram recording Sir John Findlay's announcement of higher pay for the police, of the anxiety of the Government as to the result of the elections. Never before has it attempted to exercise in this way its power of providing higher pay for the Civil Service and other Government employees; there is hardly any section of the employees of the State who have not been granted higher pay in anticipation of the elections. The Government's idea, of course, is that it will secure a great number of votes by this means, even if it has to discharge an army of State employees after the elections should it return to power, as it did after the elections of 1908. There was a time when the trick might have succeeded, but the public and the State employees have learned much in recent years. The Govemmnnt's thouchtß run in this

f»3hion: "All of these State employees will not vote for our men in despite of these increases of salary. Many of them will be won, however; seme through gratitude, and gome through their fancy that it is necessary to return us to power in order that tho contracts may be fulfilled." The Government, we are quite sure, is deluding itself with false hopes. It can expect nothing from gratitude on the part of the beneficiaries; the beneficiaries know that they have no real cause for gratitude, and that it is only because the election prospects arc frightening the Government that the increases in pay are provided. To tho public in general it will be quite obvious that the increases in pay, coming at this time, mean one of two things: either that for three years the employees of the State have been deprived of their rightful increases in salary, or else that the increases are improper, and represent merely another unscrupulous use of the public's money as a party election fund. We arc afraid that the public may feel half inclined to suspect that the increases in the salaries of the rank and file of the State employees are improper. We cannot believe that they are altogether improper, which means that the bulk of the beneficiaries have been robbed of their dues for three years. But there arc a great many increases in salary that arc manifestly wrong. Tho rank and file have had to suffer once more in order that the highly-paid officials shall be still more highly paid. Tho Estimates and the _ Supplementary Estimates bristle with large increases in the already largo salaries of Ministers' favourites and Ministers' relatives; butthc Government hopes that the policeman or the railwayman will forget this fact in his enjoyment of the Gd. por clay extra that* is to bo paid to him—or k> such of him as is not dismissed after the election if the Government is returned to power. As we have said, the time has gone by when it was possible for the Government to hope that it could gull the rank and file of the State employees. There is abundant evidence that the average State employee is bitterly cynical concerning the prc-elccticn solicitude of lite Ministry for his concerns. He contrasts his long-deferred Gd. a. day advance with the £25 and £50 increments in the salaries of the highly-paid officials. As to the second point, the Government's hopes that "the beneficiaries will fancy that the benefits arc contingent on the Government's re-elec-tion, Ministers arc making a mista.ko if they think they arc dealing with fools. The public may fancy that the higher pay is undeserved, but it realises that the increases being officially authorised should be paid, and the contract to do so observed, by whatever Government may be in office. Whatever contract respecting higher pay has been entered into should be faithfully respected. A year or two ago we should have said that no Government would if it could, or could if it would, repudiate any contract entered into by the State with an employee or with any private person. We should like t<) say the same to-day, but we cannot; for the Ward Government a few days ago, during the closing days of the session, proclaimed its readiness to violate existing contracts. What it will do with a contract between the State and a lessee of Native land it will certainly do, if it thinks fit, with a contract between the State and a, State employee.