The Feilding Star. "SATURDAY, AUGUST 4, 1888. The Government Stroke

Feilding Star, Volume IX, Issue 157, 4 August 1888, Page 2

The Feilding Star. "SATURDAY, AUGUST 4, 1888. The Government Stroke

It is observable that if any Member of the House touches the wages question he is immediately assumed to occupy an invidious position, while the Government appear to cow before a species of moral terrorism, probably from the too patent fact of so large a portion of the community consisting of Government servants and pensioners. If the position be faced boldly it must be seen that the people are the owners of the State, while the members may be looked on as managers or overseers, and if the concern is carried on too expensively, the owners have simply to put their hands in their pockets and pay for the bad management. Looking at the subject from this point of view it does seem ridiculous for the people-ownero to wish their managers to employ work and service at higher rates than are necessary. Government service, although not in some of its branches — notably the Post and Telegraph — is but too often a sinecure, and those occupying the higher situations must sometimes realise that they cannot always give an equivalent value for their positions of comfort, pleasure, and patronage. In the St. James' Gazette a return shows that when the number of men employed was greatest, and the wages highest, in the English dockyards, there was least value received in return from work done. If we accept this statement as correct, and we have every reason to be satisfied with its source, it surely behoves the people of New Zealand to protect themselves from anything similar in their railway workshops or other departments of the public service. Let only enough men be employed to do the work which has to be done, and no more. By adopting this system there would never be any of that heartsickeniug dread of sudden loss of employment, which has been too prevalent among Government employes for the last few years. Good men would feel that their situations depended only on their capacity to perform their duties, and 1 that they had not to rely on the good will or caprice of their official superiors to retain them.