GETTING VALUE FOR OUR MONEY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 42, 15 March 1909, Page 2

GETTING VALUE FOR OUR MONEY.

Jt is to bo remembered willi regret thai once there sat a Uoyal Commission to inquire into the land question. Tho Commission sat fur months. It cost a considerable sum of money; the evidence when hound weighed twelve pounds, and nobody read it. The Commission was entirely useless, having discovered things that had been known for years. There will shortly sit in New Zealand a Commission to inquire into the timber industry. Tlie Commissioners will sit solemnly, and will come to the conclution that the timber merchant of New Zealand is a poor person who is hehg badly dealt with, that the few sticks of IMi-gon pine coining from the I'ugct Sounds country (where a million million cubic feel is but as a drop in the ocean) is a wicked blow at the suffering Xew Zealand sawiuiller. The Commission will cost a lot n( money, money that could with advantage be spent on roads and bridges.

It is rumoured that because of the si long representation!! made in tlio country Press certain liovcrnmcnl departments tliiit have come under criticism lately arc to bo immediately dealt with. For instance, that absurd' monstrosity the Tourist Department, with the departure of its chief luminary to London. is to be divided up among working departments. It is interesting to observe the method of doing business followed by this department, the existence of which is excused on the ground llmt each tourist spends trill in the country —a weird basis for the conclusion of] a first standard political economist. Here conies a letter to the department. M:iv-1 1 be i| is (he only letter for the (lav. A I I junior clerk receives it. Ife shows' (hat j he has done so. mid pa-ses it to a clerk I senior in rank. This clerk probable l files it and sends it lo another clerk, i

ISy devious routes it gets to a tvpisto, and so to the cliief clerk, who initials it or signs it, and nobody ever hoars anything move nhnui it—\v"m'oh doesn't matter in the slightest degree, But the marvels of the Tourist Department are shown when a letter is being unsworn!. A rough draft is made, and it goes through the hands of at least six "persons before it is finally signed and given to the person whose duty it is to wear his soul out in an occasional struggle to carry the result of six clerks' workto the post oll'iec. The. clerks and secretaries and lypisto- and messengers necessary to get that useless letter despatched to a £sfl tourist in America, or elsewhere get anything from £2 to ,CS per week for doing nothing that matters. The point is, of course, that a lawyer's clerk, or a merchant's clerk, or anyliody else's clerk, earning the wages of the junior clerk who first started the letter going, could do the work of the whole bunch. The same is true of the Labour Department, the Defence Department, some of the Treasury officials, anil the Health and other departments. Again niouey could be saved in deal-

iiig with Government vouchers. The, man who attaches his signature to one\ of these documents for the iirsl limel is, ilo doubt, surprised at the number of signatures ami initials covering the voucher. Out of cunosilv we recently! totalled up the signatured and initials I ou a voucher presented to us. They I •lumbered nine. This meant that the voucher passed through nine different [Kiirs of hands. Now, presuming mat itl took each official five minutes—a low estimate—to examine the voucher, we have forty-five minutes. At 2s an hour the examination of this particular voucher cost the country Is (id. If trie thousands of vouchers passing t'.irougli the hands of the Government in the course of a year are dealt within the same way, it means that a tidy sum is annually wasted. No commercial

house, run on proper business lines, would dream of wasting so much time and money over a voucher, which would he cheeked by a couple of clerks at the most and put through accordingly. Tins, of course, is only a small matter, nut it all'ects a big principle, and that is the need for conducting the whole of the departments of State on economical and business lines, obtaining—as the private man must obtain, if he wants lo he successful—the value of a pound for the expenditure of twenty shillings. Happily, the present Ministers are exhibiting a disposition to make themselves llinroiiglilv conversant with the affairs and.working of their departments, which could hardlv he said of some of our firs I Ministers, and it is to be hoped that as a result of their investigations the prun- | ing kniie will be applied, and that promptly, wherever it is found necessary The country can no more a fiord to'have its departments overmanned than it can a luxury like a Timlier Commission.