H.—34

14

because of their ability; while other Departments where the work is rapidly increasing find a great difficulty in getting suitable men. In many Departments, too, there is a tendency to keep the officers, especially a number of the younger men, tied year after year at the one class of work, instead of adopting the usual business practice of putting them through,as many different classes of work as possible, so that they may become capable all-round men, fit to take up almost any class of work that offers. The result of keeping young men on one class of work is that they do not get the all-round training that they should, and which should be easily obtainable in a large concern like the Public Service. History of Service. Appointments to the Public Service are now governed by the Public Service Classification and Superannuation Act, 1908, and its amendments, and the Civil Service Act, 1908, and its amendments; but the following is the history of the methods of appointment: The first Act to govern these was the Civil Service Act, 1866. This provided that cadets were to be appointed after passing certain examinations. It also gave power to the Government of the day to make special appointments of people outside the Service for any vacancy that occurred. After some unimportant amendments in 1871 and 1878, an Act known as the Civil Service Reform Act was passed in 1886. This provided for entry into the Civil Service by competitive examination, and practically put a stop to all outside appointments. An amendment to this Act was passed, however, a year later, in 1887, which gave the Government of the day power to appoint persons for any temporary service without any restriction as to removal, or time for which they were to be employed, and also to reappoint retired Civil Servants seeking re-employment. This Act of 1886, with its amendment of 1887, practically ruled appointments to the Service for many years. In 1900 an Act called the Civil Service Examination Act was passed which set forth examinations that cadets entering the Service had to pass, and, amongst other things, made it a condition that no officer entering as a cadet could get beyond £200 a year until he had passed the Senior Civil Service or other equivalent examination. During the " nineties " and the first five years or so of the present century a very large number of appointments were made under the clauses of the 1887 Act dealing with temporary employment. Numerous positions, many of them being responsible ones, were filled by these temporary hands. The temporary hands, however, received their periodical increments of pay in the same way as those officers who joined as cadets, with this difference—that the temporary hands could be paid any salary that their work was considered to be worth, although they had passed no examinations whatever; whereas those officers who had entered as cadets and who had passed the Junior Civil Service Examination, but not the Senior Civil Service Examination or its equivalent, could not get beyond £200 a year. This state of affairs continued until 1907, when the Public Service Classification and Superannuation Act was passed. Under this Act all those officers who had been employed as temporary hands, but who had remained on permanently, were made permanent members of the Public Service, provided that they had been employed continuously for not less than five years; and it was also provided that all those who had been employed for less than five years would become permanent members of the Public Service when they had completed five years' service. The position, therefore, under this Act was that all those officers who had been put on originally as temporary hands, and who had come in, as the officers of the Service call it, by the " back door," were put in the way of becoming permanent officers of the Service on exactly the same footing as those officers who came in after passing the Junior Civil Service Examination, or, as the officers of the Service call it, by the " front door." Those, however, who were appointed as temporary hands had this advantage over those who came in by examination —they could rise to any position without passing any examination, whereas those who came in by passing the Junior Civil Service Examination could only get positions exceeding £200 a year after passing an