The Passing Show: The pace-makers (1962)

The Passing Show Column from the August 1962 issue of the Socialist Standard

The pace-makers

The present uproar among those employed in the “public sector”—nurses, teachers, civil servants, and so on—at the fact that they are the chief sufferers from the Government’s pay policy, is particularly interesting to those who remember what the Labour Party and reformers generally used to say on this subject. It was once a settled belief among left-wingers that any industry or service run by the State or by a municipality would give its workers better conditions than any similar private industry or service, and that private employers would have to improve the wages and conditions they offered in order to keep their workers. So that the nationalisation of an industry would not only benefit the workers in that industry: it would benefit those in other industries as well. See, for example, Bernard Shaw in The Transition to Social Democracy, reprinted in his Essays in Fabian Socialism:

“At the very outset of the new extension of municipal industries, the question of wage will arise. A minimum wage must be fixed . . . The worst sort of sweaters will find that if they are to keep their ‘hands’, they must treat them at least as well as the municipality.”

And so forth. When these arguments were fashionable, Socialists were pointing out that since the State, and the municipalities, and the State boards, were and could only be committees representing the general interests of the capitalist class, it was useless to hope that they would give any “better wages and conditions than individual capitalists. And judging by the recent agitation among “public sector ” employees, it seems that not only are those employed by the State and its agencies no better treated than similar workers in private employ—they are actually falling behind in wages and conditions.

But no doubt the nationalizers will still be trotting out their “better wages” arguments for years to come.

Strike in Saskatchewan

When we say that all workers by hand or brain have fundamentally the same interests, we are told that white-collar and professional workers are somehow quite different from manual workers— for example, doctors and the rest would never strike. This theory was never in accord with the facts—doctors and nurses have gone on strike more than once in Continental countries in recent years, and they threatened to strike, and nearly did strike, in this country on the introduction of the National Health Service. Now, of course, the theory has been swept away finally by the events in Saskatchewan. There the great majority of doctors have gone on strike against the Government’s attempt to introduce a medical service having some points in common with the British system. What matters here is not whether one sympathizes with this particular strike (we emphatically do not), but the simple fact that the strike has happened and has continued several weeks. Doctors, in fact, are workers just like the rest of us. In their struggles over conditions of employment they can and do use such working-class weapons as strike action even, as in this case, for the wrong reasons.

Cruel and violent

As a judge recently sentenced a man of twenty to five years’ imprisonment, and other youths to shorter terms, for wounding with intent to cause grievous bodily harm, he is reported to have said: “The iron bars and bottles and other weapons with which some of you were armed show how cruel and violent human beings can become.”

Well, well. There is news for the judge.

Human beings can become even more cruel and violent than that.

An iron bar can kill a man. A high-explosive bomb can kill a thousand. An atom bomb can kill a hundred thousand. And the latest H-bombs, we are told, can kill several millions.

But for these large-scale killings, no one is put in the dock. Violence is only deplored when it is not in the interests of the ruling class.

Yet if five years’ jail is the fit sentence for injuring one or two other men, what sentence can the workers pass on the capitalist system?

The only possible sentence is total abolition.

Top people

A new book Anatomy of Britain, by Anthony Sampson, gives several indications of the wealth of Britain’s upper class. On the distribution of wealth, he says :

“One recent survey has thrown light on capital wealth. Lydall and Tipping, writing in the Bulletin of the Oxford Institute of Statistics in 1961, estimated that the top one per cent of British adults owned 43 per cent of total net capital—whereas in America (in 1954) the top one per cent owned only 24 per cent of personal wealth. The authors estimated that 20,000 people owned more than £100,000, and that their average holding was £250,000. (While at the bottom there are 16 million people with less than £100 each, and an average of £50.)”

Mr. Sampson quotes the Ministry of Labour, I960, figures that 30,000 men and 275,000 women are in private domestic service, among whom (according to one domestic agency) there are 600 butlers. He goes on to quote an estimate of “the cost of service in a well-appointed household”:

Butler:                                       £500

Two footman at £350:               £700

Odd man:                                  £250

Head housemaid:                      £300

Two housemaids at £250:         £500

Cook:                                        £400

Kitchenmaid:                            £250

Lady’s maid:                             £300

Chauffeur (non-resident):         £650

Three daily helps at £150:        £450 

Total:                                      £4,300

Keep (residents only):           £2,000

Total:                                      £6,300

If only someone would mention these figures to the Labour Party leaders, they might stop talking about the “social revolution” they are supposed to have put through after the war.

Alwyn Edgar

Editorial: Big or Little Unions? (1937)

Editorial from the July 1937 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. W. J. Brown, the Secretary of the Civil Service Clerical Association, has thrown a bombshell into the Trade Union world by telling the busmen that if they decide that they cannot rectify their unsatisfactory position in the huge Transport and General Workers' Union, as disclosed by the recent strike, he will help them form a Union of their own, under their own control (News Chronicle, June 19th, 1937). When Big Unionism was all the rage after the War it was widely believed that you only had to merge a lot of small Unions into one big one to solve all problems and remove all difficulties. It has not turned out quite like that. For one thing the huge organisations have become very slow moving and cumbersome—this, maybe, is unavoidable— and they have not by any means got rid of the sectionalism of the different groups. Consequently much of their energy is absorbed in the constant effort to prevent some sections from being too belligerent, and thus draining away funds in strikes, and preventing the same or other elements from breaking away as a result of craft disputes with other sections of the membership. The moral —pointed out by Socialists at the time—is that you cannot get rid of the reactionary ideas of small bodies of workers simply by lumping them together in a large body, though it is fairly obvious that it is better to try to settle disputes between groups of workers inside a large Union than allow the employers to exploit the rivalries of a number of small, hostile Unions.

On the whole, and Mr. Brown rightly declares his preference for this solution of the problem, it is better to set about the task of democratising the organisation of the large Unions so that they can act quickly and can avoid laying themselves open to the charge that they neglect the interests of sections of the membership. The larger part of the problem is, however, the education of the whole membership, so that they realise their common interests as members of the working class, and so that they cease to think as busmen, dockers, clerks, and so on, but as men and women with the united aim of resisting the pressure of the capitalist class, and of working for the abolition of the capitalist system.

This much can be said for Mr. Brown, though we do not like his politics, that in his own Union of many Civil Service grades he has never been accused of lack of aggression in his attitude to their employer, the Treasury and Government, or of neglecting the interests of sections of his own membership. On the other hand, he has been charged by other bodies of Civil Servants with showing little regard for the interests of grades outside the ranks of his own Association. To which he could, no doubt, reply that that is inevitable so long as the mass of workers are lacking in a sense of their common interest as members of the working class and, consequently, go on thinking wholly or mainly about what they hope they can get by concentrating on a narrower interest.

One thing is quite certain. Mere breakaway Unions solve nothing. If the formation of big Unions did not do much to alter the outlook of the members, merely splitting them up again will do less. The need both in the big and the little Unions is for more class-consciousness and more appreciation of the necessity of the members themselves keeping full control over policy.

Blogger's Notes: 

See the following article from the same issue of the Socialist Standard, 'The ’Bus Strike—and After', for more background on the 'bus workers and their union, the TGWU.

Beneath this editorial was the following notice.

Trade Union Branches 

The Socialist Party of Great Britain is prepared to consider applications from Trade Union and other organisations for a representative to state the case for Socialism. Travelling expenses only are required.

Civil Servants and Bonus Cuts. (1931)

From the May 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

During and after the recent Great War, Civil Servants found that the wages and salaries paid to them as employees of the State were not, owing to the general rise in prices, sufficient to maintain them and their families in the same comfort they had been accustomed to. After much agitation and negotiations with the authorities, an agreement was entered into in 1920, by which an addition was made to the prewar scales of pay according to the increased cost of living then existing. The bonus was to be increased or reduced as the cost of living should further rise or fall.

At the present time the cost of living is computed to be 52 per cent. over that of 1914.

Under the agreement the full bonus is only given on rates of par not greater than 35s. per week. Rates in excess of that sum carry a bonus which is reduced proportionately as pay advances above 35s., so that, in these cases, the actual addition to pre-war rates varies from 46 per cent. to 16 per cent. on the higher scales of pay.

Civil Servants in receipt of basic pay exceeding 35s. weekly, and consequently diminishing bonus, therefore claim, not unreasonably, that their standard of living has been considerably lowered.

Considerable notice has been given in the daily press to the question and to the efforts of Civil Servants and of W. J. Brown, Labour M.P. for West Wolverhampton, to bring pressure to bear on the Government to suspend the operation of the agreement in reducing pay at the present time, but without success. A saving of three million pounds per annum, in the wages of Civil Servants is indicated.

Civil Servants have been pleased by the quite unusual notice of the press given to their demands, which had not hitherto been so prominently brought before the public. It is probable that this is not so much due to sympathy with the efforts put forth, as to the impression desired to be made on other sections of the workers whose pay is at present the object of attack by the master class, such as school teachers, bank employees, and others.

The facts of the situation should be closely considered by Civil Servants. On the whole, as is also the case with school teachers and similar employees, they are reluctant to identify themselves with the working class, regarding; themselves as superior and holding themselves aloof as forming part of a middle class. The fiction of a middle class is encouraged by the capitalist class in order that this aloofness may keep them politically separate from the working class. The very fact that the current discontent in their ranks is based upon the inadequate remuneration given to them in return for the work performed, is plain proof that they are dependent upon their earnings for their maintenance. This condition of society is essentially one that puts its seal upon the working class who, having no means of living of their own, must sell their labour power to an employer in order to obtain the means of living, the employer in this instance being the State.

The remuneration they receive is based upon the necessary cost of their maintenance as Civil Servants and the rearing of a family in like circumstances. Under the present capitalist system of society there is always a tendency to depress their standard of living to a minimum. This it is from which they are now suffering. As in outside working class ranks they have been compelled to form their unions in order to maintain and forward their interests, as opposed to the attempts of their employer, the State, to lower their status and standard of living.

What is here pointed out should help Civil Servants to realise their position in Society, and also that, in order to reap the full benefit of their labour, they should unite with ail other sections of the working-class to overthrow the capitalism system and to establish the Socialist Commonwealth.

F. J. H.

Editorial: London County Council, Ltd. (1907)

Editorial from the February 1907 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Independent Labour Party, who have long supported the Liberals and Progressives on the L.C.C., have issued a manifesto on the coming elections, and have in consequence been repudiated by their friends. It is rather unkind, after the way in which the I.L.P. have worked for and supported the L.C.C. capitalist majority, for the latter, in fear of the prospective Progressive rout, to turn upon and rend their faithful allies. But so it is. The Progressive organ, The Daily Chronicle, in a leading article on the “I.L.P. Bogey,” insists in regard to their manifesto that “the document in question is issued by the I.L.P. on its own account. The Progressive Party have nothing to do with it whatever.” The Progressive organ dismisses the I.L.P. municipal milk proposal as “unnecessary, impracticable and undesirable.” It also says: “One of the Progressive leaders, Sir Edwin Cornwall, happens to be a large coal merchant, and he has very naturally been asked what he thinks of the proposal to municipalise the coal supply of London. He thinks it sheer nonsense, and so, we imagine, will all Progressives.” Moreover it adds that “the County Council has, for the most part, no power to do the things which the manifesto talks about. A whole series of Acts of Parliament would be required to make them possible, and there is no likelihood that the series will be forthcoming.” All of which, to say the least, is base ingratitude toward the I.L.P. For what do the proposals amount to ? Merely the extension of milk and water municipalisation—the substitution of municipal capitalism for private capitalism in certain industries—that is all. Until the working class controls, nationally and locally, the municipal services that are undertaken will only be used for the benefit of the master class, and the L.C.C. policy has been no exception to this rule. The interest of the workers has ever been sacrificed to the interest of the propertied class. Indeed, the L.C.C., far from being a model employer, is noticeably inferior to a vast number of private firms in the treatment of its workmen. The hypocrisy of the Liberal Progressives is as plain as is the futiliy of the policy of the Independent Labour Party, which mistakes municipal and state capitalism for Socialism.

The Quintessence of Socialism.

There are quite a number of people in this country who call themselves Socialists because they believe in the municipalisation or nationalisation of various things. And these good people appear to be oblivious of the fact that the very essence of Socialism is the control of wealth production and distribution by the wealth producers. It is obvious that it a number of thieves are banded together they are not likely to seek less booty, or seek it less effectively, than when isolated ; so, therefore, the capitalist class, who control the national and local administrative bodies, are not likely to seek less profit, or to seek it less effectively, when their businesses come under their collective control than when they control them individually. The end and aim of a capitalist is profit, whether it comes as interest on Metropolitan Water Board bonds or as dividend on shares in the A.B.C.; and the ruling class will not, indeed, undertake municipal or national services at all unless their interests are thereby served and their general profits increased. An industry taken over by the capitalist State, though it may be also of advantage, in other respects, means that more wealth is thereby to be wrung from the workers. The sweating in government factories, the low wages in the Post Office that enable over £4,000,000 to go in relief of capitalist taxation, are an earnest of what State capitalism means. Nationalised industries can only become Socialistic, and can only be of real benefit to the workers, when the working class has obtained control of the administrative machinery. It is therefore of the utmost importance that the political movement of the workers place itself firmly on the basis of the class struggle. Indeed, all who do not recognise this fact, whatever they may call themselves, are emphatically not Socialists, for mere nationalisation, we repeat, is not Socialism at all.

A Nation of Serfs.

Another aspect of the matter that is not often taken note of is the restriction of political liberty which often goes with the nationalisation of a branch of industry. Lord Selborne’s circular (which has been endorsed by Lord Elgin) is a case in point—the railway servants in the Transvaal being forbidden to take active part in the elections there. Railway men in this country who have clamoured for nationalisation, have profound misgivings when they see the Liberal Government cripple the political activity of government railway workers. Mr. Winston Churchill has been approached by them on the matter, but he is inexorable and has said : “It has long been held to be undesirable that regular government servants should conspicuously take sides in party politics, and in consequence the railway servants in both the neighbouring self-governing colonies of Natal and the Cape are expressly forbidden to do so.” Prominent members of the present government have in the past expressed themselves strongly against the exercise of the vote by municipal employees and civil servants. This is, indeed, no new policy. The postal servants have long been expressly forbidden to take active part in politics. Supporters of the existing regime can, indeed, be brutally frank on this matter when it suits them. In a letter to the Daily Chronicle recently, Mr. Arnold White said in praise of the Government, that it had shown that efficiency was not incompatible with economy by its naval policy in abandoning obsolete dockyards, etc., and in “discharging redundant workmen who use their votes to get higher pay.”

The italics are ours.

Though government servants are not, as yet, deprived of the vote, its value is seriously lessened by the restriction of political action. The significance of this matter may be judged from a consideration of its probable effect on the political movement of the working class if all were government servants and forbidden to take sides in political affairs. The political organisation of the workers would be rendered practically impossible, their emancipation would be retarded, and the movement driven underground. The mere nationalisation of an industry gives the ruling class greater power over the workers, and, to take the railways as an example, instead of nationalisation bringing the workers a step near to the control of industry, it is likely to find them with their political wings clipped, and even more at the mercy of capitalism than before. Instead of helping to strengthen the chains which bind them, the workers should at last realise the futility of anything short of working-class supremacy.

More Confusion. (1906)

From the April 1906 issue of the Socialist Standard

We have before us a copy of the Agenda for the Eleventh Annual Meeting of the United Government Workers’ Federation, which was held on the 15th and 16th of March: a document that illustrates very clearly the confusion existing in the minds of the workers as to the class struggle.

The Agenda consists of about 50 Resolutions on Education—these are tucked away at the bottom of the Agenda and consist of something less than the familiar list of pious aspirations on the subject usually voiced at the Trades Union Congress. The Executive put forward a motion congratulating local organisations on the return of Messrs. Crooks, Bowerman and Jenkins and regretting the failure of Messrs. Quelch and Saunders. And another congratulating the Labour M.P.’s and asking them to ballot for motions for bringing the question of improving the position of State employees before the House of Commons.

Nearly all the rest of the Agenda consists of Resolutions “calling on” “urging,” “respectfully urging,” “requesting,” . . the Government to concede some special points interesting one or other of the local organisations. These or similar motions have doubtless been passed hundreds of times before by working class assemblies with exactly the same result—just nothing at all. How much longer will the workers continue to beg cringingly, each little section for itself, instead of boldly standing up as a class and taking what is their own.

A. R. V. M.

Answers to Correspondents. (1930)

Letters to the Editors from the December 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

W. Jennings (Harringay).

If you or the anonymous member of the Manchester Reform Club will give some evidence (as distinct from a mere unsupported assertion), that the workers “are immeasurably more comfortable than in the most prosperous pre-war times,” we shall be prepared to consider it.

* * *

Taxes and the smallholder.

A correspondent asks if smallholders would be better off if taxes were lowered by the abolition of unemployment pay. Small scale producers in general are at a disadvantage because small-scale production is uneconomic, because they pay heavily for transport, and because they are in competition with big and powerful rivals. If the total amount of taxes were reduced it does not follow that those who control the Government would pass on the benefit to smallholders; and if they did it does not follow that the smallholder would actually benefit. The conditions might very well permit the land owners to put up the rent. Moreover, a lowering or abolition of unemployment pay might well increase the number of those trying to make a living as smallholders and thus make competition among them still keener. In U.S.A. where there is no unemployment pay, millions of small farmers have been squeezed out of business since the war.

* * *

The pay of civil servants.

A correspondent writes to criticise our statement in the September issue that the pay of the various grades of civil servants is no better than the pay of outside workers. To support his point he compares the pay of a policeman with that of a watchman, and the pay of an L.C.C. school teacher with that of a private governess. Our correspondent makes the error of not comparing like with like, and the comparisons therefore have no point. If he imagines that his comparisons are sound will he tell us of any police force recruited from watchmen, and any education authority which appoints unqualified governesses as its teachers?

We did not say that civil servants are paid less than outside workers (although incidentally the higher grades are paid less in many cases than comparable grades outside).

Our correspondent objects to our comparison between the Post Office staff and the London Underground Railway staff, on the ground that the latter “prides itself on the high wages it pays.” The objection is pointless. In the first place the Post Office also prides itself on its high wages, and in the second place every firm of any size and standing makes the same claim.

We would emphasise that although our correspondent challenges our statement he is unable to give a single instance which will support his assertion that civil servants are “an aristocracy among the working class.” The illustrations which he uses break down because he gives untenable comparisons. (In passing it may be mentioned that neither Teachers nor Policemen are civil servants in the proper meaning of the term.)

We do not deny that the ruling class would, if they thought necessary, protect their interests by paying their state servants generously. The facts, however, bear out our view that in practice the ruling class have not in general found that policy necessary. We would in conclusion return to the main point, which is that nationalisation or state capitalism does not solve any problem for the working class.

Editorial Committee.

Answers to Correspondents: The Pay of Civil Servants. (1930)

Letters to the Editors from the November 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

The Pay of Civil Servants.

If the correspondent who wrote about the pay of teachers and civil servants will give his name and address (not necessarily for publication) we will reply to his criticism.

Editorial Committee.

* * *

C. W. Morrow.—We do not know what your views may be in the future. It is sufficient that you have not found it possible to combine Socialism with religion. To say that a Socialist has the “free-will” to be a Christian if he wants to be, is like saying that he has the “free-will” to be an anti-Socialist, which is absurd. No, Mr. MacDonald is not a Socialist. The fact that some scientific men retain, outside the province of their scientific activities, beliefs which cannot be substantiated, does not prove these beliefs to be valid.

* * *

E. Tinkler.—We suggest that you read our pamphlet, ”Socialism and Religion,” and then write to us again.

Editorial Committee.

Mr. Bromley Day by Day. (1931)

From the October 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mr. ]. Bromley, M.P., General Secretary of the Associated Society of Locomotive Engineers and Firemen, was a member of the Civil Service Royal Commission. He signed its report, published in July, recommending rates of pay which, for the lower grades, represented a reduction of about 9 per cent. on the rates ruling when the Commission began its investigation. Mr. Bromley also concurred rejecting the Post Office workers’ demand for their hours to be reduced from 48 to 40.

Early in September, Mr. Bromley was among his fellow Trade Union officials at the Trades Union Congress. On September 6th he addressed a demonstration and “ridiculed talk of equality of sacrifice as an excuse for wage cuts” (Daily Herald, September 7th.)

Two days later he seconded a resolution on the floor of the Congress demanding a maximum working week of 40 hours. (Daily Herald, September 9th.)

* * *

Do not, however, make the mistake of thinking that Mr. Bromley is not a real fighting man. A week later he made the alarming discovery that the child elected as this year’s “Railway Queen” for a carnival was the daughter of a non-Trade Unionist. Here was a really vital question, and Mr. Bromley did not fail us. Unable (or unwilling?) to stand up against his fellow-members on the Civil Service Royal Commission, Mr. Bromley, M.P., “supported by Mr. C. T. Cramp, secretary of the N.U.R., and Mr. A. J. Walkden, M.P., secretary of the Railway Clerks’ Association,” declared that he “cannot be associated with a non-unionist who, after deserting his fellows in the railway service, tries to take advantage of their work in this connection just as he has in the conditions of service which he enjoys” (The Times, September 19th). So Mr. Bromley showed Miss Patricia Eileen Annie Clark, aged 13, what Trade Union officials are made of.

What would the workers (and the employers) do without the Labour leaders ?

Letters: Civil servants (1983)

Letters to the Editors from the September 1983 issue of the Socialist Standard

Civil servants

Dear Editors

Now a regular reader, I find myself in broad agreement with your views. Particularly. I see people’s faith in the money system as being capitalism’s jugular vein. Your position on Right to Work campaigns is also sound. If this were not so, armaments production could be justified as it provides jobs.

However. I found your April article on the power of the Civil Service's permanent officials to be unconvincing. You say that "the ease with which different governments adopt different policies, and the same government goes in for U-turns, shows that government policies are not determined by the permanent officials." Well, as you have pointed out, how “different” are the policies of Labour and Conservative governments? Secondly: surely, U-turns are more likely to be precipitated by the permanent officials, who remain anonymous while government officials face the music.

A. Beckett 

Great Boughton, Chester

Reply

Mr. Beckett holds that it is the Permanent Officials who determine government policies and reversals of policies; which, he thinks, explains why there is no real difference between the policies of Tory and Labour governments.

However it is a basic error to suppose that the capitalist class is a monolithic body having only one interest, that of defending capitalism and opposing socialism, for within that general framework different groups have sectional interests, absolutely vital to themselves. These lead to conflicts fought out with all the resources at their disposal, including stirring up the workers to support one side or the other.

This aspect of capitalism was already noted by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto, 1848:

The bourgeoisie finds itself in a constant battle. At first against the aristocracy; later on with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all times with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries.

The struggle for the abolition of the Corn Laws in 1846 was not a sham fight. The factory owners wanted cheap food imports as the way to reduce wages, but the agricultural interests saw in it their own near-ruin.

Other struggles between sections with conflicting interests have been between those favouring the gold standard and those opposing it; (in America the anti-gold campaign by Eugene Debs, with his slogan “Shall mankind be crucified upon a cross of gold?” was backed by the silver mining companies); over a low pound exchange rate good for exporters and a high rate good for importers; over entry to the EEC; over Keynesian doctrines and “monetarism”; and between capitalists supporting the nationalisation of particular industries and those opposing it.

According to Mr. Beckett’s theory it was the permanent officials who made the 1945 Labour government nationalise steel; then made the Tories denationalise it; renationalised it under the 1964 Labour Government and made the Thatcher government get a mandate to denationalise all or part of it. (The Labour Party pledged itself to maintain nationalisation in its 1983 programme.)

But this is quite wrong. Labour Party demands for nationalisation all originated in resolutions passed by their conferences and embodied in election programmes. Likewise, all the Tory demands for denationalisation were, first, items in their election programmes. There can be no explanation why permanent officials should behave in this very peculiar way, giving contradictory advice to successive governments.

Of course the permanent officials have not advised governments to introduce socialism but no government has ever wanted, or would have accepted, such advice. If by chance one of them gave that advice a Tory government or a Labour government, both being firmly committed to capitalism, would get rid of that official or, as has happened in some instances when the advice ran completely counter to government policy, transfer the person concerned to a department in which they would no longer be involved in such policy questions.

Editors.

Crackpot Colonels

Dear Editors,

How is the neutralisation of state power to be made effective? In your publications, you say that with the advent of socialism, socialists will predominate throughout society, including the armed forces, which is fair enough as far as it goes. If the armed forces are for the most part socialists, then they will hardly oppose the new order.

But how will the armed forces first become socialists, in the main? Often the workers mistakenly joining the armed forces will be those who wish to preserve the existing social set up. But that’s not the point, after all, most workers, if not actually desiring the status quo. grudgingly accept it as a fact of nature, and I don’t consider that a barrier! The workers in the army etc. will be subject to more intensive indoctrination and greater isolation than the rest of us. This can only impede the spreading of socialist knowledge, so how do they become socialists? Through their families or acquaintances on the outside? Or perhaps socialists (when in sufficient numbers) will overcome their revulsion at being the boot-boys of capital, and enlist to propagate socialist ideas? Though as I understand it. being a member of the SPGB precludes membership of the armed forces (at least it will with a large socialist movement, hence aware capitalist politicians) and certainly vice versa.

Whatever the outcome, the non-socialists will be in a small minority. Fair enough, we will have abolished the state, and as military geezers are taught to obey orders, they should accept the change with no more trouble than a bit of flag-waving which most people wouldn’t particularly care for. But if there is a comparatively large anti-socialist faction remaining in the armed forces, mightn't some crackpot colonel take it into his head to attempt a disruption of the new society?

H T Muirhead

Dymock, Glos. 

(This letter has been slightly shortened — Editors.)

Reply

Let us be quite clear, that a socialist society will not submit to any efforts on the part of a minority to frustrate the will of the majority. Crackpot colonels will be suppressed with whatever persuasion, or force, is necessary.

But how will a minority be able to resist the revolutionary majority? How will they persuade people who have opted for socialism to turn back the clock to the society of war, famine, poverty, the Bomb? What point of social reference will they have, in a society without classes and class privilege? In whose interests will they advocate the abandonment of socialism?

The argument, of course, is that they will try to win their point not through persuasion but through violence. What instruments will be at hand for them to use in this? If violence is to have any hope against the wishes of the majority it must be a social effort, with popular support in its conception, organisation and carrying out. But the act of setting up socialism, by a conscious majority, will deprive it of these very essentials. The armed forces, for example, do not exist in isolation but rely in all senses on the sanction of the rest of society; deprived of that they cannot exist in any effective sense.

Workers join the armed forces for a variety of reasons; nowadays, probably because they are unable to find a job anywhere else. The armed and police forces are not peculiar in their requirement that their members act against working class interests; this happens in many other jobs as well. Although it is impossible to say why workers take up one job or another, we do know that the growth and the spread of socialist ideas affects them all; none of them are immune. The developing strength of the movement to socialism, then, will enfeeble the coercive state forces and finally the revolutionary act of establishing socialism will entail the working class taking over the state machine as the only public power of coercion. No minority will endure against that.

Editors.

Letter: The Pay of Civil Servants. (1930)

Letter to the Editors from the September 1930 issue of the Socialist Standard

A letter from a reader.

Forest Gate.

Dear Sir,

As a regular reader of the Socialist Standard I should like to take exception to the article appearing a month or two ago on “Nationalisation,” in which the low wages of various Governmental employees were quoted.

As a Socialist, I am aware of the defects of Nationalisation, but would like to point out that though some employees of the Government do very badly, some do very well.

Under the term Government I include the Local Councils of Boroughs, etc.

In the first instance we have policemen receiving, after 10 years’ service, £4 10s. wages, plus 15/6 rent aid, for a constable ; sergeants, inspectors, etc., get more; much more in the cases of the higher ranks.

Firemen, I believe, receive the same wages, less the rent aid, as it is termed.

Teachers in the Elementary Schools appear to do very well when compared with industrial workers.

Lady Teachers commence, I believe, with £3 per week, and get somewhere about £5 a week after a few years, as one instance.

School Attendance Officers as the school board man of our school days is known, start at about £4 16s., and rise to £5 5s.

Also we have Local Government Board Officers as the clerks employed by Municipal Councils term themselves, with others such as sanitary inspectors, etc., receiving in many cases anything from £4 10s. to £7 or £8 per week, coupled with three or four weeks’ holiday.

Most of the above have no more training than a skilled mechanic is required to have, and in many cases they have considerably less, but compare the wages and conditions and they are vastly different, as you already know.

I hope I am not taking up too much of your valuable space, but I am afraid I could not state my case in less words. 

In conclusion, I wish the S.P.G.B. and the Standard the best of luck in the future, and hope you will receive this letter in the spirit of helpful criticism that is intended by myself, as full facts are and must continue to be the essential feature of the S.S.

Best wishes from

“SOCIALIST.”

Reply:

Our correspondent misses the point of the article he criticises. The contention made in that article was that there is “little difference from the workers’ point of view, between State capitalism and private capitalism, whether under a Conservative or a Labour Government.”

To say, as our correspondent does, that an elementary teacher is paid more than an industrial worker, has nothing whatever to do with the question discussed. He must compare like with like; for example, compare the pay of industrial workers in the Government service with the pay of industrial workers outside. If he does he will find that our contention is correct.

But the whole question is easily settled by the statements of Civil Service authorities themselves. The Civil Service Industrial Court which fixes the pay of civil servants has laid it down when dealing with lower grade civil servants that

“the broad principle which should be followed in determining the rates of wages of Post Office servants, is that of the maintenance of a fair relativity as between their wages and those in outside industries as a whole.”

The Industrial Court takes into account the civil servant pension rights and any other benefits he may receive, and fixes his cash wage accordingly.

But whereas the Civil Service bases the pay of lower grades on the rates of pay in comparable occupations outside, the higher grades in the Civil Service are definitely paid less than the rates of pay in comparable occupations outside. This has long been a complaint of the grades concerned. In evidence given at the Royal Commission on the Civil Service (now sitting), Sir Evelyn Murray, Secretary of the Post Office, was asked if the Post Office pay as much in their higher grades as is paid outside, and replied :—

“I do not think that is a principle that the Government have ever accepted as regards the higher grades of the service.” (See Minutes of Evidence. Question 4618.)

—Editorial Committee

Machines in Office. A Call to Clerical Workers. (1931)

From the April 1931 issue of the Socialist Standard

Office staffs in all branches of commerce and industry are now finding themselves faced with reductions in pay. In nearly every instance the employers, when “informing” the staff of salary revisions (as the General Manager of the Midland Bank told the Royal Commission on the Civil Service, the Bank Board does not discuss wages with the staff, it “informs them of its decision”), give the excuse that the reductions are only reasonable adjustments to a lower cost of living, so that the real standard of salaries is not being impaired. Clerical workers, while far from satisfied that a reduced salary in 1931 will go as far as a larger salary in 1929, with the docility for which they are infamous, and with a fatalistic resignation, assume that perhaps there has to be a reduction in their pay it trade is to improve. Does it ever occur to them to consider whether the “reduction-to-meet-the-fall-in-prices” sauce that is served for the goose, salaries, is also served for the gander, dividends ? In the world of banking, at any rate, it is not.

Recently there has been much talk of the need to reduce the pay of bank clerks “in order to meet changed conditions.” The lead has been taken by the Midland Bank, Ltd., which has revised its scales of pay for new entrants. Formerly a clerk in London after ten years’ service received £240 a year if he was on the maximum scale. By the fifteenth year his pay had risen automatically to £370. Beyond that point further increases were at the discretion of the directors. Under the new scale a new entrant will receive, at the most, only £205 after ten years, and at this point automatic rises cease. Other banks are following suit.

Now what about dividends? Here directors and their Press are strangely silent about falling costs of living. All of the “Big Five” banks (except Lloyds, which reduced dividends from 16 ⅔ per cent. to 15 per cent.) paid the same dividend in 1930 as in 1929. But, according to Mr. McKenna, of the Midland Bank, the purchasing power of money in 1930 was 19 per cent. higher than in 1929, owing to the fall in prices. From which it follows that the shareholders received a 19 per cent. increase in real dividends in 1930, and even Lloyds’ shareholders were 2 per cent. better off than in the previous year. To this maintenance of dividends, side by side with a reduction in salaries to meet lower prices, the remark of Sir Frederick Lewis, Bt., when proposing a hearty vole of thanks to the staff of Barclays Bank, comes as a nicely ironic pendant. Sir Frederick, who, by the way, manages to direct the affairs of a mere 32 companies, was filled with love and admiration for the staff, but unfortunately “the only method they had of recording their appreciation was the passing of the resolution he had the honour to propose” (Times, January 21st, 1931). Needless to say, as votes of thanks, be they never so hearty, do not cut into profits, the shareholders passed the vote with enthusiasm.

On the face of it, the reduction in pay of clerical workers may look like an adjustment to lower price levels, as the employers say that it is. In fact, it is something much more important. It is an attack on standards of living and a revelation of a weakening in bargaining power of the workers. It is the first of the consequences of the mechanisation of office work that has been proceeding apace since the end of the war. Machines in offices are producing the same results as are produced by machines in industry. Unemployment, formerly of fairly small proportions so far as clerical workers were concerned, is increasing and wages are falling. Before the war the typewriter was the chief piece of office machinery. To-day it is only one of many. Calculating machines, ledger posting machines, addressographs, mechanical sorters, copying machines, automatic switchboards are but a few of the mechanical devices that are supplanting labour in offices and, by simplifying processes, increasing competition. Before the calculating machine was used, a certain proficiency in arithmetic was essential for a clerk ; now it is not at all necessary. Consequently, employers are able to recruit their staff from a lower educational grade, and to utilise women instead of men. In other words, the supply of clerical workers is being extended while the demand is diminishing. It is this that leads to increased unemployment and enables attacks on wage standards to be successfully launched. The talk of reducing pay in order to help trade recovery is a mere subterfuge. Clerical workers should not blind themselves to the real economic forces at work. As was stated by a writer in the Journal of the Institute of Bankers in Ireland (October, 19291, the changes resulting from the introduction of machines into offices are “analogous in some respects to the industrial revolution of a century ago.” According to this writer, office machines give three times the output possible by hand, with less and cheaper labour. Other conclusive evidence to this same effect is abundant. Mr. H. L. Rouse, Assistant Chief Accountant of the Midland Bank, Ltd., wrote in The Banker (November, 1930) : “Two ledger posting machines should enable two male clerks 10 be released (!) and should necessitate the engagement of one new female operator.” In a debate reported in the Journal of the Institute of Bankers (January, 1930), Mr. Rouse, discussing the installation of machinery at 73 branches of the Midland, said : “The net saving of salary to these branches is approximately £85,000 per annum against a capital outlay of £150,000; but as the life of these machines may be fairly regarded as ten years, it is obvious that the economy effected is a very substantial one.”

He went on to point out that at these branches 311 men were withdrawn consequent on the introduction of the machines, and 86 women engaged, and that new entrants to the bank had been considerably curtailed, so that juniors already in the service would have to mark time for a period until the process of mechanisation had reached its economic limit. Mr. F. Hyde, General Manager of the Midland Bank, told the Civil Service Royal Commission, on Monday, February 23rd, 1931, that the machines had enabled his bank to cut down their intake of young male clerks from between 400 and 500 a year to about 200 a year.

It is interesting, in passing, to notice that the same problem arose in the Post Office Saving’s Bank before it arose in the non-Government banks. It is claimed by high Savings Bank officials that the Post Office led the way in introducing machines and is already saving £40,000 a year by employing lower-paid women machine operators in place of men clerks. One witness at the Civil Service Commission, Sir Alfred Woodgate, went so far as to suggest the replacement of the great bulk of men clerks in the Civil Service by women at lower pay.

This general tendency to employ women on machine operating intensifies the downward tendency of wages. The male clerical worker hopes to rise to a certain salary, say, in 15 years, and to receive at least that salary for the rest of his working life, say for 30 years. But women workers’ salaries do not rise to the same levels, and as women retire earlier than men, they receive the highest rates of pay in fewer instances and for a shorter period. On this point Mr. Rouse, in the debate already referred to, was quite definite, his evidence being to the effect that “the female staff are more subject to change than the male staff; in fact, 15 per cent. to 20 per cent. of the females resign every year and are replaced by new entrants at the lowest salary.”

This is sufficient to show how machinery causes workers to be dismissed, the substitution of cheaper labour, and a contraction in the demand for labour.

The introduction of mechanical appliances has already gone far, but the process is only in its infancy. As the City Editor of The Times states : “The mechanisation of banking is likely to increase considerably during the next few years in order to reduce labour costs” (Times, December 22nd, 1930). This remark can safely be extended to apply to all other branches of clerical employment.

So far as Socialists are concerned, we have dealt with this mechanisation of clerical work because it bears out two points we have always made.

Firstly, it shows that, under capitalism, machines arc additional weapons in the hands of the employers, creating unemployment and lowering wages. Secondly, clerical workers must ultimately realise that they are not a class apart in society, a “middle class,” but that, economically considered, their position is identical with that of the so-called manual workers. They are, like navvies, dependent for their living on being able to sell their labour-power. They are propertyless individuals working for wages for the benefit of the property-owning-class. They are members of the working class. Until they act politically in the light of that fact, they will continue to find that machinery is of no benefit to them.

“BANK CLERK”

Editorial: The Post Office Workers and the Trade Disputes Act (1943)

Editorial from the September 1943 issue of the Socialist Standard

By the time these words are in print the question of the affiliation of the Post Office Workers’ Union to the Trades Union Congress will probably have been settled temporarily—by being shelved; but the consequences of the campaign will not end there. The Post Office workers have done good work by bringing the issue to the fore, and have made it certain that the whole question of the 1927 Trade Disputes Act will be a live issue after the war, even if, in the meantime, the Government makes or promises to make some concession over the single issue of the affiliation of lower grade Civil Service unions to the T.U.C.

The 1927 Act was ostensibly introduced because in 1920 some millions of workers came out on strike to help the miners. Actually its causes went much further back than that. The employing class were badly frightened by what happened in 1926, but some at least of them realised that that spontaneous demonstration was a symptom of a slow change that was taking place in the outlook of the workers. The workers were gradually becoming more conscious of the fact that as a class, irrespective of occupation, they have a common interest, to be expressed politically as well as industrially, against the employing class. Mr. Churchill, at that time Chancellor of the Exchequer, put it as follows :

“The development of trade unionism, particularly in the present century and particularly in the last decade, has produced a very great change in the situation. We have seen the trade unions become great political factors, actively engaged in party politics, in endeavouring to secure the return to Parliament or to office of one particular set of politicians, and to oppose the interests of the others.” (Quoted in Parliamentary Report May 30, 1927, col. 55.)

The 1927 Act sought to hinder or undo this development by making any strike (or lock-out) illegal “if it has any object other than or in addition to the furtherance of a trade dispute within the trade or industry in which the strikers are engaged, and is a strike designed or calculated to coerce the Government either directly or by inflicting hardship upon the community.”

The Act curtailed the legal right of picketing, made it necessary for trade unionists to give individual consent, in writing, before contributions to the political fund could be collected from them, forbad Local Authorities to make compulsory Union membership a condition of employment, and forbad Civil Service Unions to have outside trade union or political affiliations or to have political objects.

While the employing class and their instrument, the Tory Party, may be induced to make some concession to Civil Service Unions, they will do so with understandable reluctance. They know quite well that to concede something now on one clause of the Act will only be followed by demands for concessions on other clauses, and if they have to give way on the whole Act, that will be a definite set-back for them. Actually Civil Service unions in this country are more restricted than in the U.S.A. or the British Dominions. Generally speaking, the unions there can and do affiliate with outside trade unions, support political parties and affiliate with the International Postal Workers’ trade union movement, so that the Tories cannot argue that concession to the Civil Service unions is impracticable in itself.

The Sanctity of the Law

The campaign has had its interesting features. For 16 years the Civil Service Unions and the T.U.C. have protested against the 1927 Act, but nobody took any notice. All they got from the late Mr. Neville Chamberlain early in the war was a sort of promise that if they behaved themselves the matter might be considered after victory. Then the Post Office workers decided to carry on in defiance of the law. With startling suddenness the Press and the politicians woke up and broke into an almost unanimous chorus of protest. “Perhaps there is a case for changing the law,” they said— though they had usually been silent about it hitherto—”but no Government can ignore, or act under, a threat of law-breaking. This is Fascism, not democracy.”

(It may be remarked here that the Post Office workers did not take the only possible line. They could have tried quietly encroaching on the Act on the assumption that the Government, being fully occupied with the war, might ignore it.)

The Government, which includes three Labour Members, Messrs. Bevin, Attlee and Morrison, then issued a pompous warning to Post Office workers that if they persisted they would cease to be eligible for employment as established (i.e., permanent and pensionable) Civil Servants.

This talk about democracy and law-breaking sounds rather unconvincing in the light of certain facts. First, it is worth remembering that it was in 1927, when the Act was passed, that Mr. Churchill was praising Italian Fascism, and leading Fascist newspapers were returning the compliment by claiming that the Act was on Fascist lines. It should also be recalled that some of the leading members of the 1927 Tory Government had themselves in the past been active preachers and organisers of defiance against the Government. Lord Birkenhead and Sir William Joynson-Hicks were among those responsible for the 1927 Act, who had distinguished themselves by backing the Ulster preparations for rebellion (with German arms) against the Liberal Government of 1912-14 on the issue of Irish Home Rule. It was Lord Birkenhead who had said (January 22, 1912, at Liverpool) : “There is no length to which Ulster will not be entitled to go—however desperate or unconstitutional—in carrying the quarrel,” and again (at Ballyclare on September 20, 1913), “we shall stand side by side with you, refusing to recognise any law, and prepared with you to risk the collapse of the whole body politic to prevent this monstrous crime.”

The above quotations are taken from a leaflet issued by the Labour Party and T.U.C. in 1927. At that time Mr. Ernest Bevin was even talking of defying the law himself. In a speech at a Trade Union Conference called to oppose the 1927 Bill he touched on the possibility of members of his Union being ordered by the Courts to work with blacklegs, and said, “I am afraid that all the illegality and all the decisions would not influence us very much.”

Just as the poachers of 1912 turned into gamekeepers in 1927, so it seems that Messrs. Bevin, Attlee and Morrison have had their heads turned in 1943. The curious feature about this is that Mr. Attlee long ago knew and wrote about what happens in such a situation as the present one. His present plea is that he and the other Labour members are in the Government to fight foreign Fascism and must stand by the Government and see the law is enforced. In 1937, in “The Labour Party in Perspective,” he discussed what the Labour Party ought to do about coalitions to fight Fascism, and strongly urged that the Labour Party ought not to support Capitalist Governments. This is what he wrote :

“There are those who, realising the danger of menace of the Fascist Powers, tend to take up an attitude of supporting a Capitalist Government at home as the least of two evils. They tend to under-estimate the reality of the struggle between Capitalism and Socialism, and to magnify the differences between democratic Capitalist States and Fascist States. The danger of this attitude is that in fighting foreign Fascism they may encourage the subtle introduction of Fascism at home. (Labour Party in Perspective, p. 220.)

When the Labour members entered the Government in 1940, Mr. Attlee gave as one of the reasons, “To maintain the unity of the nation.” It should by now be apparent to Mr. Attlee that by taking on joint responsibility with Tories and Liberals for running Capitalism at war he has put himself in the position of directly opposing a. demand made by the Trade Unions and hitherto supported by himself. In other words, he is dividing himself from the trade union movement in the name of “national unity.” Thus does the reality of the class struggle break through. All of which points unmistakeably to the acute struggles which will up on the home front after the war ends, when the capitalist politicians—now stridently calling for liberty in foreign parts—will return to the old job of keeping the workers in subjection at home. Even members of the Labour Party who favoured the entry of their leaders into the National Government in 1940 may wonder why they did not have the foresight to insist beforehand on explicit concessions from the Tories, including legislation to amend the 1927 Act.

One lesson the incident drives home once more is the certainty that those who control the political machinery, the Government, can withstand and suppress efforts by trade unions or others to force their hand. The road to emancipation for the workers lies through gaining control of the political machinery.

Civil Service Pay (1960)

From the July 1960 issue of the Socialist Standard

In the course of years quite a number of Royal Commissions and Committees of Inquiry have made recommendations about civil service pay and the principles by which it should be fixed. The last was the Civil Service Royal Commission of 1953-1955, which laid down guidance for fixing the pay of Post Office workers and other civil servants on the basis of “fair comparison” with the pay of outside workers doing comparable work. Several civil service unions have already voiced disappointment with the results of “fair comparison." They were expecting more than they have got, probably because they were counting on rates of pay as high as the top rates in outside occupations. The Royal Commission quite definitely rejected that relationship: civil service pay, they said, should be neither the highest nor the lowest for a particular job, but should be somewhere round the middle level. No government or committee of inquiry has ever accepted the principle that the 'Government should pay more “to set an example.”

Simultaneously with arguments about civil service pay and the pay of workers on the railways and in other nationalised industries, the Labour Party is arguing with itself about nationalisation, but nobody now thinks of linking up the two questions of civil service pay and nationalisation, as was the practice when nationalisation was first being advocated as a principle by political parties. In those days it was common for the Fabians and others to claim for national and municipal undertakings that their workers would be better paid than workers in private industry. In the Fabian Essays (1889) two of the writers, Annie Besant and Bernard Shaw, proposed a minimum wage for workers in municipal undertakings, high enough to be attractive to workers elsewhere. Annie Besant thought it would be “higher than any wage which could be paid by the private employer. Hence competition to enter the communal service, and a constant pressure on the Communal Councils to enlarge their undertakings.’' (p. 165.) The view was held by the early Fabians and other supporters of government industries, that these industries would be more efficient and could therefore afford to pay higher wages than their less efficient competitors.

Emil Davies, chairman of the Railway Nationalisation Society, in his book The Case for Nationalisation (1920, page 176) instanced the higher pay some of the telephone staffs received when the Government took over the telephone service from the private company in 1912. And in another book The State in Business (1920 edition, page 192), he claimed as a general proposition that “the moment the State or Municipality takes over a service or undertaking the conditions of the workers are immediately improved."

He confessed that this was perhaps less true of this country than other countries and in fact there is little to support the belief that the Government and the local authorities in this country have ever worked on the principle of paying above the rate required to give them the numbers of recruits they wanted.

From lime to time civil service pay has got out of line and steps have been taken to correct this. In 1923, after a big fall of the cost of living and of wage rates in industry had left civil service pay rather higher than the authorities considered necessary, the Anderson Committee, recommended reductions in addition to the automatic fall of pay under a cost of living bonus scheme. The special reductions were not then made because a general election intervened and the first Labour government came into office.

In 1957 the opposite situation had developed and Mr. Marples, Conservative Postmaster-General, was able to announce big increases of postal, telegraph and telephone charges totalling £42 million a year under cover of having to bring Post Office wages up to the level of outside wages. Now that most Labour Party opinion seems lo have accepted that there will be little extension of nationalisation the prospect of civil servants ever getting a Labour Government to apply the principle of giving civil servants more than “fair comparison" with average pay outside can be put very low indeed. Imagine the Labour Party still further hampering itself in an election by pledging itself that civil servants would he paid more than other workers!

Edgar Hardcastle

Blogger's Note:

The following was in a separate box attached to the article:

“Only when industry and transport etc, are owned and democratically controlled by the whole community can service to the whole community be a reality. Nationalisation or State Capitalism is not the solution to the problem."

Socialism or Nationalisation (1/-)

Quotes. (1926)

From the April 1926 issue of the Socialist Standard

STATE SOCIALISM !

“Out of a civil service of 300,000 people, 225,000 get less than £4 a week, inclusive of bonus, 150,000 get less than £3 a week, inclusive of bonus, and scores of thousands get less than £2 a week inclusive.”—The Secretary of The Civil Service Association (“The Star,” Feb. 17).

* * *

THE USE OF RELIGION.

“In societies such as ours, in which the inequality of fortune presents a striking contrast besides our political equality, the religious sentiment is the best means of reconciling and uniting together the rich and the poor. … It teaches the poor man to be patient and honest amid all temptations, to be confident of a brighter future here below, and to look beyond the world to the hope of a good reward in another and a higher sphere of existence.”—M. Chevalier.

The Civil Service in Imperial Rome (1940)

From the July 1940 issue of the Socialist Standard

In these days bureaucracy comes in for much denunciation, and the civil servant is held up as the example of how not to run an efficient and speedy service. All the criticism, however, is made on the assumption, even when it is not fully realised, that the Civil Service is a more or less unnecessary body, an encumbrance that could be drastically lightened. The following article on the Civil Service in Imperial Rome will put the Civil Service and its critics into proper perspective, for it shows that no Empire can be administered without an elaborate organisation of administrative departments, and that the problems and the methods of handling them are much the same now as they were 2,000 years ago under the Roman Empire, not forgetting, of course, that class and sectional interests played their part then, as now.

The Civil Service has a very long history. It came into existence, in a real sense, about two thousand years ago at the birth of the Roman Empire, and was in truth the nervous system of the mightiest empire the world has ever known, In fact it was the development of the Civil Service that saved Roman society from the chaos into which it was slipping fast when Augustus came to power.

Towards the end of republican times, in the last century before the Christian era, the population of the Roman world was split up into various economic groups or classes, the following three of which only concern us here: The old Patrician land-holding families controlled and comprised the Senate, the few administrative officials and the foreign governors. The Equestrian class (or Knights) were traders, money-lenders and speculators. They were represented on the Roman juries and were seriously challenging the political rule of the Patricians. It was the conflicting interests of these two groups that lay behind the civil strife of Pompey and Caesar. The third group was composed of freed men who had purchased, or been granted, their freedom from slavery. They were chiefly officials who took part in the management of private estates and did clerical work of one kind or another. As the soldier and the trader carried Roman conquest and Roman influence over ever-widening areas the power and the influences of the equestrian class grew enormously and added considerably to the difficulties facing the administration. Rome was like a small company suddenly called upon to transact the business of a huge trust but with the same small office and staff. The administration was cracking under the strain. Not only had the Roman world increased in size, but it was further complicated by the coming together of people of different ways and tongue under its sway.

Under the Republic the administration consisted of the Senate and a few officials. This was adequate for a small city state and was the political form that prevailed in the antique city states.

As Rome added conquest to conquest and spread over Italy, and finally over a great part of the ancient world, administrative difficulties became more and more pressing until the system finally broke down. No general system of provincial administration had been introduced, nor had proper provision been made for the collection or assessment of taxes. Taxation, in fact, was a very haphazard affair. Roman citizens, both at home and abroad, were exempt, and the people who did pay the taxes had neither a voice in the assessment of them nor in the use to which the taxes were put. Groups of financiers paid a lump sum for the right to collect the taxes for a period—usually five years.—and then by devious means wrung fortunes out of the unfortunate victims of their greed. Tax-farming was a lucrative form of speculation and various methods were used to extort large sums during the period of the contract. It was not the state treasury that benefited to any great extent but the private fortunes of a small class of speculators (publicani). The miseries of the provincials were increased by another influence allied to taxation. Many provincial municipalities found themselves unable to meet the extortionate demands of the tax-farmers and had to resort to borrowing. They borrowed heavily from money-lenders (negotiatores), who also belonged to the equestrian class, and had to pay high rates of interest. There was no law regulating the rate of interest outside of Italy, and the rate was sometimes as high as 48 per cent.

Matters were made considerably worse by the civil war of Pompey and Caesar as the cost of the campaign fell upon the provincials.

The Senate found it difficult to curb the operations of the financiers, particularly as some members of the Senate either had money invested with them or were deeply in their debt. They were powerful, their operations ramified in every direction to the farthest limits of Roman power, and the state was often compelled to seek their aid when in financial difficulties. Consequently the provincial governors, when not in their pay, were forced to look helplessly on at their extortionate methods without the power to curb them.

Such was the position when Caesar crossed the Rubicon and marched on Rome.

With the coming of the Empire a fundamental change commenced, both in the method of levying and of collecting taxes. Taxation was the first and most pressing problem tackled, and for long everything was subordinate to its solution. Things were put upon an orderly footing so that each knew exactly how much he would have to pay in taxes and also for what purpose the money would be used. Officials were appointed and paid out of the state treasury to make assessments on an understood basis, to see to the collection of the taxes and to keep records. The officials were answerable only to the Emperor and depended upon him for appointment and advancement. A census was taken covering the whole imperial Roman world and territorial divisions were made, and each put in the care of a superior official who had a staff of assistants. Each superior official was responsible for the finances of his area and made reports and transferred money or goods to a central office and treasury at Rome. 

The system only came into operation gradually, piecemeal, and was spread over a long period of time. Caesar commenced the business but he had not got far when he was killed and the real work of organising the financial system devolved upon Augustus. Before the latter died the main part of the work was done and his successors only carried further the system of which he had laid down the complete foundations.

Some idea of the problem confronting Caesar and Augustus may be gathered from the fact that the population of the Roman Empire in the time of Augustus has been estimated to have reached about eighty millions, scattered over an area of thousands of square miles. One favourable condition, however, existed to a degree not reached anywhere in modern times. No city has ever been so truly the centre of an Empire as was Rome. 

As one historian puts it: —

“There were thousands of agents for the great Roman corporations scattered throughout the Empire. Rome was the money centre of the world, and the great stock companies organised to lend money, construct public works, collect taxes, and engage in the shipping trade had their central offices in the capital whence they sent out their representa-times to all parts of the world.”—(Abbott.)

From Rome roads radiated over mountains and across deserts to the most distant parts of the Empire.

When Augustus had succeeded in taking the place left vacant by the death of Caesar, and had firmly established himself, he put an end to the civil wars that had for so long racked the Roman world and in which he and his supporters had played a considerable part. For two hundred years after his accession there was internal peace. It was during this time that the civil service was built up and solidly established. Augustus was faced at the outset with two problems. His treasury was practically empty and he had to find a reliable and regular method of filling it. His first business was to bring order into the assessment of taxes and then to adopt dependable means to collect them.

As a preliminary he appears to have had a survey of the empire made. A great deal of geographical information was collected and tabulated by Agrippa, and a census of the population was taken by special imperial officials.

The principal objects of the census were: (1) To find the number of the population. (2) Sort the population out into age classes for the easier levying of certain taxes. (3) To have an exact registration of property holding. (4) To provide an exact means for valuation.

A specification for measurement was decided upon and engraved on copper. The original was deposited in Rome and a copy in the principal city of each province. This arrangement provided a basis for the land-tax (the chief provincial tax) and relieved the provinces of the extortion practised by the tax-farmers. Augustus also transferred some of the burden from the provinces to Rome by introducing a tax of 5 per cent. on inheritance and legacies, which only affected Roman citizens. There were other indirect taxes, the object of which was to put Italy on a level with the provinces and make the Italians bear their fair share of the burden of taxation. As taxing Roman citizens directly was too revolutionary a method to be successful at the time, Augustus achieved the same result in the end by introducing indirect taxes.

The main object of taxation was to provide for the army, the expenses of provincial government, salaries of officials, the corn supply and the police of Rome, the maintenance of religion, the building of temples and other public works, the public roads and aqueducts.

In the year 6 A.D. Augustus appointed a commission of three to enquire into and cut down expenditure, as a further part of the organising of finance.

The means adopted for collecting the taxes brought into existence the Civil Service.

The estates owned by the Emperor himself were considerable, and the method used for handling revenue on them was the original method adopted for the empire, modified rapidly and considerably as time passed. The revenues of the imperial estates were handled by the Emperor himself, assisted by freedmen and slaves. Hence at first the Emperor employed freedmen in the principal positions as officials of the empire. On many grounds they proved both unreliable and dangerous in positions that gave them considerable power.

Augustus had, therefore, to look round for more suitable assistants, and in this predicament found at hand a class (the equestrians) suited in almost every way for providing, in the first place, the financial officers he needed. He then set about making the imperial service attractive to this class and also placing them in a position of dependence upon him. The chief military and administrative functions were at the time performed by members of the Senate.

There was one very important reason that induced Augustus to turn to the equestrians. The latter were rivals of the Patricians, who controlled the Senate, and by using them he was opening a road to satisfy their ambitions safely, and at the same time he was attracting to his side a very useful ally in the struggle he was waging against the conservative Senate. There was also the important fact that as private speculators and money-lenders the equestrians had already acquired experience in the handling of finance.

Originally the equestrian order consisted of the state cavalry of the republic, serving on horses provided by the state. Later it covered also those who, although not actually serving, were qualified so to do. In the days of the empire a man who had the necessary property and other qualifications became a member of the order by the act of the Emperor conferring upon him the public horse—knighting him. The giving and the taking away of this honour, however, was entirely within the discretion of the Emperor. The equestrian class comprised the great bulk of the financiers of Rome.

As already noted, the process of supplanting senatorial officers and methods by imperial officials was a gradual one, spread over a long period of time. The first step in this direction was the appointment of imperial procurators to control the publicani—the financiers, who had purchased the power to collect taxes. The next step was the appointment of imperial officials who engaged to collect the taxes for a fixed payment. Finally, these officials (conductors) were replaced by imperial procurators, who raised the money through their immediate subordinates. By 200 A.D. direct collection of taxes had been introduced everywhere and the tax-farmer had entirely disappeared.

Procurators were in nearly all cases knights. It was only in exceptional cases that freedmen occupied the position. Hadrian, in the second century A.D., further revolutionised the Civil Service by excluding freedmen from all but the subordinate posts. After his day the knights monopolised all the higher posts in the Civil Service.

When the Civil Service was finally firmly established it opened up a prosperous career to men of the knightly order, and the way was open to them to rise to the highest positions in the state in the Emperor’s service. Military service, however, was a necessary preliminary to civil employment, and the time spent there and in the various grades depended largely on the favour of the Emperor, who could push a candidate through rapidly or slowly, as he deemed fit. In some cases promising candidates were allowed to skip some of the intermediate stages in their progress to the highly-paid and influential positions.

With the methodical organisation of the administration and the revenues multitudes of posts were open to those attracted to the service. There were procurators for land, mines, money for the Mint, provincial finance; ports for corn supply, streets; Public buildings and the like; water in connection with aqueducts, libraries, public games, and so forth.

The service reached its highest development in the second century, A.D., and comprised a huge body of officials covering every sphere of the administration. The salaries of these officials ran up to the equivalent of about £3,000 a year for the highest posts.

There were three principal sections in the service, and within these, again, different grades. The highest section included the Prefects. They occupied positions somewhat analagous to the present First Sea Lord, Commander-in-Chief of the Army, Governors-General of Canada, South Africa, Australia, etc. The next section consisted of heads of various departments, roughly similar to our present Secretaries of State. , The lowest section (the procurators) comprised the various officers of different degrees of importance, whose duty it was to see to the collection of the taxes, etc.

The principal officers in the first section in order of importance were : —

(1) The Commander of the Praetorian Guard, the troops on which the Emperor depended to keep secure his power over Rome and Italy.

(2) The Governor of Egypt.

(3) The official charged with the duty of keeping Rome supplied with food.

(4) The Chief of Police.

(5) The Admiral of the Fleets.

The Commander of the Praetorian Guard presided over the Imperial Council when the Emperor was away, controlled all the troops stationed in Italy as well as the imperial slaves, and had considerable civil and criminal jurisdiction.

The importance of Egypt as an imperial province gave the officer who controlled it the high position he occupied in the Roman administration. Egypt occupied a position in relation to Rome roughly similar to that occupied by India in relation to this country. It was distant, rich in products, and its governor was armed with considerable power, although directly responsible to the Emperor.

The official in charge of the food supply had assistants in Rome and agents in the provinces. He also had the duty of supervising the bakers and the captains of merchant vessels. He was particularly responsible for securing the public corn supply.

The Chief of Police was in charge of all police duties, including the watchmen of the city.

The Admiral of the Fleets was directly in charge of the two principal fleets and also controlled all the naval forces in time of war.

The second section of the administration comprised the heads of departments, graded in the following order : —

(1) The Imperial Chancellor of the Exchequer, who controlled the treasury department.

(2) The Imperial Secretary, who made the Appointments to all except the highest official posts, received and replied to all despatches, and dealt with all the public correspondence of the Emperor.

(3)The official who received and dealt with the private petitions addressed to the Emperor.

(4)The official who assisted the Emperor in his juridical functions, providing him with information and preparing the cases for his examination.

(5)The official who prepared and despatched all short resolutions of the Emperor.

The third section included all those charged with the collection of the taxes, the supervision of lands, mines, coinage, streets, public buildings, water supply, public games, education, and many other things. The highest of these officials sometimes had the governorship of minor provinces.

The service described above was so organised that there was a regular system of promotion from the lowest to the highest posts. There were numerous subordinate officials attached to each post and the various departments had staffs of clerks and assistants.

The department of finance was the earliest organised, and appears, also, to have been the most completely organised ultimately. The official in charge of the administration of justice was generally a trained lawyer and was assisted by a council of expert advisers.

Such was the Imperial Civil Service. Centred in Rome, and spreading like a web over the whole empire, it enabled the huge conglomeration of different nationalities to be welded into a single piece and kept closely knit together for decades. Never before had there been such a bureaucratic organisation, and its extent and efficiency has been the admiration and the model of later administrators.

Gilmac.