Can we really suppose that any sort of education is likely to arouse and maintain in the rank-and-file of employees either in the public services or in the great private industries a sense of public duty and a realisation of the larger industrial harmony, which will compensate in any appreciable measure for the dulness and drudgery of their particular job, and furnish an effective check upon shirking or slacking? Suppose that a salary basis of payment, a shortened work-day and security of tenure, with adequate insurance against economic mishaps, had been obtained in all regular occupations, would the quickened sense of cooperation yield a productive energy adequate to the requirements?
To this question it must, I think, be frankly answered, that we cannot tell.We have no sufficient data for a confident reply.The general reply of business men and of economists would, I think, be in the negative.It would be urged that the greater part of the routine work of industry will always remain so dull and tiresome, the sense of public duty so weak and intermittent, that the fixed salary basis of remuneration will not prove an adequate incentive for the required amount of human effort.
The experience of existing social services would be adduced in support of this judgment.Public employees, it is complained, work with less energy than private employees; there is more slacking and scamping and more malingering;the 'government stroke' has become a by-word.The dignity of social service does not evoke any clear response in the breast of the employee.Such is the complaint.It is probably not ill-founded.The great mass of public employees are certainly not animated by much conscious pride and satisfaction in rendering social service.But, before registering a final judgment upon such evidence, certain qualifying considerations must be taken into account.
The attitude of a worker towards his work will be strongly affected by the prevailing attitude of those around him.So long as the general economic environment is one in which the interests of employer and employed are represented as antagonistic, similar ideas and sentiments will continue to affect the feelings of public servants.They will not realise that they are working for themselves in working for society of which they are members:
they will treat the department for which they work rather as an alien or a hostile body, bent upon getting as much out of them and giving as little as possible.It is just here that we touch the most sensitive spot in the psychology of government, the best recognised defect of bureaucracy.The higher officials, who control and manage public businesses, evoke in the rank-and-file of the public employees very much the same sentiments of estrangement or opposition that prevail in most private businesses between employer and employee.For in point of fact, the temper and mental attitude of higher officials are those of a master in his own business, not those of a public servant.That affects their dealings not only with the rank-and-file in their department, but with the outside public.In a so-called democracy, where the highest as well as the lowest officers of state are paid by the people to do work for the people, no method of effective popular control over the official services has yet been devised.The absence of any such control is clearly recognised by all high officials, and it powerfully influences their mind and their behaviour.Uncontrolled, or insufficiently controlled power, of course, affects differently different types of men.
It induces slackness and the adoption of a slow conservative routine in those of torpid disposition.Men of arbitrary temper will be led to despotic treatment of their staff.Men of brains and enterprise will be free to embark upon expensive enterprises, to the gain or loss of their paymasters.
But in no case does the actual situation favour the permeation of the public service by a full sense of social cooperation and joint responsibility.
High officials may and often do exhibit great energy and disinterested zeal in the public service.But the sense of mastery, both in relation to the lower grades of employee and to the public, is always discernible.
They have this power and they know it.Until, therefore, the sense of public service can be made a reality among the higher public officers, no true test of the efficacy of the general will is to be obtained.This reformation of Bureaucracy is the chief crux of modern democracy.For unless some mode is found of expelling from the higher public servants the pride of caste, and of keeping them in sympathetic contact with the general current of popular feeling, the mass of the subordinate employees will not respond to the social claim upon their economic energies.
Finally, the familiar criticism of the inefficiency of public employees in this country does not take proper account of conditions of employment.
For while the top grade of officials is paid more handsomely and enjoys more dignity and security than in other countries, the lower grades are often subject to conditions of pay, hours and tenure, not appreciably better than those prevailing in the ordinary labour-market.Until these conditions are improved, it may reasonably be contended that the dignity of public service cannot be expected to furnish an effective economic motive.
