ADMINISTRATIVE PUNCTILIO. T HE discussion at a special meeting of the
London School Board on Monday of a communication from the Local Government Board, in regard ,to precautions desirable to be taken against the spread of the present outbreak of small-pox in London, gave rise to some curious and instructive exhibitions of administrative punctilio. The Local Government Board had stated that there being, as they were informed, large numbers of un- vaccinated children in the parishes of St. Pancras and, St. llfarylebone, where the malady has chiefly shown itself, the public vaccinators of each of those parishes had been actively engaged in examining children at schools where the managers allowed them to do so, with a view to securing the vaccination, as early as possible, of such of them as were not vaccinated. These visits, it was stated, had not been paid to the Board-schools because in 1894, in similar circumstances, the School Board had refused to sanction them, and it was believed that such refusal would now be le o intained. The Local Government Board, however, being advised that "considerable public risk" would be run if the children attending Board-schools in London were not at once protected by vaccination, "expressed a hope that the School Board would render such assistance in the matter as was within their power." Of course, all this was from equals to equals, for such administrative allegiance as the London School Board yields to created man is due to the Board of Education only. The Local Government Board has no more authority over it than over the German Army, except, indeed, in the case of expenditure of doubtful legality, when, as has been seen, auditors, like Mr. Cockerton, may step in with their sur- charges. Nothing of that kind, or analogous to it, was involved here, and there was no offence in the manner or form of the Local Government Board's letter. -There were, however, those who discerned in its matter ground for very serious question. Curiously enough, they were led by a gentleman—Mr. Barnes—who besides being a member of the London School Board, is Mayor of the new borough of St. Pancras, whose munici- pality is apparently wrestling with much vigour, =ord. ing to its lights, against the spread of small-pox. It might have been thought that to one thus engaged in different branches of local work the need for as much co-operation among the various authorities so engaged, and as few rigid lines of demarcation between their respective spheres, as possible, would have presented itself forcibly. Not so, however. Mr. Barnes's view was that, as in 1894, so now the School Board should decline to . allow examinations of the arms of the, children in their, schools by vaccination officers. "They were the trustees," —we quote from the Times report—" of the children for a certain purpose, and that purpose they should carry out. They had allowed the children to come into the schools whether they were vaccinated or not. Vaccination might be right or wrong. But if they were to have compulsory vaccination let the proper authority deal with it". Mr. Barnes did not entirely prevail. Indeed, for a time it seemed as if he were going to suffer entire defeat, fora resolution was moved and carried by 19 votes to 15 in favour of giving "facilities to the public vacemation officers of the Metropolis to enter the schools of the Bo. ard for the purpose of examining the arms of the children with a view to advising the parents to allow their childien to be vaccinated." But on the margin of the narrow majority by which that resolution was carried there Wei! members sufficiently affected by Mr. Barnes's doctrine of limited trusteeship, or sufficiently susceptible to the idea of pressure from the organisers of "conscientious, objec- tors," to iecure a serinus reduction in' the score of the authorisation which had been agreed to. By 17 votes to 16, the resolution above quoted was qualified by a proviso that the School Board issue a circular to parents asking if they have any objection" to the proposed examination ; sad if they object it is not to take place. Thus, so far as the London School Board is concerned, the facilities for bringing argument to bear upon parents, in favour of vaccination, under the emphasising influence of an outbreak of small-pox, are likely to be withheld in precisely those cases in which it is most important that such accentuated pressure should be exercised by the vac cination officers. The conscientious objector to vaccination is virtually to be invited to entertain and express an objec- tion which might never have occurred to him against the examination of his child's arm, and the merely ignorant, selfish, and lazy parent who does not care to be bothered about any matter affecting the health of his family or his neighbours is to be assisted to indulge his anti-social propensities without check at a time when they may cause very real public danger. How much this result is duo to the presence of anti-vaccination feeling on the School Board itself, how much to fear of an electioneering agitation of which the "inviolability of the person" would be the grotesque war-cry, and how much to the doctrine of limited trusteeship, we cannot, of course, undertake to determine. But we have no doubt that the last element exercised a very considerable influence upon the decision arrived at by the School Board. It is entirely in accord with all that is known of human nature, and perhaps rather specially of English human nature, that the fact should be so. The tendency to cut up the duties of life, private and public, into compartments, for the whole of each of which some individual or some elected or nominated body is responsible, and for none of which any other individual or body is responsible, is very widely spread, and is most unfavourable wherever it exists to collective efficiency and wellbeing. It is seen in households, where the most conscientious servant, so long as he knows that his own special work is properly done, will too often contemplate with indifference such breakdown of other servants, or such scamping of their work, as by a little help or remonstrance from him might have been averted. It is seen conspicuously in Government offices, where red-tape is little more than the deposit in permanent form of the limitations by which successive generations of public servants have fenced off the duties of their own Departments, or sections of Departments, from those assigned to others. It is not necessarily in its origin all evil or unworthy. It is, indeed, connected with a recognition of the principles of the division of labour, which implies that there is or may be a waste of force for effective work in the diffusion of attention among various aspects of an enterprise. But it involves a perversion of that principle, —a perversion which in these days of specialisation in machinery and lines of scientific research is peculiarly likely to lead to mischief. For genuine efficiency in the household, the business concern, and the public service, whether Imperial or local, we must have widely spread the intelligence which discerns the vital connection between the various branches of common undertakings, and the spirit which is ready to be at the cost of effort to lend aid, within or without the assigned department, wherever the need of it is felt. • That spirit may doubtless be itself helped or hindered in its development, in the case of public work, by the manner in which the responsibilities imposed on public bodies are allotted. In particular, we should say that the disposition towards intelligent co-operation among those engaged in different branches of local self-government would be likely to be much enhanced by the election of one body for all, or almost all, public duties of a local character, with the delegation of different departments to Committees, composed largely of persons with a natural bent towards the matters dealt with by those departments respectively. Elections ad hoc, as they are called, even if the occasionally secure a special concentration of eipert ability, cannot be counted on to continue to do so, and undoubtedly tend to produce a type of administrator to whom his department is almost everything, and other branches of the public service are of comparatively slight consequence. That type may, indeed, be developed under almost any conditions, because, as we have said, it has its roots in human nature, and is apt to be fostered by the scientific and economic tendencies of the age. But the creation of great local bodies charged with the care of all, or almost all, matters touching the welfare—physical, intellectual, testhetic, and moral—of their districts, so far as they can be suitably dealt with by authority, is the plan most likely to check the growth of crippling doctrines of limited trusteeship, and to cultivate among elected and electors the habit of seeing life steadily and seeing it whole. As that habit and temper spread, administrative punctilio will shrivel and fads will begin to die away, and the energy now spent in the maintenance of the one and the advancement or defeat of the other will be saved and utilised on lines of intelligent and liberal co-operation for the public good.
Previous page
