BUREAUCRACIES AND BONUSES.
[To THE EDITOR Or THE " SPECTATOR."] Sia,—Some years ago Punch published a picture of a man lying on the ground in a state of drunken :stupor. " Poor man," murmured a sympathetic old lady in the small crowd standing by, thinking he was in a fit. " Wish I'd half his complaint, mum," rejoined a working man. That wish will be echoed by many people when they hear a Civil servant grumbling about the inadequacy of his war bonus. I will take three instances from the table given by your correspondent, "One of the Bureaucrats," in your issue of the 16th inst., and compare them with the position of professional men with corresponding pre-war incomes. A Civil servant with £300 a year pre-war salary gets 76 per cent. bonus. How many of the clergy are there with that stipend who are getting anything like that bonus? Personally, I know one with it who is—so far, shot- ever may happen in the future—getting no bonus at all. A Civil servant with £600 gets 60 per cent. bonus. Doctors' fees have, I am told, gone up by 50 per cent. Therefore, a '• U.P." with £600 a year pre-war earnings is now getting £300 a year extra as against the 9.363 17s. 6d. extra of the Civil servant, without, it be remembered, any prospect of pension or paid-for holidays. A Civil servant with £800 a year gets 57 per rent. bonus. Solicitors' fees have been increased by 33 Per cont- (That dove not apply to conveyancing, which forma the bulk
of the average solicitor's practice, but as the value of properly, on which conveyancing, charges are based, has gone up we will take it at 33 per cent. all round.) Consequently, a solicitor with pre-war earnings of .£800 a year is now getting £1,066 13s. 4d., as against the Civil Servant's £1,253 17s. 6de and, like the doctor, earns nothing while on holiday, and has to provide his own pension.—I am, Sir, he.,
Previous page
