THE RELATIONS OF WORK AND PAY.
THE Telegraph of Monday contained an interesting notice of the late Mr. Peter Vargas—he died on September 26th— a man unknown to the public, who filled for an unusual period an office of much importance in the House of Commons. Nominally head messenger, with a salary of only 000 a year, he was really for more than half a century the confidential clerk of each successive Patronage Secretary, or "Whip," a man on whom Ministers had constantly to rely for delicate and difficult work, for warning them that their presence was required in the House, for arranging to bring up men to vote, and for keeping themselves posted up to the progress of the nightly business. Though at heart a decided Liberal, he never failed in- his duty whatever Ministry was in power, and was entirely trusted by leaders as different as Lord Melbourne, Lord Palmerston, and Mr. Disraeli, all of whom pieced him in a confidential re- lation to themselves. That is a remarkable life, worthy of a more extended record ; but the writer in the Te/egraph, while doing every justice to Mr. Vargas, evidently thinks that the most extraordinary fact about him was that he was so good. upon so very little money. " Only £300 a year," he seems to exclaim, iu admiration, " for all that trustworthiness 1" We dare say, the House-of-Commons scale of payment being considered, that the salary was small, though, as Mr. Vargas never com- plained, the probability is he was contented, and the amount itself was as much as the average salary of an English beneficed clergyman ; but just now what we have to do with is the surprise expressed at the quality of the work purchased for that modest income. That surprise has become almost uni- versal in this country. No remark is now so, constantly made as that work is proportioned to wages ; that if we want better service, and particularly service to the State, we must give more money ; and that nothing but eye-service can be expected of men on so many shillings a week. It is wonderful, it is con- stantly said, that work is done as well as it is, considering the pay. So far is this carried, that most men expect better work for every increase of pay, and even politicians believe that a general rise in allowances will render Departments more effi- cient. The old idea that the man fit for the work once found, and made fairly secure in his income, all will go well, has been abandoned, and proposals are made showing clearly the belief of those who make them that as the pay so will the quality of work be,—that pay, in fact, acts as a selecting force. The police do not find a murderer because they are badly paid, magistrates make mistakes for want of allowances, country doctors are inefficient because they can earn so little. The poverty of the clergy is paraded as an excuse for neglect, and suggestions are offered that all would go well if only rich livings were melted down for the benefit of poorer parishes. The belief is spreading every day and affecting every business arrangement, and yet we believe it rests almost, if not quite, en- tirely upon a confusion, of thought. The beat paid posts attract, on the whole, the most efficient men, because, as all men, or nearly all, wish for them, a struggle ensues, in which those in some way the strongest are apt to survive ; but a, man's fidelity to his work, his sense of duty to it, his pleasure in its perfection, are almost independent of pay. The man with the power of doing good work, and the instinctive impulse to do it, who is the man everybody wants to secure, is not incessantly making a mental bargain with his employer, mid giving such a quality of work for so many shillings ; but is pleasing himself by doing his work as perfectly, and above all, as faithfully, as he can. If he is only a gardener, his garden must be bright. He likes re- ward, if he is human, and money is the most tangible form of reward ; but it is not by the amount of money that he regulates the quality of his work, but by an impulse from within himself. Ho likes, if he is a butler, that " his " silver should look bright. Of course, in making his contract, he regulates the quantity of work, the number of hours, &c., by the pay, just as he would regulate the quantity of goods ho delivered. over ; but that is not the question discussed, but the character of the work. That depends mainly, as we believe—in honest men, we mean, of course—not on pay, but on the workman's sense of the importance of the work lie is doing, and his own consequent importance in doing it. If that is nothing, he works slovenly ; if it is much, he works care- fully and with a will. Mr. Vargas's idea, quite an accurate one, was that his work, trifliug as it might seem, was of the last importance to the State ; that he himself was one of the pivots or jewels of the watch—or, Mr. Vargas being human, the central pivot—and he could not endure by ineffi- ciency to impede the complicated machine. The compulsion on his mind was as strong as the compulsion on a Premier's mind. There is scarcely a successful establishment in the world where there is not some such man in humble position, who has found out, or, may be, imagines, that the well-doing of his work is indispensable to the concern, and consequently does it well. " There are no houses with door-steps like mine I" says the efficient charwoman,—door-steps being the ultimo, ratio of houses. The traditional Bank of England clerk—who, by the way, is, we suspect, very real, at least we have studied two of the kind—is just of that sort. Unless he counts accurately, or watches carefully, or remembers so much that other men's memories would break down under the strain, the work of that centre of the universe could not go on ; and so he finds calculating power, or patience, orrecollection—the recollection of a bank clerk or a theatre ticket-taker is often improved into a separate faculty—as if the whole concern were his own. He may deserve more wages, but more wages would not improve him one bit. They might, indeed, injure him. It is by no means a general fact of human experience that the best paid work is the best done work. On the contrary, as the worker gets comfortable, he very often gets careless, a fact of which keen employers, with strong slave-driving instincts, are often thoroughly aware. The skilled British workman is a great deal happier and more civilised now, when he has 40s. a week, than when he had 20s. ; but his increased fidelity to his work, increased disposition to put his whole soul into it, and regard it as part of himself, would. be denied, and truly denied, by half the employers in the kingdom. No doubt increased hurry has something to do with that, and perhaps increased independence, but the main cause is a less microscopic view of the importance of the work itself—a souse that the world will not stop if the colour is slopped on, instead of painted on—and a consequent indifference and laxity, which only the sense of rectitude, of which we are not talking just now, could entirely remove. No servant is so good as a self-important one, one who thinks that if the sweeping is careless, or the meat under-
done, or the waiting hurried, the world is at an end, and there- fore, is faithful, not so much to the employer, as to the function itself. Writers see that when they paint Caleb Balderstones, yet will remark the next minute how much better the clergy would be if they were paid twice as much. They probably would not be so good. They may deserve better pay, and iu that case ought to have it; but the pay would not improve the. thing supplied, though, of course, you might get stronger men to supply it
The Prussiau Services are the most efficient in the world, and the reason is that the Prussian servants of the State, though always wretchedly paid, are taught from their entrance into the Departments to exaggerate the importance of their functions, taught it till every individual among them thinks himself an axle in the coach. They become the most self-important and dis- agreeable functionaries in the world, but no work is so thoroughly done as theirs. It has been remarked for ages that honourable poverty is the condition in which the soldier fights best, and Napoleon's Marshals became useless as their incomes swelled. It was because Prime Ministers, as the Telegraph says, shook hands with Mr. Vargas, and that he therefore recognised how valuable his work was, that it was done so exceedingly well. Six hundred a year instead of three would have made no difference whatever, though for aught we know, six times that would only have been fair compensation at market rates for the capacity
of the work were dependent on the expended. If the quality pay, men would work better as they rose in grade, which is notoriously not the case ; and there would be something like equality in the out-turn of men on the same allowances, instead of an inequality so marked as to compel all Governments and all employers to supersede promotion by seniority—the only just system, if men wore equal—in favour of selection. Why, if pay evolves work, are not all poot-captaius alike P Curates worth their salt work harder than good Rectors, and the English Church being the one profession in which merit is nothing and interest everything, it is not from hope of advancement that they work so hard,—and by the admis- sion of all men, not for pay. Would curates be more efficient on an average 2250 P We doubt it very greatly, and so does Rome, which is credited with knowing men, 'and steadily approves, though she does not always enforce, poverty in her working soldiery. Pay will attract strong men, and it will produce content, which is sometimes, though not always, a condition of good service—nobody ever meta contented sailor, however good, or a good one who shirked work because he never received enough—but it will not develops, far less create, mental or moral faculties ; and it is from them, and not from income, that faithful work must come. A good ploughman ploughs straight, not because he is paid highly, but because he thinks the straightness of his furrows important to the farm, and his own character to himself lowered by their crookedness. He may deserve double wages for his work, but the furrows will not for them be one hair's-breadth the straighter. They are as straight always as he can make them, because, to accept his own true, though unphilotmophical explanation, " He can't abear to see 'em elsewise."
Previous page
