CIVIL SERVICE ASSOCIATION.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume IV, Issue 503, 6 September 1890, Page 2

CIVIL SERVICE ASSOCIATION.

[to the editor.]

Sib, —For one I cordially support the movement in favor of a Civil Service Association. That is I approve of the principle, but if the speech?* made on Tuesday evening as reported in the Press, are to be taken as indicating the objects of the Aseocialion, it is likely to have a very short shrift. The first point.made, that the Association is bound to be a success because an Imperial Institute Ring nominee has approved of it, j a the essence of folly, because the time is not far distant when the democracy ot New Zealand will object to pay away—to throw away, let me put it—thousands of pounds yearly for a mere ornament. Lord Onslow seems to ba a patch above such aa the Gordon snob, but who can tell what his successor will be like ? It is a bit of impertinence for him to mix himself up with ths thing at all. Taxpayers are not likely to object to the Service cementing its bonds, but they must not let it savor ot backstairs Downing street influence. Mr Gold Smith is reported to have said that"there was no fear of their being disloyal to the Government, because they were too intellectual and so on to ever think of a strike. I will not attempt to criticise such remarks, because I believe when the gen ieman alluded' thinks over them he will admit they have a meaning he never intended—they ara in effect that all strikers are not intellectual, etc. What is the use of working on a sham ? It is be ter to state that the Association is intended to have influence, otherwise it is a farce—it is useless unless it has a weighty influence, with a membership that will not scatter like chaff before the first puff of wind. Through having no combined influence in ths past the Service hashed to labor under such hirassing ooncondirions—excepting a few favoured individuals who float buoyantly to the surface of the whirlpool and are helped over the political falls to the placid waters above—that no man who has served in the Service would think of allowing bis son to waste his opportunities and chances of improvement by joining and endeavouring to walk in the footsteps of his father. If the Association is to he successful it must make a bold front, frankly state its platform, avoid anything that can be deemed a reflection on other people, and it will get a large support, which it deserve-,—l am, &e. John Blink.

Later.—After I had written the above I noticed in your contemporary a comical letter written by a sham Unionist. He says the Civil servants have a right to shorter hours, but their masters should decide—their masters being members of Parliament, the majority of whom are nominees of Banks and sheep runs, like Asy Blank, and who have already prostituted the Service by vaulting a lot of toadies over the heads of deserving men, An Assooiutioh would look into such matters. If railway employees have a right to form a Union so’have all other Government employees, Toprevent further misconception I think it would ba as well for an apology to be made concerning the remark that slipped out about being too intellectual.—J.B.