expenses, the expenses on account of wages and salaries having risen from 11.9 cents per telegram in 1897, to 13.7 cents in 1904. That is a matter of importance, for the recommendations of the Committee extended to the Telegraph Branch as well as to the Postal Branch proper. Again, the Committee had stated that "in the working of a monopoly by the State, the interest of the public as a whole is the paramount consideration, and every economy consistent with efficiency must be adopted." In the 20 years ending with 1903, the proportion of the Post Office's gross revenue available for defraying the general expenses of the State had declined steadily from 33 per cent. to 20 per cent.[216] Still, again, in the year 1903, the expenses of the Post Office had been increased by $3,000,000 through the Tweedmouth and Norfolk-Hanbury settlements.[217] In the face of those facts, the Bradford Committee made recommendations that Lord Stanley, Postmaster General, said would cost $6,500,000 a year.[218] The Bradford Committee sought to justify its recommendations with the simple statement that there was "widespread discontent" among the Postal employees. The Postal employees themselves had made demands before the Committee that would have called for the expenditure of an additional $12,500,000 a year. Their attitude to the Committee's amiable proposal to conciliate them by giving them $6,500,000 a year, is shown in the subjoined extract from the official organ of the telegraph staff. "It is perfectly plain, ... that the recommendations of the Committee, well-meaning as we frankly admit them to be, cannot be accepted as a full settlement of the case of the Post Office workers, or as one carrying with it the character of finality. They can only be accepted as an instalment of a long overdue account; and Postal Telegraphists, even if they have to fight alone for their own hand in the future as they did for many long years in the past, will combine for the payment of the balance."[219] That a body of five men, of whom four were respectively a Liverpool merchant and ship owner, a general manager of a railway, a manager of a large wholesale coöperative society, and a manager of a large department store, could make a Report such as the foregoing one, affords a melancholy illustration of the fact that no matter how far popular governments may go in assuming the conduct of great business enterprises, they never will succeed in creating a public opinion that will sustain them in their efforts to conduct their business ventures on the commonly accepted principles of the business world. * * * * *