Sir R. E. Welby, Secretary to the Treasury, and other witnesses, spoke of the abolition terms often acting as a premium on inefficiency. Mr. Robert Giffen, the eminent statistician and political economist, who also was an officer of the Board of Trade, said: "When a man is reorganized out of the service, as a rule he gets so many years' service added [to his actual service], that is to say, at 50 years, if he has served 30 years, he may have 7 or 10 years' service added, and thus get two-thirds of his salary as a pension; and he begins to get his pension at once, instead of waiting until he is 60 years of age. A man who thus gets a pension at 50 years, really gets more than double what he would get if he waited until 60 years of age. The present value of $100 a year, beginning at once at the age of 50 years, is a good deal more than double the present value of $100 a year to be paid to a man when he reaches 60 years. The difference in favor of the man who is reorganized out of the service, as against the man who remains until he is 60 years of age, is simply overwhelming to my mind." Sir Algernon E. West, Chairman of the Inland Revenue Commissioners, illustrated the working of the practice of getting rid of inefficient men by reorganizing an office, by citing the following instance of "successful" reorganization. Sir Algernon West had retired 39 upper division clerks, permanently reducing the number of the staff by 39. He had thus effected a saving in salaries of $70,000 a year. But he had incurred an annual expenditure of $44,160 on account of pensions, and an annual expenditure of $10,000 on account of abolition terms. Therefore his net saving was not $70,000 but only $15,840. Yet Sir Algernon West denominated his reorganization successful. In the course of this reorganization, Sir Algernon West had increased the hours of work from 6 hours to 7 hours. The reorganization, also, had necessitated certain promotions. Sir Algernon had made it a condition of promotion, that the man promoted should consent to work 7 hours a day. Men not promoted he gave $150 a year "as a personal allowance in consideration of the extra hour they were called to serve." One man, aged 34 years, declined to work more than 6 hours on any terms, saying that the Government had made a contract with him for six hours' work a day. In order to get rid of this man, Sir Algernon West gave him a pension on the basis of 10 years' service. Legally, of course, the man had no claim to any pension or abolition allowance whatever, for he was in reality dismissed for refusing to perform the duties demanded of him.[272] FOOTNOTES: [250] _Third Report from the Select Committee on Civil Services Expenditure_, 1873; q. 4,283 to 4,288. [251] _Third Report from the Select Committee on Civil Services Expenditure_, 1873; q. 4,270 to 4,282, 4,146 and following, and 4,198 to 4,210. [252] _Third Report from the Select Committee on Civil Services Expenditure_, 1873; q. 4,937.