their corporate capacity and, still more, in their individual capacity, are more disposed to use their influence with the Executive Government in order to increase expenditure than to reduce it." Sir John Eldon Gorst testified in 1902: "But although the Civil Service head of the office has a very great motive to make his office efficient, because his own credit and his future depend on the efficiency of his office, he has comparatively little motive for economy. Parliament certainly does not thank him; and I do not know whether the Treasury thanks him very much; certainly his colleagues do not thank him.... I think anybody who has any experience of mercantile offices, such as a great insurance office, or anything of that kind, would be struck directly with the different atmosphere which prevails in a mercantile office and a Government office.... I have no hesitation in saying that any large insurance company, or any large commercial office of any kind is worked far more efficiently and far more economically than the best of the Departments of His Majesty's Government." Sir John Eldon Gorst might have added that the Civil Service head of a Department really had only rather moderate power to enforce economy. Before the Royal Commission of 1888, Lord Welby [then Sir Welby], Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, was asked: "But you would hardly plead the interference of Members of Parliament as a justification for not getting rid of an unworthy servant, would you?" Lord Welby, who had been in the Treasury since 1856, replied: "It is not a good reason, but as a matter of fact it is powerful. The House of Commons are our masters." * * * * * In the hands of a commercial company, the telegraphs in the United Kingdom would yield a handsome return even upon their present cost to the Government. That is proven beyond the possibility of controversy by the figures presented in the preceding chapters. In the hands of the State, in the period from 1892-93 to 1905-06, the operating expenses alone have exceeded the gross receipts by $1,435,000. If one excludes, as not earned by the telegraphs, the $8,552,000 paid the Government by the National Telephone Company in the form of royalties for the privilege of conducting the telephone business in competition with the State's telegraphs, the excess of operating expenses over gross receipts will become $9,987,000. That sum, of course, takes no account of the large sums required annually to pay the interest and depreciation charges upon the capital invested in the telegraph plant.