Those tables are constructed on the basis of including in the cost of telegraph offices only the allowance to the local postmaster for telegraph work, and the cost of maintaining the instruments in the office, and of excluding the cost of maintaining the wire, the cost of additional force required at the central station in London and at the district centres because of the large number of outlying branches, as well as the interest on the capital invested. Those omissions led the Treasury Committee of 1875 to say: "We fear the full cost of working these numerous and unremunerative offices is not realized [appreciated]." In 1888, Mr. C. H. B. Patey, Third Secretary to the Post Office, was asked by a Select Committee of Parliament: "Where you have established telegraph offices at money order offices under guarantee from individuals interested, do you find that eventually these offices pay?" He replied: "No; in exceedingly few instances do they pay. The guarantee has continued, and after seven years we have got a fresh guarantee in order to continue the office."[82] Mr. Patey's testimony is corroborated by the continued, and successful, agitation of the House of Commons for the reduction of the guarantee demanded by the Treasury. The second reason for the financial failure of the State telegraphs is, that while the precipitate reductions made in the rates charged to the public led to a great increase in the number of messages transmitted, that very increase of business was accompanied by such augmented operating expenses, that some years elapsed before the reduced average margin of profit per message carried sufficed to pay the interest on the immoderate capitalization of the State telegraphs. The increase in the operating expenses was in part inevitable; in part it was due to the waste inherent in all business operations conducted by executive officers who hold office, either at the pleasure of legislative bodies elected by manhood suffrage, or at the pleasure of large bodies of voters.