Sir Lyon Playfair, who had been Chairman of the Royal Commission on the Civil Service, 1874 to 1876, and the author of the Playfair Reorganization of the Civil Service, 1876, testified as follows before the Royal Commission of 1888. "Unfortunately Members of Parliament yield to pressure a great deal too much in that direction, and they are certainly pressing the Exchequer to increase the wages and salaries of the employees of the Crown.... In a private establishment a man looks after his own interests, and if a person came to him and said: 'Now you must increase the salaries of these men by $100 or $250 all round,' he would say: 'You are an impertinent man, you have no business to interfere,' but you cannot say that to Members of Parliament, and there is continual pressure from Members of Parliament to augment the salaries of the civil servants."[143] * * * * * [Sidenote: _Raikes Revision of 1890-91_] With the increase of the number of telegraphic messages transmitted, from 33,278,000 in 1884-85, to 62,403,000 in 1889-90, the average sum spent on wages and salaries per message transmitted, fell from 13.72 cents in 1884-85, to 10.62 cents in 1889-90. In the following year, 1890-91, Mr. Raikes, Postmaster General, inaugurated an extensive scheme of increases in wages, reductions in the hours of work, and other "improvements in the condition" of the telegraph employees, that again raised to 12.28 cents per message in 1894-95, the average sum spent on wages and salaries. Mr. Raikes, Postmaster General, raised the wages of the supervising staff, as well as the wages of the rank and file;[144] he granted payment at one and one-quarter rates for over time, granted payment at double rates for all work done on Sunday, gave extra pay for work done on Bank Holidays, and increased from half pay to full pay the sick-leave allowance. The annual cost of those concessions Mr. Raikes estimated at $500,000 a year. The cost of the concessions granted at the same time to the employees in the postal branch of the Post Office Department, he estimated at $535,000 a year.[145]