[822] _Ibid._, 1881, app., p. 53; 1891, app., p. 66; 1901, app., p. 83; 1905, app., p. 99. The financial loss experienced by the Government in operating the telegraphs has naturally produced considerable interest in this phase of the question. Mr. Blackwood, the Financial Secretary of the Post Office, in his evidence before the committee, considered that the financial control and oversight of the department were inadequate and that the department was over-manned. On the other hand, he was of the opinion that many expenses were met by revenue expenditure which should have been charged to capital. Mr. Baines, the Surveyor-General, among other causes of the financial deficiency, called attention to the shorter hours and longer annual leave of the telegraph staff as government employees, the higher standard of efficiency established by the Post Office, and the prevalence of much overtime work as a result of the maintenance by the companies, just before the transfer, of an inadequate staff.[823] The fact that the yearly increase in messages continued to diminish after 1879 is commented on by the Postmaster-General in 1884 as due to the stagnation of trade, the competition of the telephones, and the rapidity of the letter post. Mr. Raikes called attention to the large number of telegrams on the business of the railways which were transmitted for nothing. By an agreement with several of the railway companies to send, as a right instead of a privilege, a fixed number of messages containing a fixed number of words, this increase was checked. In 1892, the following comment is found in the Postmaster-General's Report: "This stagnation of business, viewed in connection with an increased cost in working expenses, is a matter for serious consideration, and necessarily directs attention to that part of the business which is conducted at a loss," the reference being to the increased number of press messages transmitted at a nominal charge. When in 1868 the newspaper proprietors succeeded in obtaining the insertion in the Telegraph Act of special rates for the transmission of press messages, no condition was laid down that copies, in order that they might be sent at the very low charges there enumerated, should be transmitted to the same place as the original telegram. The newspapers combined to receive messages from news associations in identical terms, and, by dividing the cost, obtained a rate equal on the average to 4-1/2 _d._ per hundred words. Under the arrangements adopted for the transmission of news messages the number of words so sent did not necessitate a corresponding amount of work, but it is an interesting fact that in 1895 the number of words dealt with for the press formed two fifths of the total number. In that year the loss on these telegrams was estimated at about £300,000 a year. The high price paid as purchase money is another of the factors to be considered, only in so far,