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Q. Do you think better pay would do it?
A.-Unquestionably I do. What can I do with $50, picking men up from the street. Lately, I assure you, I have given a great deal of thought to this to see how I could purge this department of the obloquy that has been cast on it, merited or unmerited, and I can think of no remedy but that of getting good men. I can devise checks, I can visit works, even out of the town, and I think that, with men of good character, should guarantee that things would be conducted honestly.
-Hon. A. LISTER.What pay do the Overseers get now?
A.—$60 a month, with an increase of $48 a year until they obtain $100 a month, and there they stop, but none of them have been sufficiently long in the service to get $100.
Q.-What would you recommend?
A.-I would give them, I think, $100. I would not give these men much more; I would get good men from England and give them $100.
Q-And any increase?
A.-I would suggest they be increased $4 every year until they reached $150 a month. I would not give them more than that?
Q.-Then we will pass to another matter. It has been put in evidence that there has been from time to time some delay, or there is alleged to have been some delay in the payment of bills, and it seems there is occasionally some delay, perhaps mostly owing to the cumbrous Government system of audit. Can you suggest any system by which bills could be paid more quickly when all is in order?
A.-Certainly, there are delays in consequence of the cumbrous system of Govern- ment payments, as you call it, but I think it is only right to point out that the greater portion of the delays which occur in respect of bills are simply because there is a differ- ence between the price charged by the Contractor and the schedule price. A bill for measured work is a very complicated thing, and sometimes a bill has been written to my. own certain knowledge six times; it has been sent back to be amended. Very often the ground has had to be dug up again owing to questions having arisen.
Q.—I saw a bill for a writing table, I think it was. The entire cost was $30, and the bill was a foot long, Would it not have been very much simpler to have bargained with the man?
A.-Unquestionably it would.
Q.-Do you
often have bills like that?
A.-No. I dare say you are alluding to the same bill I have in my mind, a bill for a drawing table for Mr. HANCOCK. I must say in justice to the office I don't think I have seen a more absurd bill than that, though I have been ten years in the office.
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