532
(
and, as the Department is to have a type-writer next year, capable of using it.
These necessary additions to the staff will emphasize the want of space in the present buildings.
It is very advisable that the Chinese employees should live on the premises, for reasons that have been dwelt on at length elsewhere.
Mere numerical increase in the staff will not alone effect the degree of efficiency desired, a better class of clerks is required, whether the better terms now offered by the Government (an initial salary of $40 instead of $20), will attract such class, remains to be seen; but the fact must not be lost sight of that hitherto the Post Office has been the last resource for the very poorest of the Portuguese; capable recruits have been the exception. Whilst the increase in the initial salary has been a move in the right direction, the fixing of the maximum reached by annual increments at $60 is unquestionably too low, and compares unfavourably with the labour market.
A man that has steadily and honestly worked up to $60 a month in five years will certainly resign, when he sees scarcely anything before him for the first offer he gets of $75 or $80 a month the average wages of decent clerks in mercantile houses.
If, after he has reached $60 a month, in two years he gets $70, and in two more $80: there would be some chance of men joining who intended to spend their lives in the Department, otherwise it is questionable, or rather unquestionable, that, as in the past, men will simply join the Post Office as a stepping stone to private employment.
It,