Machines, Methods, and Modernity in the British Civil Service, c. 1870–c. 1950

Abstract

The growth of government and its bureaucracy in the first half of the twentieth century focused political interest in Britain on office work, workers, and practices. Parallels were drawn to offices in large organizations in business and industry and an active market of office products offered a growing choice of machines and other appliances for use in public offices. Demands for manpower in the military and related industries during the First and Second World Wars coupled with an increase in public business in civil offices encouraged both novelty and greater system in analysing processes to overcome obstacles to speed and management controls. Certainly by 1930 civil servants in Britain saw their offices as being different from those of their predecessors. Modern ideas linking specialist skills in organization and methods with machine processes drove changes to increase economy and to speed workflow. This article explores aspects of office history in the British Civil Service especially as it relates to the use of machines for written communications, the conditions that encouraged their use, and the ideas that came in their wake.

Notes

The administration of the state's business mirrored other large organized enterprises, including departmentalization related to special areas of administration or competence, vertical differentiation of departments into sub-units, and cadres of senior officers who directed subordinates and various assistants. The exact number of employees in each department is difficult to determine exactly because the counting exercise is always determined by a definition establishing the conditions for including or excluding workers. Despite this inherent difficulty in determining exact numbers of employees it is clear from the evidence presented to numerous committees of inquiry into the Civil Service held between 1870 and 1946, that long-established departments, such as the Treasury and Foreign office, grew in size and complexity and many new departments were created, such as Munitions and Economic Development, to handle novel areas of government responsibility. See the following as examples: Parliamentary Papers 1875, Playfair Commission; Parliamentary Papers, MacDonnell Commission 1914; Parliamentary Papers 1919 Bradbury Report and The National Archives (hereafter cited as TNA) T 162, Establishment Officers Files, 1920–1930, 59 eo 5083 ‘Control over Civil Establishments 1921–1924’, T 162, 79 eo 8027 ‘Staff of Government Departments.’ Comparison between numbers employed in July 1914 and July 1921, and T 162, 881 eo 51953/026 Organization of the Civil Service Working Party no. 4 Business Efficiency in Departments. Interim Report Oct. 1946 and T 162, eo51913/025 ‘Organization of the Civil Service Working Party no. 4 Business Efficiency in Government Departments. Papers and Minutes, 1946.’

Three examples of exceptions are the preparations made for the periodic national census, for national insurance, and for rationing during the First World War. See T 1, Treasury Board: Letters and Papers, 1557–1920, 11243, re the Census of 1911; T1, 11691 re the Stationery Office 1911–1914, T1, 11822 re the Stationery Office and Addressograph Machines 1913–1915, Stat Records of the Stationery Office, Stat 12, Files of Correspondence series I, 16/3 re Calculating Machines ca. 1912–1916 and Stat 14, files of Correspondence series II, 419 ‘Underwood Street 1912–1966.’

Records keeping was an area of office administration, workflow, and economy in which many establishment officers acquired considerable knowledge and expertise within the Civil Service. From among the many examples of studies and discussions within the records of departments see the following: T 1, 10369 report of the Cartwright Committee on the Foreign Office 1905; and T 1, 12334 Notes for the Use of Registry Branches, 1919 and T 162 82. The group of specialist officers that worked on producing the publication on registry office practices came from the Civil Service, were involved in aspects of the work of the Committee on Staffs and were clearly cognizant of economy and efficiency work in the United States.

By the 1920s specialists in office work and in machine processes were working the Treasury and other large departments. An active market offering different types and models of complex machine for duplicating texts made selecting the right equipment for a job and area of specialist knowledge. Many models were complex to operate effectively and to keep in working order. See Stat 12 27/4 and T 162/347 concerning typewriters and a census of machines, T 199, Establishment Officer's Branch: Registered Files (eo and 2eo series), eo 100 on machine testing in the Treasury in the early 1920s, Stat 14 1156 for the classification of known duplicating processes in 1931, and Stat 14 271 for the work of the technical sub-committee of the Interdepartmental Study Group on government photography and reproduction services in 1946–1947.

A good example of the widespread knowledge and general admiration of business methods is ‘Report of a Sub Committee (War Office) of the Committee on Staffs’ T1, 12292/10174 1919. However, there are also examples of criticism of the wholesale importation of techniques from a business environment into the Civil Service in the reports of the committee on staffs see T 1 12292/10174, and in the records of the Stationery Office see Stat 12, 38/1 re accounting machines.

Parliamentary Papers Playfair Commission 1875, Parliamentary Papers Ridley Commission 1888 Parliamentary Papers McDonnell Commission 1914, Parliamentary Papers May Commission 1931, and T 162 881 and 944 are examples of the many commissions, committees, and official cross-service working parties that addressed many aspects of business practices, efficiency in administration, and innovation in office work processes to save money and streamline administration. These moments of official review provided opportunities to take stock, but also to entertain larger ideas that were about in the service and particularly in the world of politics where many interests and lobbies jockeyed for attention and a hearing.

Parliamentary Papers, Northcote-Trevelyan Report 1854. Northcote-Trevelyan did not foresee the role of machines within their reform measures but their work certainly laid the ground for the introduction of machines into Civil Service offices as assists in the mechanical sphere.

The comments of an observer in 1919 is perhaps emblematic of the views held by many that it was problematic to entrust modernizing reforms to an embedded department of state that had roots back to the middle ages. This view was often unfair considering the degree of controls over establishments and expenditure expected by Parliament. See T 162, 79 eo 8027 ‘Staff of Departments Comparison between number employed in July 1914 and July 1921.’; T 162, 59 eo5083 ‘Control of Civil Establishments.’ 1921–1924; T1, 12285 appointing the Committee on Staffs 1917. T1, 12292/10174.

T 1, 12334 Notes for the Use of Registry Branches 1919.

Craig, ‘The introduction of copying devices into the British Civil Service, 1877–1889.' Also see T 222, Organization and Methods Division: Registered Files (om and 20m series) 32 om233/02/01 ‘Review of clerical procedure with a view to further mechanization, 1946–1948.’

The 400% increase in correspondence handled by the Foreign Office between 1913 and 1919 is perhaps the most obvious example of growth. These numbers driven clearly by the extraordinary amount of work undertaken by the office during the War. See T1, 12239/47779 Nov. 14 1918 ‘Report on Foreign Office Registry.’ However, growth was general across the service well before the War and was noted repeatedly beginning as early as the late 1870s. Also see T1, 9078a re establishment of the Colonial Office and increase in paper business 1896; T1, 8313a, re typewriters and copyists 1887–1891; and T1, 8613b re abstractors and copyists in the Board of Agriculture, 1891.

An example was the Stationery Office, which had to meet urgent and extraordinary demands on its services, particularly as the supplier of materials for administrative work but also as a supplier of machine devices of various kinds to meet the demand that arose in wartime for mass duplication of forms and reports. In this the Office had experience providing central duplicating and mass distribution services for national insurance materials, rationing books, and income tax forms. See Stat 12, 20/4 ‘National Health Insurance commission England 1912–1918.’ The Stationery Office also needed to supply office machines in great quantities to other departments, many of them newly created, and then to ensure that this equipment was kept in working order. By 1916 Britain's reliance on foreign manufacturers for office machines, particularly typewriters, but also for other material used in office work rose to be a concern for the highest levels of government. Concerns were never fully alleviated, even after the cessation of hostilities in 1918, largely because further disruptions came in the wake of an economic depression, a second global war, and subsequent post-war problems with currency exchange. By 1918 there were about 32,000 typewriters in use, over two thirds or 22,000 having been added during the war years. Subsequent annual censuses of machines were done off and on until the outbreak of World War II. The census of office machines was renewed in 1951. See details in Stat14, 860 ‘Stocktaking and control of office machinery. Audit queries. Oct. 8 1953.’

T 222, 32 ‘Machines and Appliances in Government Departments: Memorandum to accompany publication 1947.’ Also see T 222, 1200 for a copy of the publication. The machine booklet and accompanying circular stress savings in manpower not money. This echoes earlier discussions that accompanied the introduction of mechanical devices in the third and fourth quarters of the nineteenth century. See for example T 1, 8313a re typewriters and copyists 1887 - 1891; Stat12, 2/12 re use of copying machines in the Stationery Office 1889; and T1, 8613b re abstractors and copyists in the Board of Agriculture 1891.

T 1, 11243 re census of 1911 including method of counting and use of machines, 1911; T 1, 11822 re Stationery Office and addressographs 1913–915; Stat 12, 20/4 National Health Insurance Commission England 1911; Stat 12, 25/5 re accounting machines 1912–1919.

Stat 12, 16/3 re calculating machines 1913–1917 and Stat 12 25/5 re accounting machines 1912–1919 discuss the Stationery Office's experience with mechanical tallying for stocktaking, which proved to be a failure. Adjustments were needed to the process to emphasize human responsibility for checking errors and assuring proper reconciliation. By 1953 the Civil Service was the largest singe user of reproduction equipment in the United Kingdom, Stat 14, 280 ‘H.M. Stationery Office Review. Report. 1953.’

There are numerous examples of the increase in written business during the war and one may conclude that there was a similar increase in the use of informal networks to expedite business. A good example is provided by the reviews of staffs and staffing levels undertaken at the conclusion of the war. See T 162 79 for the rise in official letters during the war at the Treasury. The development and use of informal oral networks especially through the telephone and by personal contact is a topic for a forthcoming paper ‘Writing and Talking: oral networks in offices of the British Civil Service, c1870–c1956.’

Considerable information about numerous local innovations during the First World War, including the use of machines, is to be found in the many reports of the investigations undertaken by the sub-committees of the Committee on Staffs. One example is T1, 12292 10174 on the War office. Office memory as the active recollection of experience by long-serving staff shortens considerably during times of change, especially when new people replace those who have a long experience in the office and with its business. Moreover, as a result there was a tendency quickly to normalize innovations. The use of the press to make copies of out-letters is quickly viewed as a practice that had been in place from ‘time immemorial’ and appears to be accepted wisdom by the end of the First World War. (Presses were selectively used in some departments in the mid 1870s (see T1, 12850, and T1, 82271 1886 for Treasury's experience) and were only ubiquitous by about end of the century.

An example is provided by the system used by the British delegation to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919, which was abandoned later as unworkable for the future. See T 1 12460/1459. The experience of the British Delegation with the elaborate systems established to track negotiations is a topic I am pursuing in a future research project.

T 199, Establishment Officers Branch file 1919–1966, 93, eo 88/127/02 1930 provides information on the Treasury's experience using card indexes: these were abandoned in the 1930s.

Some Treasury commentators in the late twenties and thirties remarked on the administrative difficulties that ensued following the introduction into recordskeeping what they referred to with some irritation as business practices: apparently these practices caused many difficulties for tracking authority and compromised work later when reference to past decisions were difficult to trace. Also see Parliamentary Papers Bradbury Report 1919 and T,1 12286 re the Bradbury Report with an edited version of the text, 1919.

For example, see the work of the technical committee on reproduction processes Stat 14 1156 1931.

T1, 8313a concerning typewriters 1887–1891; T1, 8531c 1890 concerning copying, copyists, and typewriters. Also see T 222, 32 ‘Machines and Appliances …  …  … 1947.’

T 199, 83 eo 118/04 ‘Treasury Investigating Officers. Creation of Posts, Pay and Grading. 1919’; and T 162, 59 eob5083 ‘Control over Civil Service Establishments 1921–1924’. Also see Stat 12, 38/1 re accounting machines 1917; Stat 12, 19/2 ‘Proposed employment of Traveling Inspectors … . 1916–1918’ and Stat 12, 23/3 ‘Advisory Committee on Accounting Machines … ’ 1918–1919; and T 1, 12310 re office machine inspectorate etc. ca. 1919.

See T 1, 12334, 23800 ‘Notes for the Use of Registry Branches 1919’ and T 199, 95 ‘Interdepartmental Study Group on Registry Techniques, 1945’; T 162 112 eo 8027 ‘Staff of Government Departments’; and T 222, 32 om 233/2/01 ‘Review of Clerical Procedures with a view to Further Mechanization 1946–1948.’

Craig, Barbara L. ‘The introduction of mechanical copying devices into the British Civil Service, 1877–1889.’

Craig, Barbara L. ‘Re-thinking formal knowledge and its practices in the organization. The British Treasury's Registry after two world wars.’ Archival Science and ‘Twilight of a Victorian Registry – the Treasury's paper room before 1920.’ Knowledge Organization.

A good example is the re-organization of the registries in the Treasury after World War Two. See T 199 176, 177, and 178. Also see Organization of the Civil Service Working Party #4 T 162 881 and 944.

Stat 14, 1342. re duplicating and printing 1927–1833. T 199, 83 on the appointment of investigating officers in Treasury and plans of work, 1919. Also see Agar, John The Government Machine and Wilson, Guerrio Robie ‘The machine should fit the work …  … ..’ 321–333. Civil Service offices, like those in business and industry, were viewed within the dominant discourse of rational method, efficient procedures, and cost/benefit analysis. Recordkeeping was an area of office administration, workflow, and economy in which many establishment officers acquired considerable knowledge and expertise within the Civil Service.

Perhaps the high water mark of the concept of method applied to offices in the Civil Service was in the years immediately after World War I with the report of the Bradbury Committee, T 1 12286/8431 and 8432, and the appointment of Treasury investigating Officers in 1919. There was a renewal in the vigour of this interest again during and immediately after World War Two. See for example T 199, 84, eo 118/03 Report of Reid-Young and Advisory Panel on Organization and Methods in the Civil Departments of Government 1941–1943.

For example, in 1951, responding to a Treasury Organization and Methods report on duplicating at the Stationery Office Duplicating Division, a respondent noted that there is little point in comparing commercial typing practices with those in government departments that operate under Treasury conditions. A business may pay a typist 50% more than in the Civil Service and may demand 100% more production; however, they would not allow a person trained gratis to leave immediately, nor are businesses required to be pay by age and service as opposed to ability. So in this case, as in others too, it is the rules of central control and standardization across the service for staff, classification, and rates of pay that trump any change that would need to alter these essential conditions of labour.

Stat 12, 38/1 re accounting machines 1917; Stat 12, 19/2 re proposed employment of traveling inspectors; T 1, 12310 re office machinery inspectorate 1916–1918. Copiers, typewriters and other pieces of office equipment were improved in design and numerous suppliers vied for the lucrative business of Civil Service departments. New models with special features catered for special requirements, for typewriting into books, for entering figures in large accounting sheets, and copiers were developed to handle volume reproduction beyond the capabilities of the simple duplicating machines of the early 1870s. While the need for machines in the business of the office may have been clear for certain types of work, their virtues were neither sufficiently obvious nor their uses demonstrably economical in all situations for these to be quickly and universally accepted. Familiarity with the uses of machines and experience with their capabilities were important in stimulating a growing demand for typewriters and copiers. Customs of use, familiarity with routines, and a host of other social factors were powerful elements in any office culture; these may not have been fully recognized by contemporaries as being as important a determinant as in retrospect we can see that they are. The progress of mechanization throws the social terrain of the office into a sharp relief, exposing its biases and assumptions, each as important as the rules of conduct and written orders of the office. In this process, one of gradual introduction punctuated by periods of intensive change as in wartime, individuals within departments were instrumental in local innovations. Before the First World War the incorporation of machines, such as typewriters and copiers, into departments was steady but not could not be termed a flood. Typewriters, stencil copiers, and accounting machines required the operator to have considerable dexterity as well as the training to operate the machine successfully. During the First World War and thereafter machines became standard in administrative offices and fostered new areas of technical and administrative expertise to understand the needs and economics of their uses. See T 162 for numerous examples.

T 199, 83 Treasury Investigating Officers. ‘Creation of Posts, Pay and Grading, 1919.’

T 1 7143b/1871 for the establishment of a pool of temporary writers at the Civil Service Commission for use by government departments instead of copyists hired from law stationers. The file also contains regulations concerning skill level, duties, and pay scale by word. Also see T 1/17041/1879 on the central copying service at the Civil Service Commission.

T 222, 92 eo 88/04 ‘Treasury System of Registration, 1922–1942’; T 162, 112 eo 14972 ‘Comparative Cost of Registering Correspondence in Government Departments, 1925’; and T 162 ,121 eo 17043 ‘Civil Service: Comparison of Costs of Staff 1915–1927.’

Stat 14, 271 re development of reproduction facilities 1940–1953; Stat 14, 1156 ‘Office machine Committee now Treasury Organization and Methods Division 1920–1952’; T 199, 32 re Treasury investigating officers etc 1925–1936; T 199, 202 eo 481/02 ‘Advisor on Office Services … . Report 1951–1952.’

T 1, 12334 ‘Notes for the Use of Registry Branches 1919’ and T 199 95 ‘Report of the Interdepartmental Study Group on Registries 1945.’