Lord Mayo's visit to certain railway works under construction by private contractors, and about the same time to a building being erected by the Public { 174} Works Department, forced this last defect of the system strongly on his mind. At the private contractors' works he saw three European gentlemen, umbrella in hand and their heads roofed over by enormous pith hats, standing out in the hottest sun, and watching with their own eyes the native workmen as they set brick upon brick. In the building under erection by the Public Works he found only the coolies and bricklayers, without supervision of any sort. On inquiry, the engineer in charge pleaded office duties, the subordinate engineer pleaded the impossibility of looking after a great many works at the same time throughout a considerable District; and the net result was, that Government had to put up with loss of money and bad masonry. Lord Mayo exclaimed: 'I see what we want--good supervision and one thing at a time.'
Lord Mayo also found that the extravagance in Public Works was due in a large measure to the practice of constructing them out of borrowed money. He therefore laid down a strict rule that all ordinary works, that is works not of the nature of a reproductive nature, and paying interest, must be constructed out of current revenue.
'Any further increase to our debt,' he decisively wrote, 'cannot be made without incurring danger of the gravest kind. I will incur no responsibility of this sort, and nothing will tempt me to sanction in time of peace the addition of a rupee of debt for the purpose of meeting what is really ordinary and { 175} unproductive expenditure. It is a policy which, acting on my own strong convictions, and in full concurrence with Her Majesty's Government, I am determined to reverse.'
The long series of measures by which Lord Mayo reorganised the Public Works Department lie beyond the scope of this volume. It must suffice to say that by stringently applying his principles 'of first finding the money, and improved supervision,' he not only effected a large saving during his own Viceroyalty, but rendered possible the subsequent expansion of the Department without financial disaster to the country.