Some people give way handsomely when they find there is no chance of standing out successfully. Under the Telegraph Construction Act (1908) the Department has certain powers of compulsion. Representations were made to a lady but she took no heed of them, and a notice was served on her by the Solicitor of the Department. She replied: “With reference to your communication respecting the erection of telegraph poles, &c., I am afraid I have not taken much interest in the matter, and I thought it was all finished long ago. The absurd fuss that was made some time ago seemed to cause my husband much amusement, and as he is letter scribbling, and has nothing else to do or think about, I handed the affair over to him to see to, as I did not think it of any importance. As far as I am concerned you can put 40,000 poles or anything else you like up down or all over the road: it is a matter of absolute indifference to me.”

The laying of underground wires is, however, developing fast, but it is usually cheaper to keep the wires overhead, and in the present state of electrical science the effectiveness of a telephone wire is reduced when laid underground. In the Postmaster-General's Report for 1906 he deplored the differences into which he was forced with landowners, and “with those valuable associations whose care it is to preserve the natural beauty of the country. In the case of Hindhead I am glad to say that, thanks to the consideration shown by the Directors of the London and South-Western Railway, I was able to take the poles by another route.” It is pleasant to find consideration for the beauty of the country influencing the policy of the Post Office. The Postmaster-General went on to say that “means of overcoming the present difficulties are urgently required; for it is most unsatisfactory that important towns should go for years with inadequate trunk telephone facilities because it has not been possible to overcome some difficulty of wayleave many miles away.” This was written before the Telegraph Construction Act of 1908 was passed, but even with increased powers the Department experiences great opposition from local authorities and others to the erection of overhead wires, and the wayleave getter's task is still difficult in many districts.

Another of the works carried out by the Engineer's Department is the establishment of a system of synchronisation of clocks by means of ingenious automatic appliances, and in this matter the Post Office has given a lead to the nation. At no distant date, if the example of the Post Office is followed, we may be spared the experience which frequently occurs in a London street, of finding a difference of time in almost every clock we pass. The Post Office clocks are like Wordsworth's cloud, they move together if they move at all.

The Stores Department is another branch of the service which does not come under the direct notice of the public. But it is as necessary to the Post Office as the stoker is to the railway train. Stop the supplies and every post office in the country will feel the effect very quickly. Nothing is too small or insignificant to be supplied by the Stores. If a department wants a packet of pins it applies to the Stores: if it requires a safe or a telegraph pole the Stores will supply the article. If an official requires a uniform the Stores will fit him as well as a West End tailor. The business done is colossal; the figures of the Stores Department are in some respects the most interesting in the Post Office. They would move to envy firms like Selfridge's or Harrod's. For instance, in one year 1,250,000 pens were supplied to the Postmaster-General, and yet, as Mr. Sydney Buxton complained pathetically when mentioning this fact publicly, his handwriting was no better. During the year 1909 more than £1,300,000 of goods were purchased by the Post Office, and £800,000 of this represented the cost of engineering stores.

Everything that is required in connection with postal and telegraph work is examined and tested before delivery. No fewer than 1,035,720 separate consignments of stores, weighing 6223 tons, are despatched from the Studd Street depÔt annually. About 100,000 persons in the United Kingdom are supplied with uniform, and the total number of garments issued annually is about 420,000. The annual value of all this clothing amounts to about £210,000. As a rule everybody is allowed two suits, one for summer and one for winter wear, and they are made according to standard sizes. The method adopted is called the Fitting Sizes Scheme, and I shall refer to it in more detail in my chapter on the Postman.

The Department always holds large stocks of cloths, linings, tapes, braids, and buttons, and it issues them from time to time to its tailoring contractors. Think of a supply of three or four million buttons! The percentage of misfits is two.

Mail bags, parcel post receptacles, official bicycles, and telegraph instruments are supplied in large quantities. Over 11,000 bicycles, carriers, and trailers are in use throughout the Kingdom, and the mileage covered by them amounts to 150 million miles per year.

Miscellaneous postal stores, such as stamps, seals, scales, weights, telegraph paper, string, sealing-wax, are purchased by the Stores for the Post Office. Printed matter, pens, ink, paper, and office requisites, though stocked and distributed by the Stores, are supplied by the Stationery Office, Whitehall. Household stores, that is materials for cleansing and cooking purposes, are supplied to the Post Office by the Board of Works. The Stores supply the General Post Office with red tape to the extent of 1,000,000 yards annually. The amount will not come as a surprise to many people, who may perhaps be inclined to say that the exports of red tape by the Post Office even exceeds the big import. Needless to say, the Stores only supply the article in its material form: they are content to allow the administrative branches to manufacture the other kind. Pencils are supplied to the tune of 1,000,000, and pens I have already mentioned. Again the critic may step in and say that if the average post office pen were renewed as often as it ought to be the order from the Stores would be still larger than it is. The stationery supplies are of course stupendous. Here are a few figures covering one year: 2200 gallons of gum, 4800 gallons of writing ink, 11,000 boxes of paper-fasteners, 4800 quires of blotting-paper. And you can get sealing wax in three qualities, and in hundredweights. But if I continue in this strain I shall turn the heads of my readers.

Closely allied to the Stores are the factories. Speaking broadly, the Post Office does not make the goods which it requires; it gets them for the most part from other firms: the goods are brought into the factories to be examined and tested, and the Stores distributes them throughout the Kingdom. A certain amount of manufacture does, however, take place at the factories. A quantity of telegraphic apparatus is made here: the supply and upkeep of thousands of miles of telegraphs and telephone lines has to be provided for. In one place you will find a machine, the work of which consists in installing wires into cables: in another you will find a machine doing exactly the opposite kind of work, pulling cables to pieces that have had their day; the wires are untwisted, and the gutta-percha is stripped off. The insulators for the telegraph poles all come into the factory, and the arms on which they are to be fixed for the support of the wires are made here. They are of British oak or Australian karri-wood. All kind of fittings for postal and telegraph work, including silence cabinets for the telephone business, are constructed in the factory.

Repairs form a large part of the work. Here are awaiting repair, straps, postmen's bags and pouches, and the great bull hides—envelopes as they are called—in which the mail bags are wrapped to be dropped by the Travelling Post Office. Many of these are continually being brought into the factories to be repaired, rent and split up all to pieces, indicating the violence of the action which often takes place during the exchange of the bags.

Leather is used very much in postal appliances, and a large staff is employed making and repairing articles. Powerful sewing-machines are employed for the purpose. One curious industry is the making of the little felt and leather carriers which are used for the transmitting written telegrams and other papers through the pneumatic tubes. These are made by women. There are, as I have already pointed out, miles of these pneumatic tubes under the streets of London.

Here is a paint shop, also a smith's shop with steam blast and hammer. Basket-mending is very much in evidence. The Post Office uses thousands of baskets, many of which used to be made in prisons. The bulk, however, come from contractors, but the mending is done here.

When the articles have been tested the Stores undertake the delivery throughout the country.

One of the burning questions of the Post Office is the supply of telegraph poles. In the Post Office Circular of the 8th December 1908, the Postmaster-General invited his staff throughout the country to acquaint him of any promising sources of home-supplied timber. There was a time when the needs of the British Post Office were met solely from Norway. From the Norwegian forests came the poles which supported the overhead telegraphs of the United Kingdom. But at the present time there is a shrinkage in the supply from that quarter. The Post Office requires 40,000 poles per annum. Sweden has supplied us, and now Russia with her interminable and primeval forests sends us the poles. There are virgin forests in Russia in the White Sea Hinterland, but these are very dense, and it is sometimes very difficult to get out of them anything longer than 40 feet. The timbers used for telegraph “arms” are, however, imported from Australia.

An interesting fact about the supply of telegraph stores is that a General Election decided on at short notice involves an immediate order for 2600 instruments with accessory stores. The additional telegraph forms required reach high figures.

Arrangements are made to meet emergency requisitions due to telegraphic breakdowns, naval or military manoeuvres, &c., and officers are frequently called from their home at night to despatch by the first means at their disposal the necessary instruments.

The returned stores form a large item of the business. Instruments get out of date as well as out of repair. These are examined by an officer, who decides whether they shall be sold complete, or broken up and sold as brass, ebonite, &c. It pays to break up instruments, if, for example, they contain platinum, but on the other hand, for instruments such as bells, switches, &c., there is a limited demand, and these are sold in small lots by auction. It is a matter of some difficulty to determine, and it has frequently to be decided by experiment, what instruments can be broken up, and as the demand is very limited, how many complete instruments can be released from stock without affecting the price.

Storeboys do most of the breaking up of instruments, and useful parts are retained for stock. Nobody can be relied on to break up anything with more of the joy of life than a boy. Lead-covered cable is stripped in the factories for sale as copper and lead, and gutta-percha for sale as copper wire and gutta-percha strippings. Superintending Engineers throughout the country are allowed to sell locally certain stores such as old iron, iron wire, and poles, but other valuable stores are sent to London for disposal.

There are two or three general tender sales of old stores in the year, and special sales of copper and lead are arranged whenever the accumulations or the state of the market require it. But the scrap-heap of the Post Office is of the dimensions of a mountain.

There are also returned postal stores, which come under the name of condemned material. These are sold for what they will fetch. In one year the Department obtained £1800 for clothing and rags, £850 for string, and £700 for boots. Accumulations of used string are disposed of also locally by certain postmasters. Here is indeed an example in domestic economy.

The Stores supply in response to requisitions a quantity of postal stores to the Colonies and British post offices abroad. There are British post offices at Ascension, Beyrout, Constantinople, Panama, Salonica, Smyrna, and Tangier.

I must not omit to mention the Awards Committee of the Post Office, which exists to encourage workmen and other Post Office servants to bring forward suggestions for improvements in machinery, tools, apparatus, &c., and lists of the awards are published from time to time in the Post Office Circular. The Postmaster-General, in a recent report, stated that “since the operations of the Committee began, the Post Office workmen have displayed greater interest in their work.”

There is a systematic inspection of the conditions of employment under Post Office contractors. The amended Fair Wages Resolution passed by the House of Commons on the 10th March 1909 is now inserted in all contracts for Post Office stores, and firms desiring to be added to the official lists of contractors are required to give an undertaking that they will conform strictly to the conditions of this Resolution. A clause is also introduced into head-dress and clothing contracts prescribing minimum wages for women and girl workers.

The labour conditions of the Post Office in other respects are sometimes not so satisfactory. A Superintending Engineer recently sent in a claim for a double extra allowance for certain of his men who had performed seventy-six hours' extra duty each in a week, and he explained that one of the men had worked for eighteen of these hours “under somewhat discouraging conditions, being head downwards in a manhole.” Many of us would prefer to take the risk of balancing ourselves on the top of a telegraph pole.

The work of the Stores Department is, it will be seen, of a singularly responsible character. Dealing as it does with contractors in a very large way, it requires in its officers not only judgment and experience but the highest commercial probity as well. Dealing also with large numbers of workmen, it has opportunities of earning for the State a reputation for fair treatment, and for setting an example to private firms. No doubt the popular view would be that the Stores only supply telegraph poles, sealing-wax, and things of that sort, and any salesman in Oxford Street could do the work. The Stores Department suffers from its name: the man in the street connects it in his mind with the Civil Service Stores, and he knows what goes on in those premises. But if he were to visit the offices of the Department, he would find the difference rather striking, and he would for ever afterwards have a wondering respect for “the man from the Stores” who buys and sells articles by the million, and who will probably ask you for the loan of a pencil or a stick of sealing-wax, as his personal supply of these articles has run short.