If the Post Office were a private or joint-stock company, the office of Postmaster-General would be an anachronism; the Secretary would be the Chairman of the Company, and the Assistant Secretaries would be the Board of Management. I do not pretend that this is an accurate estimate of what would happen if the Post Office were disestablished, but there is no doubt that the duties of the Chairman and Board of Management in a business undertaking correspond very closely to those performed by the Secretary of the Post Office and his Assistants.

The State, however, controls the Post Office, and the necessity therefore arises for the supreme head of the Department to be a member of the Government of the day, and under this arrangement the position of the Secretary resembles somewhat that of the general manager of a company.

Now the part which a Postmaster-General takes in the control of the Department depends very largely on his own inclination and strength of character. He is a bird of passage; the changes and chances of parliamentary life bring about a rapid succession of Postmasters-General, and the office is often regarded in Government circles as merely a stepping-stone to higher things. The Postmaster-General has to defend the policy and conduct of his Department in Parliament, and he has to pilot through the House in which he may be sitting all measures relating to the Post Office. He has magnificent opportunities, and as he is the largest employer of labour in the country, his policy on all industrial and working-class questions is a matter of national concern.

We often hear the question asked, “Does a change of Postmaster-General make any difference to the Post Office?” A change certainly makes sometimes a great difference to the staff. When Mr. Sydney Buxton became Postmaster-General in 1905 he immediately took a step which has had far-reaching consequences. He announced that he would recognise officially the associations of the employÉs, and he was prepared to deal with grievances of the staff through representatives from the associations. That may or may not have been a step dictated by political considerations; but my point is that it was done by the personal action of the Postmaster-General. Moreover, the effect of this policy has been to set an example to other large employers of labour in the country, and in dealing with the grievances of their servants many have followed the lead of the Post Office.

A change of Postmaster-General may also affect considerably the public. In modern times Mr. Fawcett and Mr. Raikes have been the Postmasters-General who perhaps made their influence felt most at the Post Office and in the country. Mr. Fawcett brought to his duties a knowledge of finance and a keen interest in Post Office problems. He infused a certain enthusiasm for reforming schemes into the administrative staff, and the years of his rule were busy and fruitful of results. He possessed ideas of his own as to what the Post Office might be to the nation, and his premature death was regretted by none more keenly than by Post Office servants.

Mr. Raikes, with a personality less pleasing than that of Mr. Fawcett, was a man of great independence and force of character, and he depended less for his policy on the permanent staff than has been the case with most Postmasters-General. He was confronted with many difficulties arising out of the dissatisfaction of large numbers of the staff; but he faced all questions with courage and determination, and he too left his mark on the Department. It is a striking fact that Mr. Fawcett and Mr. Raikes, who were indefatigable workers, and who both went through times of great official anxiety, should have died in harness. I do not wish to imply that all Postmasters-General who survive their term of office are weak and indifferent chiefs; but these two instances show the enormous strain which is in modern times put upon a Minister who attempts seriously to grapple with the multifarious questions and anxieties of his Department. It must always be remembered, too, in considering what is expected of a Postmaster-General, that he usually comes to his duties without any experience of the technical work and routine of the Department, and if he takes his work very seriously he is perpetually being obliged to acquire knowledge at very short notice. He has not only to convince Parliament of the rightness of his policy; he has also to argue the matter out with the permanent officials, who know all the ropes, and can obstruct his schemes by their superior knowledge of the practical difficulties.

Mr. Chamberlain in speaking on one occasion, when Secretary of State for the Colonies, to a body of Civil Servants, said: “You are aware that the human race is divided into two great categories—those who are members of the Civil Service and those who are not. But even the Civil Service may be subdivided into those who are permanent and non-political and those who are political and temporary, who come like shadows and so depart. I have a shrewd suspicion that you could do without us. But I have an absolute conviction that we could not do without you.”

These words apply exactly to the relations of a Postmaster-General to his staff. And the staff would reply to such words that while they do the work whether their political chief is present or not, he has frequently the capacity to inspire them, and he has the public reputation which confers distinction on the Department. He can at least modify the dull rule of the permanent official.

Many distinguished men have held the position of Secretary of the Post Office. Of these no one was more indefatigable or rendered greater services to the Department than Sir Francis Freeling in the early years of the nineteenth century. To him was chiefly due the speeding up of the mail coach service. The acceptance of the position by Sir Rowland Hill gave a distinction to the office which it has never since lost. He was followed by Sir John Tilley, who was the last Secretary to be appointed from the staff of the Post Office. The men who have been appointed since his day have usually come from posts outside in which they have made a name. Sir Arthur Blackwood was Secretary for sixteen years, and he came from the Treasury. The Treasury always keeps a watchful eye on the Post Office, which is a revenue-earning Department, and the somewhat extravagant outlay on the purchase of the telegraphs was not at all pleasing to the Treasury. So Sir Arthur Blackwood, steeped in Treasury traditions, was sent to watch over the Post Office. He was known outside the Department as a religious enthusiast and an active philanthropist. He was a man of fine presence and great personal charm—he had been known in society in his youth as “Beauty Blackwood,” and though in matters of religion he gave the impression of being extremely rigid and unbending, he was as an official exceedingly wily and diplomatic. The late Sir Spencer Walpole, who succeeded him, had previously been Governor of the Isle of Man; he was a writer, and had published a History of England from 1815.

The Assistant Secretaries have included several men who were not only able administrators, but who were known outside the walls of the office. In another chapter I have spoken of Mr. Frank Ives Scudamore, C.B., who was one of the most remarkable men who ever served in the Post Office. Mr. Herbert Joyce, C.B., was an Assistant Secretary, and he wrote a History of the Post Office which is the standard work on the subject. Mr. F. E. Baines, C.B., was also an able administrator. He rendered valuable services during the period of the transfer of the telegraphs and in the organisation of the parcel post. He was an official with ideas, and he possessed what is rare in a permanent official, the quality of enthusiasm. He has published two books, Forty Years at the Post Office and On the Track of the Mail Coach, which are important contributions to the history of the Post Office. Mr. H. Buxton Forman, C.B., who was long associated with the foreign business of the Department, is known also as the editor and biographer of Keats, and as the author of several works dealing with the Keats and Shelley circles.

The Comptroller and Accountant-General is the keeper of the purse at St. Martin's le Grand. He is practically the financial adviser of the Postmaster-General, and his Department keeps the accounts. Centralisation is the great feature of Post Office business, and in nothing is this more marked than in financial matters. The postmasters' accounts throughout the whole of the country pass through the office, and the money needed to carry on the work is advised to the postmasters by the Accountant-General's Department. The balance-sheet of the Post Office is a formidable document. Take, for instance, the year ending 31st March 1910. The receipts from all sources amounted to £23,625,710, while the expenditure was £19,845,746, and the net revenue was therefore £3,779,964. Bear in mind that these huge sums are made up for the most part of very small items and daily accounts, and you will have some idea of the work performed in the Accountant-General's Department. All salaries and pensions are also paid from this office. Mr. Herbert Samuel, the Postmaster-General, wittily described the work of this branch of the Service at a departmental dinner in 1911:—

“The Department was always there, watching the flow of money through the Post Office system, ready to pounce on anything wrong, just as certain corpuscles in our blood were ready to deal with any foreign substance in our systems. In fact, the staff of the Accountant-General's Department were the guardian corpuscles of the Post Office system, and without them the Post Office could not be maintained in health and efficiency. Over 200 millions of public money passed through the hands of Post Office officials, and it was the duty of the Department to see that it did pass through. (Laughter.) Every year some 20 millions of money were spent on Post Office work, and it was their duty to see that those 20 millions were properly spent. Of course the Accountant-General's Department itself cost a large sum of money, and he was not sure that it would not be cheaper to be cheated. (Loud laughter.) It was the duty of their Department to throw upon the scaring proposals of imaginative men—not the cold light of reason, that was done by the Solicitor's Department—(laughter)—but the even colder light of arithmetic. (Cheers and laughter).” I quote from a report in the Civilian.

The Engineer-in-Chief is a man whose duties have developed enormously during recent years. The telegraph and the telephone demand mechanical genius and considerable scientific attainments. A huge army of engineers is maintained to keep the telegraph and telephone plant in proper condition, and to organise new lines. The position of Engineer-in-Chief has been held by Sir William Preece and Sir John Gavey, and both men have big reputations in the scientific world. Sir William Preece has done much to popularise the knowledge of the working of electricity by his writings.

The Surveyor's establishment is responsible for the supervision of the post offices in town and country. Each Surveyor is responsible for a certain district of the country, and he has to arrange for the periodical visitation of every post office in his visit, and to have the accounts checked. The Assistant Surveyor is “the bus jumper” of the Post Office. The Surveyor also deals generally with the organisation of the service in his part of the country. Anthony Trollope, whom we have mentioned in a previous chapter, was a Surveyor of the Post Office in Ireland for many years.

I have passed rapidly in view the various posts held by men who are the chief official advisers of the Postmaster-General. But of course there is a Solicitor to the Post Office, and in a business undertaking which is constantly entering into new contracts, and dealing with claims from the public, the position is no sinecure.

There remain the big clerical establishments of the Head Offices for me to deal with. How can I best describe their functions in the service? In the early part of the nineteenth century, a letter was addressed to the Secretary of the Post Office by the Lord Salisbury of that time in these words:—

The Secretary replied:—

This rebuke to the haughty Cecil was richly merited, and Sir Francis Freeling deserves credit for standing up for his office. His esprit de corps was aroused, and he was not the man to remain silent when discredit was thrown on the Post Office. But the doubt as to the fitness of the Post Office service for the sons of gentlemen exists to-day among people who associate the Post Office only with the sticking on of stamps and the delivery of letters. And even in the eyes of the Treasury the Post Office has suffered because of its commercial associations, and the great spending departments, such as the War Office and the Admiralty, have usually received more honours and attention.

In the old days, when places in the Civil Service were filled by the nominees of peers and politicians, there was no competition to enter the Post Office so long as positions could be found in West End offices. There was usually an uncomfortable suspicion in the candidate's mind that the Post Office required a full day's work from every man. There was a Commission of Revenue Inquiry in 1823. One of the Commissioners questioned the Secretary of the Irish Post Office thus:—

“It appears one of the surveyors, Mr. Bushe, avowedly does no duty at all. When he received his office, did you or not consider him as receiving an office with certain duties attached to it?”

“Certainly.”

“Did you ever call upon him to perform his duty?”

“I did indeed call upon him to do his duty once, and his answer was that he would never do any, for that he held his office during good behaviour, and was determined therefore to do nothing wrong.”

“Did you suggest to him that doing nothing at all was perfectly consistent with good behaviour?”

The Secretary's answer was evasive, and we are forced to the conclusion that he thought Mr. Bushe's position reasonable. It appeared also that though Mr. Bushe performed no duties, he exercised his privilege of sending his letters free. Mr. Bushe might have had a distinguished career in some of the other public offices at that date, and he might have been rewarded with a title on retirement. But even in 1823 he was out of place at the Post Office. It was evidently no place for a gentleman's son.

The clerical establishment of the Post Office consists almost entirely of men and women who have entered the service through open competition. A limited number belong to the Higher Division of the Service, having passed the examination for that body, but the majority of men clerks have entered the service through the Second Division, and if they have attained to higher posts it has been by seniority or merit. Promotion is slow, and while human nature in the higher officials remains in an imperfect state, advancement does not always fall to the most deserving. The conflicting qualifications of seniority and merit have their own times and seasons for application. At one time seniority is emphasised: at another time merit: on the whole the man who possesses both has the best chance.

The Civil Service is not a field which provides scope for a variety of different characters and temperaments. Forty-nine out of fifty posts are of a more or less routine character, and the men who succeed are often those whose minds move with ease in a groove, or they are men who, by long practice and severe discipline, have trained their minds to act with the finish and regularity of a machine. Some of the most successful men in the lower branches of the Service, when promoted to positions where some initiative and diplomacy are required, are obvious failures. The very name “permanent official” is with some people a byword for red-tapeism, obstinacy, circumlocution, and want of imagination, and this is often due to the fact, that owing to their training in the lower branches, many of these men belong to the type who make excellent servants but indifferent masters. Officialism enters into the very tissue of their being. They have allowed it to grow upon them until it has sucked up every trace of healthy variety or originality they may have formerly possessed, and though they be promoted to high places and obtain large salaries, they too often bring the service to discredit in the eyes of the public. It is not because they do not possess sufficient zeal: it is rather because they are righteous overmuch.

Some time ago there was a discussion in the Grand Magazine entitled “The Secret of Success in the Civil Service,” conducted by men such as Sir George Kekewich, Sir Algernon West, Sir Spencer Walpole, Lord Welby, and others. All these men had held high positions in the Service, and their opinions on “the secret” ought to be of some interest to us. But there was no agreement among them. Sir George Kekewich suggested that if you are “socially desirable” everything is open to you. Sir Henry Primrose thought that intelligence is useful, if it is accompanied by good health and industry. Sir Spencer Walpole, with doubtless pleasant recollections of the ways of postal agitators, suggested that a capacity for expressing themselves marks successful Civil Servants. Lord Welby advised perseverance and the patience to wait, while Sir Francis Mowatt recommended trustworthiness and the will to succeed. And he was the only one of the writers to suggest that the confidence of a man's fellows is an important item. His words are wise, and I quote them: “He must determine that his colleagues shall regard him as a good fellow. It is a term not easy to define, but we all know what it means. A good fellow does not give himself airs, is courteous to all he works with or comes in contact with, helps and encourages his juniors, and sets his face against all that he knows to be bad form.” Let us take off our hats to Sir Francis Mowatt. We have no patience with those who talk official platitudes in retirement.

Sir George Kekewich was, however, the only practical man of the whole bunch. He said that “jobbery will never be eliminated from the Civil Service, nor the most efficient men placed at its head, nor the way opened for merit from the very bottom to the very top, until there is established a proper Board of Promotion.”

In a previous number of the same magazine was published a series of explanations of “Success in Literature” by prominent literary men, and it was interesting to notice how candid and genuine and modest were the confessions compared with those of the distinguished Civil Servants. The Civil Servant, even when he is a retired official, seems unable to use his pen without experiencing the necessity to be cautious and commonplace. We can almost hear him saying to himself: “The Civil Service, as we know it, is an organised hypocrisy. But we must not give the show away: we must talk to the public as we used to talk to our subordinates: we must uphold the supremacy of the copybooks.”

As far as I can make out from the admissions of the leading lights of all the professions in this country, the Civil Service is the only career which secures advancement from the very bottom to the very top, as the reward of a simple observance of the law of right and wrong. The lawyer, the artist, the literary man, and the doctor, all admit in these discussions that a certain degree of artfulness, social influence, and eagerness to take advantage of other folks' weakness, are conducive to success in the different professions; it is only when we come to examine the claims of the Civil Service that we find leading authorities unanimous on the point, that stern and unbending uprightness is the sole road to success. It is an astonishing claim, and it almost takes our breath away. The air men breathe in the Civil Service seems too light and rare to support human life. We are on the mountain top when the Civil Service chiefs talk to us. Even the Church confesses to a wise respect for private patronage, and curates are advised to marry into bishops' families. But nothing helps men in the Service except diligent attention to their duties. It was stated by an official witness before a parliamentary commission that there was nothing, except, perhaps, the intervention of a member of Parliament, to prevent a sorter rising to be chief of his Department. The road exists, and to walk along it requires only ability and perseverance. But the most that we can fairly say about such a matter is that the thing is possible, but the immense numbers who make up the Post Office staff render promotion into the higher ranks accessible only for the few. The influences which keep a man down or send him up, irrespective of merit, are as strong in the Post Office as they are in other business undertakings. For one thing, the age limit does not allow sufficient time for the exercise of those qualities of patience and perseverance, which we are told in books on Self-Help are necessary in order to attain our ambitions.

But it is easy to be cynical and to make jokes on the subject of promotion in the Civil Service. The fact remains that in spite of all disadvantages the clerical work of the Post Office is performed in a very efficient manner. There is, perhaps, less wastage of time and force in the Post Office than in any other public institution. And the Post Office clerk has many compensations. He has definite hours of work; he has security for leisure time and security of tenure; he has a good annual holiday; and above all he has the promise of a pension. In some departments his work is extremely interesting; in others it is abominably dull. And good work is always appreciated by his chiefs and by the public. In these commercial days we define the word “appreciation” only in terms of £ s. d.; we are in danger of losing the full meaning of the word. The fact is, every decent man craves for appreciation by his fellows; it is the noblest thing about him; and a man who professes to be superior to this craving, and demands only payment in hard cash, has the experience of centuries against him. For this reason the esprit de corps of the Post Office service is most marked. Lord Rosebery some years ago endeavoured to make “efficiency” a battle-cry for the nation; but so far as the clerical work of the Post Office is concerned he was preaching to the converted. The Post Office man simply smiled as the self-righteous man does in church when he thinks how admirably suited the sermon is to his sinful neighbours. But when self-righteousness is the act of a body and not of an individual it is called esprit de corps, and becomes not a sin but a virtue.

If the high officials of the Post Office have included men who are known in other than Civil Service circles, this is equally true of the clerical establishment. Among them have been authors, artists, sculptors, and musicians. “The extra subject” may or may not help them in their official careers; it certainly enables them to sustain with greater philosophy the routine and the disappointments of office life. Mr. Alfred Parsons, R.A., was a Savings Bank clerk early in his career; so was during many years Mr. W. W. Jacobs, the author of Many Cargoes and Sea Urchins.

A growing proportion of the permanent clerical staff consists of women. At present they are restricted mainly to the account work of the Department; they keep the ledgers of the Savings Bank, they do work in the Money Order and Postal Order offices, and in the Accountant-General's Department. Their scales of pay are as a rule considerably lower than those of the men clerks, and hitherto they have been employed by the State mainly on account of economy. But the women have great ambitions; they have an association, the chief demand of which is equal pay for men and women, and entrance to the Service by the same examination. The advance and success of the woman's movement have had a great influence on the ambitions and hopes of the women clerks, and female employment in the Post Office is probably entering on a new phase. The economical advantage to the State is already not so marked as it used to be, as the commencing salaries of large numbers of the male staff have been reduced, and there is one department at least where the women in their earlier years of service are paid higher salaries than are large numbers of the men. If this latter policy is pursued it means the beginning of a revolution and the upsetting of the old-fashioned social order. The women do their work excellently, and they only ask to be allowed to establish their claim to be able to perform the highest duties that are given to clerks in the Post Office. The women also, it will be seen, are becoming possessed by esprit de corps, the note of the permanent staff of the General Post Office.

I have only one word to say in conclusion. Esprit de corps is a virtue I have claimed for the permanent staff; but this virtue, like all others, has its defects, and one of these is the state of mind which it induces in an official, to look at his Department as an organisation which has already done a maximum amount of good for the public. If you mildly suggest that much remains to be accomplished, he is apt to regard your remark as a want of confidence in himself. It is this attitude on his part which often explains the bad reputation which the term “permanent official” occupies in the minds of the public.