In the preceding chapter it was stated that the Government in August, 1903, appointed Sir Edward Bradford, Mr. Charles Booth, Mr. Thomas Brodrick, Mr. R. Burbidge, and Mr. Samuel Fay a Committee “to inquire into the scales of pay received by the undermentioned classes of Established Post Office Servants, and to report whether, having regard to the conditions of their employment and to the rates current in other occupations, the remuneration of (a) Postmen, (b) Sorters (London), (c) Telegraphists (London), (d) Sorting Clerks and Telegraphists (Provincial) is adequate.” No further question was submitted to the Committee.

The Committee, in May, 1904, reported: “We have not seen our way to obtain any specific evidence as to the comparative rates of wages current in other occupations. So far as regards this portion of the reference to us,209 we came to the conclusion that no really useful purpose would be served by asking employers of labor to furnish precise details of the wages paid by them. Certain official information is already available, being obtained and published from time to time by the Board of Trade. This information, supplemented by our own experience, affords more reliable data than any particulars we could hope to obtain in the way of evidence within the limits of an inquiry of reasonable duration.

“Moreover, it is difficult to make any valid comparison between a National Postal Service and any form of private industrial employment, the entire conditions being necessarily so different; payment by results and promotion or dismissal according to the will of the employer being inapplicable if not impossible under the State.”210

The Committee’s report covers nineteen pages, but only these two paragraphs are in answer to the reference given to the Committee. In them the Committee reports its failure; and with that report of failure the Committee should have contented itself, under all of the rules of procedure governing Committees and Commissions appointed by the British Government. But the Committee ignored the established rules of procedure, roamed about at will, and reopened many of the questions settled by the Tweedmouth Committee, which had sat two years, and had taken upward of a thousand closely printed folio pages of evidence. The Bradford Committee did this in violation of the established usage of the country, as well as in spite of the fact that Mr. Austen Chamberlain, Postmaster General, had closed the speech in which he announced his resolve to appoint the Committee, with the words that he wanted advice on the question of comparative wages only and that he refused to transfer to “any Committee the duty of regulating in all its details the daily administration and work of the Post Office.”

Upon the Report of the Committee, The Economist211 (London) commented as follows: “This Committee was asked to compare the wages of Post Office servants with those paid for corresponding work outside. Their answer was, in effect, that no such comparison could be instituted. Why, when postal servants are taken from various ascertained classes [of society], it should be impossible to compare their pay with that ordinarily received by the same classes in other employments is not obvious. What is obvious is that the Committee either mistook the inquiry entrusted to them, or did not choose to enter upon it.”

The Times212 said: “The reference here is explicit, … The specific question they were asked was the question to which, as our Correspondent says, the taxpayer really wants an answer—namely, are postal servants fairly paid…? This question the Committee has neither answered nor attempted to answer. Passing by the terms of reference altogether, the Report declares that ‘it is difficult’…. But, as an answer to the specific question addressed to the Committee; it is, in our judgment, in the literal sense of the word, impertinent. However, having rejected the criterion propounded to them by the Postmaster General, the Committee proposed to apply a criterion of their own….” The Committee made some general statements as to the rates of wages that should prevail in the public service. They were: “We think that Postal employees are justified in resting their claims to remuneration on the responsible and exacting213 character of the duties performed and on the social position they fill as servants of the State. The State, for its part, does right in taking an independent course guided by principles of its own, irrespective of what others may do; neither following an example nor pretending to set one. It must always be remembered that in the working of a monopoly by the State, the interest of the public as a whole is the paramount consideration, and every economy consistent with efficiency must be adopted. The terms offered by the State should, however, be such as to secure men and women of the requisite character and capacity and ought to be such as will insure the response of hearty service.” If one seeks to find in the foregoing statements an answer to the very matter-of-fact question whether the postal servants’ wages are too high or too low, compared with wages in outside employment, he will have to conclude, with Alice in Wonderland, that “it seems very pretty, but it’s rather hard to understand; somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas, only I don’t know exactly what they are.”

The Committee concluded with the statement that the adequacy of the wages obtaining among the postal employees could be tested by the numbers and character of those who offered themselves; by the capacity they showed on trial; and finally, by their contentment. It found that there was no lack of suitable candidates; that there was no complaint as to their capacity; but that there was widespread discontent. It added that the Tweedmouth and Norfolk-Hanbury settlements did not give satisfaction at the time; and that that dissatisfaction had been “aggravated by the general rise in wages and prices and in the standard of life which took place to some extent even during the two years occupied by the Tweedmouth inquiry (1895 and 1896) and had continued since, culminating, however, in 1900, since when there has been some slight reaction. The same period has seen a great development of Postal and Telegraph business, causing greater pressure of work. This has been combined with lower charges to the public and a considerable increase in Postal Revenue. We therefore consider there is a just claim for revision.”

Taking these statements in their order, one finds, first of all, that the Committee took no evidence on the question how Post Office wages had compared with wages in outside employment previous to the rise in wages and prices in the period from 1895 to 1900, nor on the question of the rise in wages in the Post Office Service in 1896 to 1900, compared with the rise in wages in outside employment and in prices in 1895 to 1900. The first statement of the Committee, therefore, was supported by no evidence, it was a mere assertion. The second statement, namely, that the growth of the Postal and Telegraph business had caused greater pressure of work, also was not supported by evidence. On the other hand, it was absolutely essential that such a statement should be supported by evidence, because it is a fact that in both branches of the Postal Service the policy obtains of having so large a body of employees “that the maximum of work, as a rule, can be dealt with without undue pressure.”214 As to the Post Office having lowered its charges to the public in the period from 1895 to 1900, it is to be said, first, that it does not follow therefrom that wages should be raised; and second, that the penny rate on domestic letters was not lowered, and that the carriage of penny letters is the only work upon which the Post Office makes a profit.215 Finally, as to the statement that there had been, in 1895 to 1904, “a considerable increase in Postal Revenue,” the facts are, first, that the net revenue of the Post Office as a whole increased from $14,640,000 in 1895, to $18,166,000 in 1896, and to $18,781,000 in 1897; but that in the subsequent years, 1898 to 1904, it did not again reach the high-water mark of 1897, and averaged $17,642,000. Second, that in the period, from 1895 to 1904, the Telegraph Branch did not earn operating expenses, the expenses on account of wages and salaries having risen from 11.9 cents per telegram in 1897, to 13.7 cents in 1904. That is a matter of importance, for the recommendations of the Committee extended to the Telegraph Branch as well as to the Postal Branch proper. Again, the Committee had stated that “in the working of a monopoly by the State, the interest of the public as a whole is the paramount consideration, and every economy consistent with efficiency must be adopted.” In the 20 years ending with 1903, the proportion of the Post Office’s gross revenue available for defraying the general expenses of the State had declined steadily from 33 per cent. to 20 per cent.216 Still, again, in the year 1903, the expenses of the Post Office had been increased by $3,000,000 through the Tweedmouth and Norfolk-Hanbury settlements.217 In the face of those facts, the Bradford Committee made recommendations that Lord Stanley, Postmaster General, said would cost $6,500,000 a year.218 The Bradford Committee sought to justify its recommendations with the simple statement that there was “widespread discontent” among the Postal employees. The Postal employees themselves had made demands before the Committee that would have called for the expenditure of an additional $12,500,000 a year. Their attitude to the Committee’s amiable proposal to conciliate them by giving them $6,500,000 a year, is shown in the subjoined extract from the official organ of the telegraph staff. “It is perfectly plain, … that the recommendations of the Committee, well-meaning as we frankly admit them to be, cannot be accepted as a full settlement of the case of the Post Office workers, or as one carrying with it the character of finality. They can only be accepted as an instalment of a long overdue account; and Postal Telegraphists, even if they have to fight alone for their own hand in the future as they did for many long years in the past, will combine for the payment of the balance.”219

That a body of five men, of whom four were respectively a Liverpool merchant and ship owner, a general manager of a railway, a manager of a large wholesale coÖperative society, and a manager of a large department store, could make a Report such as the foregoing one, affords a melancholy illustration of the fact that no matter how far popular governments may go in assuming the conduct of great business enterprises, they never will succeed in creating a public opinion that will sustain them in their efforts to conduct their business ventures on the commonly accepted principles of the business world.

In the House of Commons, Lord Stanley, the Postmaster General, said: “As to the Committee’s Report, it did not comply with the reference, because no comparison was made with the rates of pay in other occupations … but they conclude that as there was discontent there ought to be an increase of wages. That was a direct premium on discontent, a direct encouragement to the employees to say among themselves that if they were to be discontented and to agitate, they would get more in the future. The Committee, on the other hand, went outside the reference, because they proposed a complete reorganization of the Post Office, including overseers, who were not referred to in the reference. On this particular subject they took no evidence…. Since the employees of the Post Office had said in a circular: ‘We wish to make it perfectly clear that we do not regard the Committee as in any sense an arbitration board,’ that was rather against the argument that the Report ought to be accepted as an arbitration award. He did not complain of the ordinary circulars of the employees [sent to Members of Parliament], but he did object to one circular [sent to every Member of the House of Commons], at the bottom of which was a paragraph, which could be torn off, for Members to sign [and mail to the Postmaster General], informing him [the Postmaster General] that he ought to do this or that.220 That [circular] he [Lord Stanley] would not receive…. Coming to the main question, he thought it was obvious that it was impossible for either side when in power to go on for long being swayed in all these questions of increases of wages by any pressure, political or otherwise, that might be put upon them. [Cheers.] The Post Office was not the only party concerned. There was not a class employed by the Government, who, if it saw another class getting an increase of wages by agitation, would not try the same method. He supported cordially the suggestion which had been made in the debate that all questions of pay of employees of the Government should not be referred to the House, but referred to some judicial body on whom no outside influence could be brought to bear, who would look at the matter in dispute as between employer and employee with the object of giving to the employee the wages which in the open market a good employer would give, while at the same time protecting the master—in this case the State—from any outside influence.”221 In conclusion, Lord Stanley made the statement that the adoption of the Committee’s Report would cost “well over $5,000,000 a year.”

Sir Albert Rollit acted as the spokesman of the Postal employees. He is a Solicitor in Mincing Lane and at Hull; a steamship owner at Hull, Newcastle and London; and a Director in the National Telephone Company, which pays its employees materially less than the Post Office pays the employees of the Post Office Telephone system.222 He has been President of the Associated Chambers of Commerce of the United Kingdom, as well as of the London and Hull Chambers of Commerce. He was Mayor of Hull from 1883 to 1885; and for several years past he has been the President of the Association of Municipal Corporations. Sir Albert K. Rollit was not re-elected to Parliament in the General Election of January, 1906; and in the following March, the Postal Telegraph Clerks’ Association passed a resolution “expressing appreciation of the services rendered to the Postal movement in and out of Parliament by Sir Albert K. Rollit, and regret that they were no longer able to command his championship in the House of Commons.”223

After the Balfour Government had rejected the Report of the Bradford Committee, in the interest of the taxpayers, Lord Stanley, Postmaster General, instituted “a careful comparison between Post Office wages and those current in other employments; and, as the result of the comparison, he felt justified in recommending to the Lords Commissioners of His Majesty’s Treasury certain improvements of pay” aggregating $1,861,500 a year.224 The improvements of pay were granted to sorters, telegraphists, sorting clerks and telegraphists, postmen, assistant and auxiliary postmen, and various smaller classes throughout the United Kingdom.

209 There was no reference but that one.