Upon a preceding page has been mentioned the contention of the civil servants that there is an implied contract between the State and the Civil Service that the conditions of employment obtaining at any moment shall not be changed to the disadvantage of the civil servants, except upon payment of compensation to all persons disadvantageously affected; and that unless such compensation is paid, any change in the conditions and terms of employment must be limited to future entrants upon the service of the State, or to persons who shall accept promotion on the express condition of becoming subject to the altered terms of employment.

Before the Select Committee on Civil Services Expenditure, 1873, Mr. W. E. Baxter, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, said: “I am not an advocate for long hours; and in the mercantile business with which I am connected, I have years ago reduced the hours both of the clerks and of the workmen, but I am inclined to think the six hours given to their work by the Government officials [that is, Upper and Lower Division clerks], rather too short a period, and that it might with advantage be somewhat lengthened. At the same time we must always keep in mind that the effect of lengthening the hours would be to cause an immediate demand for an increase of pay. However I have a very strong impression that in most of the Government offices there are too many clerks, and that there might be considerable economy in a reduction of numbers and an increase of hours.”

The Chancellor of the Exchequer stated to the Committee that it would be inexpedient to try to raise the hours of clerks from 6 hours to, say, 7 hours. He said: “I suspect that my one-seventh more time would be more than compensated by my having to pay them a great deal more than one-seventh more salary; and I think it would be very perilous to take up the floodgates in that way.”363

Before the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the Civil Establishments, 1888, Sir Reginald E. Welby, Permanent Secretary to the Treasury, stated that he was in favor of extending the hours of the Upper and Lower Division clerks from 6 hours to 7. The Chairman queried: “But can it be done with existing clerks without a breach of faith?” Sir R. E. Welby replied: “With regard to Lower Division clerks, it is provided that in consideration of an extra payment, which is according to the regulation, a 6 hour office can be turned into a 7 hour office…. There is no provision of that kind for the Upper Division, and, of course, any change would have to be made a matter of consideration…. The arrangement made between the authorities of the Inland Revenue and the Treasury, in those departments of the Inland Revenue which have adopted the 7 hours system, has been that the clerks who were under no stipulation to do 7 hours’ work, should have an extra allowance until promotion. As soon as they are promoted to another class, we have assumed that we have the right to put our conditions upon the promotion, and, therefore, from that time they fall into the ordinary scale of salary without addition.” At this point Mr. H. H. Fowler, a Member of the Commission, queried: “I understand you to say there is no provision made for altering the period of service of an Upper Division clerk from 6 hours to 7 hours. I want to know where is the document by which the State binds itself over to accept 6 hours’ work …?” “Nowhere. The only thing is that when he enters the office he is told that the hours are from 10 to 4, or from 11 to 5.” Mr. Fowler continued: “I consider this is a question of vital importance, and I want to have it very distinctly from you: I want to know where is the contract between the State and any Upper Division clerk in any department, that he is only to work 6 hours a day?” “There is no such document that I know of, and no such understanding further than the statement upon his entering the office that the hours are such and such.” “But I want to ascertain whether there would be even an approach to a breach of faith (if such a term may be used) if the State says: ‘We insist upon our servants working for us 7 hours a day?’” “None in my mind, and I may add that it is generally known that the hours are so and so, but longer hours when required” [on exceptionally busy days].

To Sir T. H. Farrer, Permanent Secretary to the Board of Trade, 1867 to 1886, the Chairman of the Royal Commissoincommission said: “What is your view with reference to its being fair or necessary to increase the pay if seven hours’ work be asked from an Upper Division clerk. Do you think there is any contract to do only 6 hours’ work?” “No, there is no contract whatever; theoretically the rule is that civil servants are to do the business that is required of them. The practical difficulty remains that if you do it you may have a great uproar. You may cause discontent, and you may have, as I said before, pressure in the House of Commons; but theoretically, and as a matter of right, I can see no reason why every officer should not be obliged to give 7 hours for the existing pay.” “Have you not to some extent recognized it364 by creating a different scale of pay in the Lower Division for 7 hours than for 6 hours?” “Yes, you have, and I am very sorry for it; when I say you have, I was a party to it,365 but I am sorry that we did it.” “But you are of course of opinion that when you announce that the office hours are from 10 to 4, it means that these are the hours of public attendance, but that it does not in any way prevent the head of the office from asking the clerks to stop until the work is done?” “No; but the larger your class of Lower Division clerks, the more you will find that the hours become fixed hours, and if they are asked to attend beyond them [because of unusual pressure of work], they will ask for extra pay for attendance.”366

In 1881, Mr. Fawcett, Postmaster General, created for the provincial towns the class of “telegraph clerks,” who are recruited from the first class of telegraphists, and act as assistants to the assistant superintendents. Since the men in question were styled clerks, they immediately contended that their hours of work should be reduced from 8 hours a day to 39 hours a week, the hours of the clerks proper. The Department always has refused to recognize that claim. But Mr. Beaufort, Postmaster at Manchester, acting on a misreading of the rules, from 1884 to 1890 granted the telegraph clerks at Manchester the 39 hours a week. In 1892 the hours were raised to the correct number, namely 8 hours a day, with half an hour for a meal. In 1896, 9 telegraph clerks from Manchester sent a spokesman to the Tweedmouth Committee to state that they had become telegraph clerks in 1890, when the hours were 35 a week, and that they deemed it a “hardship” to be compelled to work 8 hours a day.367

In November, 1902, Mr. Austen Chamberlain, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, stated in the House of Commons: “The town postmen at Newton Abbot were formerly paid on too high a scale [in consequence of an error of judgment made by a departmental officer]. The wages were accordingly reduced some years ago, but the postmen then in the service were allowed to retain their old scale of payment so long as they should remain in the service, and the new scale was applied only to postmen who entered the service subsequently. This will account for there being temporarily two scales for postmen at Newton Abbott.”368

In 1881, Mr. Fawcett, Postmaster General, established for Metropolitan London the class of “senior telegraphists,” with a salary rising by annual increments of $40, from $800 to $950. He intended that this class should be filled by the promotion of men from the first class of telegraphists who possessed exceptional manipulative efficiency as well as sufficient executive ability to act as assistants to the assistant superintendents. But as a matter of fact many men were promoted to this class by mere seniority and without reference to their qualifications. In 1890, however, under Mr. Raikes, Postmaster General, the Department resolved to promote to the senior class no more men who were not fully qualified.369 And in 1894, the Department imposed a technical examination370 between the first class of telegraphists and the senior class, in order to insure that all men promoted to the senior class should have the qualifications required of them. Mr. H. C. Fischer, Controller of the London Central Telegraph Office, said of this examination: “It is not considered unjust that this should have been enforced in the case of men who had always been employed on instrument duties, and who had only themselves to blame if they neglected to acquire some knowledge of technical matters, which all skilled telegraphists are expected to possess…. Even before the institution of the examination it was always held that the possession of technical knowledge gave the man an additional claim to promotion to the senior class.”371

Before the Tweedmouth Committee the representatives of the first class telegraphists complained of the technical examination as a “grievance.” They said: “The regulation came into operation at once, an act which is regarded as exceptionally unjust toward men of more than 20 years’ service, who, up to that time had understood from the general practice of the Department, that, other things being equal, good conduct and manipulative efficiency would secure promotion. Now, however, the possession of technical knowledge is added as a necessary qualification before promotion to the senior class, and this without a coincident rise in the maximum [salary] of the first class as compensation for the additional demand upon the capacity of the staff.” As the alternative to the raising of the maximum salary of the first class [$800], “it was earnestly contended that the scale to which the officer is raised on passing the examination should be materially enhanced [beyond the present maximum of $950] in recompense for the further additional demand upon his time, and for his pecuniary outlay in preparing himself for the requirements of the Department.”372

Prior to November, 1886, special intelligence was required of the sorters of foreign letters in the London Central Post Office, who were correspondingly well paid. The wages of the first class of sorters of foreign letters began at $13.75 a week, and rose to $17.50, by triennial increments of $1.25 a week. Those of the second class began at $11.25, and rose to $13.75, by annual increments of $0.50 a week. But in consequence of a material simplification of the duties of the foreign letter sorters, consequent upon the changes in the international postage charges, the Department resolved, in November, 1886, to replace the two classes of sorters of foreign letters by one class, with wages ranging from $12.50 a week to $15.373 It was provided, however, that the existing sorters of the first class should retain the old scale of wages; and that the existing sorters of the second class should have the option of immediate promotion to the new class, with wages rising from $12.50 to $15, or, “of being advanced to the $13.75 to $17.50 scale, in the order in which they would have attained to that scale if the old first class scale had not been abolished.” In other words, the men who, prior to November, 1886, had been in line for ultimate promotion to a class carrying wages of $13.75 to $17.50, were offered the option “of being regarded as having a vested interest to rise to $17.50 a week, as vacancies should occur.”374

In 1895, Mr. H. B. Irons, a second class sorter in London, appeared before the Tweedmouth Committee to present the grievance of himself and colleagues, who, prior to 1886, had given up the position of first class letter carriers to become second class letter sorters in order to improve their prospects of promotion. The grievance was that the prospects of promotion of letter sorters had been curtailed by the abolition of the sorterships of foreign letters in 1886, and the abolition of the sortership of the first class of inland and foreign newspapers in 1890. Mr. Irons alleged that he would have remained a letter carrier had he foreseen the changes in question.375 His argument was that the civil servant must be exempt from the ordinary chances and vicissitudes of life.

In 1890 some senior telegraphists protested that they ought to be made assistant superintendents, alleging that they were performing the duties of assistant superintendents. Mr. Raikes, Postmaster General, found that some of the duties of the complainants were of the nature alleged, but not all of them. Therefore, he made the complainants, forty-nine in number, second class assistant superintendents. By 1896, this new class had come to number sixty-five.

From 1881 to 1890, the proportion borne by the senior telegraphists to the first class and second class telegraphists had ranged between 1 to 6.6 and 1 to 7.7. The promotion of forty-nine senior telegraphists in 1890, and of the others in subsequent years, raised the proportion in question to 1 to 10, in 1895. But counting senior telegraphists and second class assistant superintendents, there was, in 1895, one of these superior officers to each 6.5 of first class and second class telegraphists. In other words, the rate of promotion of first class and second class telegraphists to appointments superior to the first class of telegraphists, but inferior to the position of assistant superintendent, had been more rapid in 1891 to 1895, than it had been in 1881 to 1890.

In 1895, Mr. Nicholson, Chairman London Branch of the Postal Telegraph Clerks’ Association, appeared before the Tweedmouth Committee to voice the grievance of the first class and second class telegraphists, which was, that the rate of promotion from the second class and first class had decreased, as shown by the fact that there was only one senior telegraphist to each ten first class and second class telegraphists. Mr. Nicholson contended that the increase of telegraphic messages consequent upon the introduction of the charge of 12 cents for 12 words had necessitated the creation of a new class, the second class superintendents; and that the first class and second class telegraphists had a right to demand that they should derive benefit from that increase of traffic and that necessity of creating a new class of officers. That the Department’s failure to fill the vacancies created in the senior class of telegraphists by promotions to the class of second class superintendents, had deprived the first class and second class telegraphists of all advantage arising out of the creation of a new class of officers, the second class assistant superintendents.376

The nature of the claim made by the Chairman London Branch of the Postal Telegraph Clerks’ Association is forcibly illustrated by the following incident from the proceedings of the Royal Commission on Civil Establishments, 1888. Mr. H. A. Davies, the official representative of the clerks in the Receiver and Accountant General’s Office of the General Post Office, had made a similar demand on behalf of the men whom he represented. The Chairman asked him: “Does a man enter the public service on the assumption that all the upper places are to remain the same as when he enters…. If you and I enter the public service finding a certain Department, the Post Office or any other, with twenty posts above to which we had a reasonable hope, if we behaved well, and showed merit; if administrative reform takes away five of these posts, are we entitled to compensation, because that is what it [your allegation of grievance] comes to? Can you say, there being no contract whatever between me and the State when I entered the office as a clerk, no contract whatever that I should attain to a higher post, except when there is a vacancy, that I have a claim [to compensation] when administrative reform takes away some of the other places?” The spokesman of the Post Office clerks replied: “If I were defending that [position] to Parliament, I think I should say that the country has a certain duty toward men who, when they entered the service, had, judging by the precedents of their office, a fair prospect of reasonable promotion, and that if any economy is effected by subsequent administrative reforms, the sufferers deserve some consideration.”377

From 1885 to 1888 Mr. Lawson, M. P.,378 was a Member of the Royal Commission appointed to inquire into the Civil Establishments. In March, 1889, he intervened in the administration of the Post Office by asking the Postmaster General how many vacancies there were in the first class of telegraphists at the Central Telegraph Office, London; how long those vacancies had been open, and whether the Postmaster General had received a petition from the second class telegraphists for their promotion; and whether there was anything to prevent him from complying with the request. The Postmaster General replied that on January 1, 1889, there had been 53 vacancies. “To thirty-four of those vacancies I have made promotions within the last few days; and this, practically, is an answer to the petition of December, 1888.”379 The reader will recall that in February, 1888, Mr. Lawson had intervened on behalf of a letter carrier who had been dismissed in 1882. In 1889 to 1892, and 1897 to 1904, Mr. Lawson was a Member of the London County Council.

In June, 1902, Mr. Hay, M. P.,380 asked the Postmaster General, through the Financial Secretary to the Treasury: “With reference to the fact that the proportion of appointments above $800 a year in the Central Telegraph Office, London, now bears the same relation to the staff below that salary as during the period when the circular [1881 to 1891] was issued promising a prospect of $950, whether he is aware that during the years 1882 to 1892 the proportion was one appointment above $800 to 5.5 below [that salary], and that the proportion at the present time is one appointment above $800 to 6.4 below; and, seeing that this difference of proportion represents nearly forty appointments, above $800, whether he will take steps to readjust that proportion on the basis of 1 to 5.5?”381 In 1906, Mr. Hay was made a member of the Select Committee on Post Office Servants.

In April and in August, 1902, Captain Norton asked the Postmaster General, through the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, to appoint so many additional senior telegraphists that it should no longer be necessary to call on men in the class below to act as substitutes for the senior telegraphists who were taking their annual leave of one month.382 In 1906, Captain Norton became a Junior Lord of the Treasury in the Sir Campbell-Bannerman Ministry.

In February, 1902, Mr. Plummer383 stated that at Newcastle-on-Tyne thirty-eight telegraphists, who had, on an average, served 27 years each, were waiting for promotion. “Will the Postmaster General facilitate promotion by enforcing in the future the Civil Service Regulation with reference to retirement384 at the age of sixty years?” Mr. Austen Chamberlain, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, replied: “The Postmaster General would not feel justified in enforcing the retirement of any efficient officers for the purpose of accelerating the promotion of others.” On August 1, 1902, Captain Norton repeated the request.385

On November 24, 1902, Mr. O’Brien asked the Postmaster to create more rapid promotion at Liverpool by retiring all men who had qualified for the maximum pension [two-thirds of salary], irrespective of the fitness of such men to continue to serve.386

On June 19, 1902, Mr. Keir Hardie asked the Secretary to the Treasury, as representing the Postmaster General: “Whether he will state the special qualifications which necessitate the retention in the Postal service of the assistant superintendent, Mr. Napper, and the inspector, Mr. Graham, at the West Central District Office, after reaching 60 years of age; and if the probable date of retirement can be given?” On July 28, 1902, Mr. Keir Hardie asked: “If he will state what are the special qualifications which necessitate the retention of the inspector, Mr. E. Stamp, at the North Western District Office, after attaining the age of 60 years; and if he can give the probable date of this officer’s retirement?”387

Any officer who is retired with a pension, on account of ill health, before he is sixty years of age, may, if he recovers his health, be recalled to duty at the discretion of the head of his Department or of the Treasury. Under such circumstances the officer receives the salary of his new office and so much of his pension as shall be sufficient to make his total income equal to the original pension. Under the foregoing rule two officers were made respectively postmaster at Bristol and postmaster at Hastings.

Before the Tweedmouth Committee, Mr. Uren, President of the Postmasters’ Association, protested against such “blocking of some of the best offices by pensioners…. Here are two good offices, one with $4,000 a year, and the other with $2,750, which are taken up by pensioners who recover their health, and so block a line of promotion…. I only mention these as the two most recent cases with which this sort of thing has happened, but they are not the only occasions by a good many, which I am instructed to bring before your Committee as a fair subject for consideration.” Mr. Crosse, another witness, added: “The Postal Clerks’ Association also desire to endorse the evidence put forward by the Postmasters’ Association as to the anomaly and injustice of certain postmasters being retained in the service who are in the receipt of pension and salary from the Department.”388

Prior to August, 1891, the postmen of metropolitan London were divided into two classes: the second class, with wages rising from $4.50 a week to $6, by annual increments of $0.25 a week; and the first class, with wages rising from $6 a week, to $7.50, by annual increments of $0.25 a week. In consequence of the rapid growth of the postal business, however, the postmen frequently passed through the second class into the first class, not in six years, but in from two to five years. But the rate of promotion from the second class into the first differed materially in the several metropolitan branch offices, because of the unequal growth of business at those several offices. That inequality of promotion violated the ideal389 of the civil servants, which is, that all should fare alike; and therefore, the postmen demanded that the division into two classes be abolished, and that every postman should rise, by stated annual increments, from the initial wage of $4.50 to the final wage of $7.50. But the abolition of classification would put an end to the possibility of those rapid passings through the stages between $4.50 and $6 that had been of frequent occurrence in the past in some of the metropolitan branch offices. By way of compensation for the loss of that chance the postmen demanded that the annual increment be increased beyond $0.25 a week.

The Department, in August, 1891, abolished the classification of the postmen, but it refused to raise the annual increment. It said that the rapid promotion from $4.50 to $6 that had characterized the past had been an accident, that it had not been foreseen, and that the men who had entered the service while it had obtained had not acquired a vested right to it. In 1896 the men who had been postmen prior to the abolition of classification appeared before the Tweedmouth Committee with the statement that they “were under the impression that it was an official principle that no individual should suffer by the introduction of a new scale of promotion or wages.” They demanded compensation for the fact that they had lost, in 1891, the possibility of passing in less than the regular time from the wage of $4.50 to that of $6. They stated that they were prepared to show that “they had suffered material pecuniary loss … amounting in some cases to about $500.”390 All of which goes to show that in the British Post Office service the abolition of a grievance can in turn become a grievance.

Before the Tweedmouth Committee appeared also the representatives of the telegraphers, to demand the abolition of the division of the telegraphers into classes, with promotion by merit between the classes. They demanded amalgamation into a single class, in which each one should pass automatically from the minimum pay to the maximum, provided he was not arrested by the efficiency bar, to be placed at $800 a year. Mr. E. B. L. Hill, Assistant Secretary, General Post Office, London, began his discussion of this demand by quoting with approval the conclusion of the Telegraph Committee of 1893, which was: “We have taken great pains to investigate this matter. Almost without exception the provincial postmasters and telegraph superintendents were opposed to an amalgamation of the classes, and gave the strongest testimony to the value of the present division [into classes] as a means of discouraging indifference, and encouraging zeal and efficiency. We think … that for purposes of discipline it is desirable to maintain the division of the establishment into two classes.” Mr. Hill continued by saying that in the course of the last three or four years he had changed his opinion, and had come to the conclusion that amalgamation into one class must come. “The staff seems to desire, first of all, equality, and the abolition of classification seems to insure the fulfillment of that wish. At the same time classification is a valuable incentive to exertion and efficiency….”391

In 1896 the proportion borne by the supervising officers above the rank of first class sorting clerks to the total staff of sorting clerks was 18.85 per cent., whereas the proportion borne by the officers above the rank of first class telegraphists to the total staff was 12.59 per cent. At the same time the proportion borne by the first class clerks to the total of first and second class clerks was 20.17 per cent. on the postal side of the service, and 24.64 per cent. on the telegraph side. In other words, the chances of promotion to a supervising position are much better in the postal branch than in the telegraph branch; so much so, that to an able and energetic man, the postal branch is more attractive than the telegraph branch, even though the chances of reaching a first class clerkship are somewhat better in the telegraph branch than in the postal branch. But the letter sorting clerk’s work is more irksome than the work of the telegraphist, and therefore “the telegraphists are usually reluctant, notwithstanding the better prospects of promotion, to accept work on the postal side.” For example, in the four years ending with 1896, only ten telegraphists at Birmingham had themselves transferred to the postal side, and three of those ten had themselves re-transferred to the instrument room, because the work on the postal side proved too hard for them. Again, on March 6, 1896, Mr. Harley, the postmaster at Manchester, issued the following notice: “I should like to afford an opportunity to telegraphists in this office of becoming acquainted with letter sorting duties, and, with this view, if a sufficient number of officers apply, I will arrange an evening duty of from 2 to 3 hours in the sorting office for a month in every three, such duty to form a portion of their 8 hours’ duty. About 50 officers would be required to enable me to carry this suggestion into effect, and I shall be glad if all officers who are disposed to avail themselves of this opportunity of acquiring postal knowledge will submit their names.” At the end of three weeks Mr. Harley had not had a single response, though he had in person explained to a number of “representative telegraphists the advantage which a knowledge of postal work would give them.”

The telegraphists, as a body, decline to avail themselves of the opportunities offered them to improve their chances of promotion; none the less they allege they have a grievance in the fact that their chances of promotion are not so good as are the chances of the sorting clerks. They demand that the Post Office redress their grievance, either by increasing the number of telegraph supervising officers, or by raising the salaries of the first and second class telegraphists sufficiently to compensate the telegraphists for their smaller chance of becoming supervising officers.392

The telegraphists even try to bring pressure on the Government to stop the Post Office from forcing them to learn letter sorting. For example, in 1896, the Post Office required the telegraphists and sorters employed in the Oxford Central Post Office to work at the pleasure of the Oxford postmaster at letter sorting or at telegraphing. The Oxford telegraph clerks argued that they had contracts with the Government to work as telegraph operators, and that the Government had no right to force them either to do sorting, or to suffer transfer to some other office where the convenience of the Government would not be affected by their refusal to act as sorters. The clerks kept up their agitation for years, and in December, 1902, they induced Mr. Samuel,393 M. P., to champion their cause in the House of Commons.394 Mr. Samuel, in 1895 and 1900, had contested unsuccessfully South Oxfordshire. He took “First Class Honors” at Oxford, and he has published: Liberalism, Its Principles and Purposes. In 1906, Mr. Samuel became Under Home Secretary in the Campbell-Bannerman Ministry.

In June, 1904, Mr. William Jones asked the Postmaster General: “Whether he is aware that for some time past endeavors have been made to compel the telegraph staff at Oxford to perform postal duties, and that they have been informed that they would be removed compulsorily to other offices in the event of the men declining to perform those duties; and whether, in view of the declaration of previous Postmasters General, that telegraphists who had entered the service before 1896 are exempt from the performance of postal work, he will explain the reasons for his action?” Lord Stanley, Postmaster General, replied: “The telegraph work at Oxford has of late considerably fallen off [in consequence of the competition from the telephone], and there is consequently not sufficient work to keep the officers in the telegraph office fully occupied. Their services have therefore been utilized for the benefit of the Department in such manner as the exigencies of the service require. All officers of the Department are expected loyally to perform any work required of them which they are capable of undertaking; and unless some means can be found of utilizing the services of redundant telegraphists at the offices where they are at present employed, a transfer to another office is the only alternative.”395 Mr. Jones had sat in Parliament since 1895. He is a private tutor at Oxford; has been assistant schoolmaster at Anglesey; and has served under the London School Board.396

Within ten days of the Jones episode, Mr. Dobbie,397 who had just been sent to Parliament to represent Ayr Burghs, Scotland, intervened on behalf of the Glasgow Post Office clerks, who objected to being compelled to do dual duties.398 At about the same time Mr. Henderson, who, before entering Parliament, had been a Member of the Newcastle Town Council, intervened on behalf of one Chandler, a sorting clerk and telegraphist at Middlesbrough, who had been informed that his increment would be withheld because of his ignorance of telegraphy. The Postmaster General replied: “All the circumstances of his case have already been examined more than once both by my predecessor and myself, and I am quite satisfied that he has received proper treatment.”399

In October, 1906, Mr. Parker, M. P., intervened on behalf of some telegraph clerks at Halifax who were being made to sort letters.400

The Bradford Committee on Post Office Wages, 1904, reported: “…it was pointed out that in the larger offices promotion is better on the Postal side…. This is admitted, though we understand that it is open to any telegraphists to acquire a knowledge of Postal business, and so qualify for promotion on either side. It is found that this is not done, however, as the men prefer the Telegraph work to the more irksome Postal duties.”

The Post Office gives those counter men of London and Dublin who receive or pay money over the counter, a risk allowance, for the purpose of reimbursing them for any errors that they may make in dealing with the public. No such allowance is given to the postal clerks in any other city; nor are such allowances paid by railway companies or other private employers. Upon the provincial Post Office clerks making a demand for equal treatment with the London and Dublin clerks, the Department decided to discontinue the allowances in London and Dublin “as to future entrants to the postal service,” and under “the most sacred preservation of all existing interests.”401 The Tweedmouth Committee endorsed this resolution, with the statement that “the rights of existing holders of risk allowances should, of course, in all cases be maintained.”

The Tweedmouth Committee suggested a new scale of pay for the several kinds of letter sorters in London. That new scale was suggested for two reasons: for the purpose of discontinuing the complex system of special allowances that had sprung up; and for the purpose of reducing the pay of several classes of sorters, the existing scale of payment being too high. The Committee proposed that all existing rights be safeguarded, saying: “Present holders of allowances should enter the [new] scale of salary at a point equal to their previous salary and allowances combined, and wherever the maximum of the present scale together with the allowances exceeds the maximum of the new scale, that, but no further excess, should be granted.”402

The Tweedmouth Committee also reported: “We think that the holidays of the Dublin and Edinburgh [telegram] tracers should for the future be 14 week days, the same period as London men performing the same duties, instead of 3 weeks as at present, the change as to holidays of course not applying to present members of the class.”403

The Tweedmouth Committee concluded that the holidays given to the letter sorters and the telegraphists in London and in the provincial towns were excessive. It proposed that the annual vacation of 21 week days during the first 5 years of service and of one month after 5 years of service, be reduced, to respectively 14 week days and 21 week days. It added: “It is not, however, suggested that this change should apply to those officers already in the service who receive a leave of 3 weeks during the first 5 years, nor is it proposed to curtail the leave granted to those officers who have already served 5 years, and are, therefore, in enjoyment of a month’s holiday.”404

Before the Royal Commission on Civil Establishments, 1888, Sir Reginald E. Welby, Secretary to the Treasury, testified that throughout the Civil Service the Upper Division Clerks had 48 working days’ vacation a year, besides the usual holidays. He said that but for custom, which had become “almost common law,” there was no reason for giving such a “very liberal” annual vacation. But he added that any change should be made to apply only to future entrants to the public service.405

In 1892 the Department increased from 21 week days, to one calendar month, the annual leave of all men in the Central Post Office, London, who were in receipt of $750 a year, or more. In the following year, 1893, the Department gave the same increase to men with $750 a year, or more, in the branch offices of Metropolitan London, and in the offices of the provincial towns. In 1895 the representatives of the men who had not obtained the increase of annual leave until 1893, appeared before the Tweedmouth Committee with the demand for ten days’ pay by way of compensation for the fact that, in 1892, they had “lost ten days.”406

The tenacity with which the civil servants resist any change in the conditions of service that is to their advantage, is further illustrated by the following incidents.

Down to 1880, the overseers in the postal service, who are on their feet all day, had one day a week of relief from duty. In 1880 that allowance was reduced to half a day; and in 1893 it was discontinued altogether. In each case the change was made to apply only to the future entrants upon the office of overseer. In 1896 the new entrants upon the office still were complying under protest only with the requirement of the Department that they sign a paper stating that they were not entitled to any weekly “relief leave of absence.”407

There are four Monday Bank Holidays in the year; and for several years prior to 1892, the Telegraph Branch, as an act of grace, gave a Saturday holiday to those “news distributors” whose services could be spared on the Saturdays preceding Monday Bank Holidays. In 1892 it ceased to be possible to continue this act of grace without employing men on over-time, and therefore the practice was discontinued. In 1896 the news distributors complained before the Tweedmouth Committee that the withdrawal of “the days of grace was a grievance with which they would like the Committee to grapple.” The spokesman of the news distributors said: “After having enjoyed the privilege for [several] years it was withdrawn, an arbitrary course, almost, it is thought, without precedent. To grant a privilege, and then take it away, displayed a lamentable want of that courtesy that we think should be inseparable qualities of power and position.”408

In June, 1904, Mr. Shackleton409 intervened in the House of Commons on behalf of some men in the Liverpool Post Office, whose grievance was that an interval of 15 minutes, given as “an act of grace,” had been reduced to 10 minutes.410

In July, 1905, Mr. James O’Connor, M. P. for Wicklow, intervened in a similar matter on behalf of the men at the London West Central District Office.411

Before the Royal Commission on Civil Establishments, 1888, Sir Lyon Playfair was asked whether it would not be better to replace by boy clerks the “writers” employed in the past. Sir Lyon replied: “I think that would be better for the civil service and better for the boy clerks themselves. Of course, regard should be had to the writers who are employed now, and the change should be made by not taking on more, and not by dispensing with those that are now employed.” A moment before, Sir Lyon Playfair had been asked: “The writers are now a very large and very important body in the public service, are they not?” He had replied: “Yes, and they make you feel their largeness and importance by Parliamentary pressure.”412 Sir Lyon Playfair had been Chairman of the Royal Commission on the Civil Service which had sat from 1875 to 1876; and he had been the author of the Playfair Reorganization of the civil service in 1876.

Before the Committee on Civil Services Expenditure, 1873, Mr. W. E. Baxter, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, said: “…but I may say at once in regard to the matter of the travelling expenses of county court judges, that I think the whole thing has hitherto been in such an unsatisfactory state that it would be very difficult to defend the action of the Treasury in various matters connected with it.” Thereupon Mr. West, a Member of the Committee, queried: “Acting in accordance with that view last year, the Chancellor of the Exchequer endeavored to reform the system as to existing judges and as to future judges, did he not…? Is that reform being now pursued with regard to the existing judges?” The Financial Secretary to the Treasury replied: “Not in regard to existing judges. I have always been of opinion that it is very difficult to go back upon arrangements which have been made in the past, however injurious to the public service and uneconomical they may have been, and that it would be better for economists [persons desiring to effect economy] to direct their attention to preventing new arrangements of a similar character.”413

The thoroughly unbusinesslike spirit of the postal employees is illustrated still further in the following “grievance” laid before the Tweedmouth Committee by the official representatives of the postal employees, who spoke, not as individuals, but as the instructed representatives of their respective classes of public servants.

Mr. G. McDonald presented the grievance of the “news distributors,” who “are the picked men of the Telegraph Service, chosen on the ground of exceptional merit.” He complained that there was not sufficient opportunity for promotion, since [the automatic] promotion was limited to postmasterships worth from $1,000 to $1,250 a year, and there were not enough postmasterships of that kind. Mr. McDonald admitted that men under 35 years “by competitive examination,” could rise out of the class of News Distributors to surveyors’ clerkships; but he argued that since such promotion was attained by competitive examination, “it must be credited to the man himself who wins his position, and I therefore beg to suggest that it cannot count as promotion in the ordinary sense.”414

Another grievance of the News Distributors was that they were not “treated and classed” as Major Division Clerks, though they were paid on the scale of such clerks. They were compelled to work 48 hours a week, whereas Major Division Clerks worked only 39 hours a week.415

Mr. Alfred Boulden presented the telegraphists’ grievances as to pensions. He demanded that retirement on pension should be optional at the age of fifty; and that if a man died in harness, such deduction as had been made from his salary toward the pension fund, should be paid to his heir-at-law. Mr. H. C. Fischer, Controller London Central Telegraph Office, replied that “optional retirement at 50 years of age would result in the more healthy members of the staff retiring at that age, and seeking other employment to add to their income, leaving the less healthy and less useful persons to hang on in the service as long as they could.”416

Mr. A. W. North presented another grievance, namely, that a female telegraph clerk can become a female superintendent in 21 years, whereas a male telegraph clerk can reach the corresponding position only after 27 years of service.417

Mr. J R. Lickfold appeared as the representative of the postal employees to demand that in the case of an employee having failed to appear for duty, the Department should accept without any inquiry whatever the medical certificate of any physician. At this time it was the practice of the Department to doubt the genuineness of the illness and the bona fides of a medical certificate only in case “the man had a bad record for frequent short sick absences,” “though it was a well known fact that private [physicians’ as distinguished from departmental physicians’] certificates could be obtained for 12 cents without even the doctor seeing the patient, but on a mere statement of his symptoms from somebody else.” In support of this request, Mr. Lickfold, as the instructed representative of the postal employees, could make no better argument than to cite the dismissal, early in 1894, of two railway Post Office sorters, W—— and J——. In the evidence in rebuttal, Mr. J. C. Badcock, Controller London Postal Service, gave the following account of the episode in question. W—— and J—— were absent from duty from January 8 to 11 inclusive. On January 10 they sent in medical certificates dated the 8th, but the date of one of the certificates had apparently been changed from the 9th. W——’s landlady testified that W—— and J—— had returned to W——’s lodgings on the 8th, shortly after the departure of the mail train, saying that they had missed the mail, but saying nothing of illness. She added that both men had been repeatedly at W——’s lodgings on the 8th and 9th. Both W—— and J—— were absent from their lodgings during the greater part of the three days from the 8th to the 10th. The Post Office inspector found J—— in bed on the night of the 10th. J—— told him he had not seen W—— since the 6th, gave evasive answers, and contradicted himself. The inspector also found W—— on the night of the 10th, and gave an equally unfavorable report upon W——’s answers. On the 11th, the Departmental Medical Officer found both men in W——’s room, and reported there was no reason why both men should not have been on duty from the 8th to the 10th.

Mr. Spencer Walpole, Permanent Secretary of the Post Office and a Member of the Committee, said to the witness: “Have you any doubt that the Department would not have taken the extreme course of dismissing any of its servants on the divided opinion of two medical men, if there had been no previous cases against them…? These men are described as deliberate malingerers?” The Chairman of the Committee added: “Do you not think it would be wise that before bringing forward a particular case of this sort, you should inform yourself thoroughly as to the nature of the case, and as to the character of the men to whom you refer?”418

A very large portion of the evidence presented before the Tweedmouth Committee, which evidence covered upward of a thousand closely printed folio pages, affords a melancholy comment upon the theory which is rapidly spreading from the German Universities over the English speaking countries, to wit, that the extension of the functions of the State to the inclusion of business enterprises automatically creates a public spirit which strengthens the hands of the political leaders in charge of the State, even to the point of enabling those leaders to reject the improper demands made upon them by organized bodies of voters, and to administer the State’s business ventures with an eye single to the welfare of the community as a whole, particularly the long-run interest of the taxpayers. The so-called Norfolk-Hanbury compromise, the appointment and Report of the Bradford Committee, and the appointment, in 1906, of the Select Committee on Post Office Servants—the last act not having the support, by speech or by vote, of a single man of first rate importance in the House of Commons—are melancholy instances of what that most discerning of statesmen, the late Marquis of Salisbury, used to call “the visible helplessness of Governments.”