The meeting was called for the 28th June 1873, to be held after the duty,
at eight o’clock in the evening, and the Newspaper Branch at the top of
the building was placed at their disposal. For in those days, in this
particular branch at least, there was a cessation of duty after this
hour. The conditions were bad; but the Post-Office was not always at work
during the whole round of the clock; it was not exactly the ever-panting,
ever-working, never-ceasing, never-sleeping monster it is at the present
day. The floor of the branch would be capable of accommodating over two
thousand men; but it was necessary to make some preparation. A platform
was extemporised from two or three of the facing or stamping tables,
each almost of the dimensions of a respectable platform in itself,
and round this a number of chairs and seats were ranged. The seating
accommodation was, however, principally made up of bundles of disused
mail-bags and baskets, while a considerable number, perhaps the majority,
stood. The success of the meeting from the first moment was beyond all
expectation. If any had fears that the men would be too suspicious of
attending a gathering of this kind within the precincts of the building,
and under the shadow of the department, they were mistaken. Almost
directly the despatches were finished, and the duty done with for the
night, they swarmed in from every part. From every other branch in the
building—for the General Post-Office is a nest of branches, like a
Chinese puzzle-box—and from outside offices they swarmed up the stairs
and through every means of entry. The men from the districts showed up
in full strength, and provided a few spectators for the platform. The
branch in its structure was admirably suited to such a meeting; it was
lofty, and there was a plentiful supply of gas-jets, depending in a long
regiment from the ceiling. By half-past eight, the time for opening the
meeting, the vast room was crowded. Every one was expectant and curious;
this was an auspicious occasion, and there was something of novelty
in the circumstance and the local surroundings. It was pretty well
conjectured that spies would be present, as they were generally to be
looked for at all their open deliberations. They were pretty well known,
but it would have been impolitic, if not impossible, to exclude them.
Those who were among the crowd could not very well on the spot take notes
of what they heard and saw without betraying the real reason of their
presence there. But if it was suspected there were official spies there,
it was more than suspected, it was known almost for a certainty they had
on their side a newspaper reporter, who had been quietly smuggled in with
the crowd of district men. Thus was the prohibition of the officials
evaded; and it was said that the _Standard_ reporter avoided the scrutiny
at the entrance by borrowing a portion of a letter-carrier’s uniform. It
was afterwards said that the enterprising reporter found concealment in
a recess beneath the great gallery clock, which overlooked the whole of
the branch. However this may be, that there was an officially proscribed
“chiel amang them takin’ notes” was sufficiently evidenced a few hours
later, when the morning _Standard_ came out with a report of the night’s
proceedings.

The floor of the branch, which when empty was like the interior of an
enormous barn, by half-past eight was black with men. Not only did they
completely cover the floor in a dense, solidly-packed mass, but they
perched themselves on the tops of the sorting-tables; they swarmed up the
tall slim iron columns which support the roof, and clung there, thirty
feet above those below. Others more venturesome, by the same means, found
a resting-place on the higher ledges of the over-stretching girders,
smothered in dust, their heads in contact with the shelving ceiling.
Hundreds more had to content themselves with catching an occasional
glimpse of the platform and its occupants through the tiers of empty
pigeon-holes, rising from the middles of the sorting-tables into which
the newspapers were sorted. For every one came to see as much as to hear.
A very large number from distant districts had only heard of him, and
wanted to see Booth. They wanted to see what kind of man it was whose
audacity and whose organising resource had so far overcome official
objections as to make this meeting possible, who had thus enabled them to
beard the official lion in his very den. The rostrum on the platform was
contrived of big square mail-baskets and some wooden boxes covered over
with mail-bags, touched up with a piece of green baize in the middle;
and by this there were sitting a few postmen and others. Some one rose
to speak, but the tumultuous outbreak of applause kept him silent on his
feet for fully a minute. This, then, was Booth; and eyes and ears were
strained to better take his measurement, and to catch his words—a rather
short, sturdy man, with a full head and somewhat Gladstonian features. He
spoke for half-an-hour or more, and if at first there were any waverers
in the crowd, there were none when he finished. They would have stormed
the Treasury benches that very night. Other speakers followed, and
emphasised the necessity of laying their plaint before Parliament; and in
the end a provisional committee was elected to draw up the petition. The
lines on which the petition to Parliament was to run were to ask for the
appointment of a Select Committee to inquire into their grievances, and
their claims for better pay and improved prospects of promotion, and the
abolition of Sunday labour.

The petition was accordingly prepared, only however to be returned
as not complying with the standing orders of the House. It was soon
framed on more constitutional lines, and again being forwarded through
the approved channel, the petitioners awaited the result with renewed
confidence. There was a weekly subscription among the men; there were
letters to Parliamentary candidates; there were bushels of circulars
openly posted to sitting members, the folding and addressing being done
by volunteers in their spare time in the official retiring-rooms. Further
than this, Booth now sought the co-operation of the provincial men, and
worked night and day, often depriving himself of sleep to prepare and
send the necessary correspondence. No less a number than three million
tiny circulars were dropped in pillar-boxes all over London, and Booth
and his assistants spent hours of their spare time in disseminating by
this means the seed-corn of discontent. Then one morning the Petition
Committee were sent for by the Controller of the London postal service,
and informed that they had incurred the serious displeasure of the
department, as they were exceeding the bounds of a legitimate movement.
They were informed that they had not confined themselves to formulating
a petition to Parliament, but they had become active in fomenting an
agitation throughout the entire service. They were forbidden to act as a
committee, and they were to receive no recognition from their followers,
and they were forthwith to disband themselves without calling any
meeting. Whatever protest or appeal may have been thought necessary to
save the situation was made, but without avail. There was no alternative
but dismissal. The committee was therefore disbanded, and the affairs
wound up, and balance-sheets issued to the men, the reasons being given
for this strategic movement to the rear.

CHAPTER VII

    ASSERTING THE RIGHT OF PUBLIC MEETING—PUBLIC AND PARLIAMENTARY
    FRIENDS—CONFERENCE OF M.P.’S—THE ORGANS OF THE MOVEMENT—MEETING
    AT EXETER HALL—A MONSTER PETITION TO PARLIAMENT—ELUDING THE LAW
    OF CONSPIRACY.

But it was not Booth’s way to take a defeat so tamely. Almost immediately
the organisation was re-formed on a more definite basis than ever,
with a new high-sounding title of the “United General Post-Office and
Telegraph Service Benefit Society.” Rules were made and collections were
started; Booth was appointed chairman, and a dismissed agitator, named
Hawkins, was engaged as secretary. After the official rebuff the men
felt it unsafe to join openly, but they none the less joined secretly,
and cheerfully responded to the calls upon their purse. Booth animated
the whole movement; and it is probable that but for him the department
would have seen it crumble to pieces, yet they probably saw that his
dismissal just then would only have strengthened his arm against them.
The authorities, however, went so far as to suspend him from duty on
some trivial pretext; and Booth was not slow to turn the fact to his
advantage. He immediately set about organising a public meeting to be
held at the Cannon Street Hotel, 16th July 1873. The objects of this
meeting were twofold: it was to strengthen the hands of the members of
Parliament who were supporting the postal petition, and it provided a
means of protesting against the leader’s unjust suspension. But mainly it
was intended as a hint to the Government, and as a parade of strength to
show that their Parliamentary friends were well supported by a following
in the postal service. A few days previous to the date of the meeting
a conference had taken place in the tea-room of the House of Commons,
attended by nearly every member pledged to their support, from whom the
statement of grievances, made by Booth and several others, received
a very attentive hearing. Among the members of Parliament who had
interested themselves in the postal case were Mr. W. H. Smith, Mr. A. J.
Mundella, Mr. Roger Eykyn, Mr. J. Locke, and several other influential
members. And it was to give support to their friends in the House that
this first Cannon Street Hotel meeting was called.

On the Post-Office vote being taken on Monday, 28th July, the claims of
the aggrieved postal employés were strongly urged upon the attention of
the Government by each of those members who had attended the tea-room
conference, and the advocacy of Mr. W. H. Smith, Mr. Mundella, and
others was particularly able. The reply of the Government was, however,
unfavourable, or at least unsatisfactory.

The antagonism towards their claims, as voiced in the House by the
Postmaster-General and other members of the Government on that occasion,
caused Booth to decide on another public meeting. This meeting of protest
against the decision of the Government was called also in Cannon Street
Hotel, on Tuesday, 5th August, and was to be presided over by Sir John
Bennett. The forthcoming meeting was officially “proclaimed,” and the
men were warned against attending such public demonstrations; but it was
looked forward to with enthusiasm. Elaborate preparations were made for
the forthcoming meeting, and almost all the funds in hand were used to
ensure its success. Five brass bands were engaged, and the procession
of district men then off duty, marshalled by Booth, was to start from
Finsbury Square so as to reach St. Martin’s-le-Grand a minute or so
before eight o’clock, the hour when the staff at the General Post-Office
would cease work. The district contingents turned out strong at the
place of meeting, and by a quarter to eight the procession of postmen
in uniform, followed by an enormous crowd of sightseers, moved in the
direction of Cannon Street by way of St. Martin’s-le-Grand. The five
brass bands blared out some stirring marching tunes, and the procession
was animated with all the enthusiasm of men anxious of defying
authority. On reaching the General Post-Office they were quickly joined
by the letter-sorters, letter-carriers, and others, and their numbers now
swollen to a big battalion, they marched to Cannon Street Hotel as if to
capture a fortress, the bands meanwhile keeping them in step with “The
Postman’s Knock” and “Rule, Britannia.”

The huge hall of the Cannon Street Hotel was filled to overflowing within
five minutes of the arrival of the procession; and the utmost enthusiasm
took possession of them. Sir John Bennett, who had already distinguished
himself as a friend of the postal workers, was punctually in the chair.
Sir John, with his snowy ringlets, his gold spectacles, his velveteen
jacket and Hessian boots, and his fresh, clean-shaven, almost boyish
features, which so belied his years, was a familiar public character,
and the postal employés felt that in securing him for chairman they were
favoured. Among those supporting the platform were Henry Broadhurst—not
yet M.P., but only a working stonemason; George Potter, who then owned
and edited the _Beehive_ newspaper; and Charles Bradlaugh, not yet either
so notorious or so distinguished as he afterwards became.

The speeches were stirring, and the keynote of almost every speaker was
that as postal employés enjoyed the right of every citizen to petition
Parliament, they had no need to fear the petty restrictions of red-tape;
and this inalienable right should be their sheet anchor and their hope.
At the same time the authorities were violently denounced for so meanly
visiting their resentment on the leader Booth by suspending him without
any assigned cause; and, as may be surmised, the most capital was made
out of the incident, the action of the authorities being ascribed to
his having dared to exercise his right as a free-born Englishman; in
which, on the whole, the speakers were probably not far wrong. Mr. M.
C. Torrens, M.P., and other well-known friends of the movement graced
the platform, and formed the necessary firing party. All the speaking
from the platform was done by the public friends and sympathisers; the
postal employés themselves significantly remaining dumb. They had not
yet the right of free speech, though they had asserted the liberty of
holding a public meeting in this fashion; that was to be tested later
on. The public press noticed the meeting at some length; and it acted
as a splendid advertisement for the postal claims. The next day Booth
was ordered back to the Chief Office, not, however, to receive his
sentence of dismissal as was surmised, but to be restored to duty without
suffering the loss of pay usual in such circumstances.

For the purpose of discussing ways and means of raising funds to keep
the fire going and sustaining the enthusiasm of the men, there were also
one or two meetings held at a little hall known as the Albion Hall,
conveniently situated in London Wall, near to the General Post-Office.
Mr. George Potter took the chair, and Sir John Bennett, of Cheapside
fame, ably supported.

Sir John Bennett had proved himself one of the staunchest and most
industrious of their numerous public friends at this period. He had an
especial liking for the postmen, and any one of them in uniform could
purchase a three-guinea watch at his shop at something like thirty-five
per cent. discount. But they were doomed to lose him in a somewhat
peculiar manner. The postal volunteer corps, the then 49th Middlesex,
had been formed on the occasion of the Fenian scare of 1868; and during
a recurrence of a similar alarm from the same causes, a number of the
postmen and others joined the corps in a body. Sir John Bennett was
peculiar in his views of postal patriotism, and dropped the postmen and
their agitation from that moment.

“If,” said he in his blunt fashion, “you who are agitating for better
hours and a better wage can find time to go ‘gallavanting’ about with
weapons of destruction in your hands, you have no reason to ask my
assistance.”

It was scarcely a fair statement of the position; but he was not to be
moved further, and kept his word.

That, however, was a loss not to be sustained till later.

Not long after the great public meeting, and probably resulting from
it to some extent, there was a slight revision in the scales of pay of
the London town letter-carriers. But it was a very niggardly affair,
and the entire benefit secured amounted to about £52 in a period of
fifteen years, or a rise of one shilling and fourpence per week, no
regular addition being made to the maximum or minimum, while even
this small benefit was confined to a small class of about four hundred
men only. This, in the circumstances, could not be accepted as a
complete settlement of all their various claims. It was not only quite
inadequate to meet the needs of the class it was intended to satisfy,
but entirely ignored the claims of the suburban, auxiliary, and country
letter-carriers, and also those of the sorters, assistants, and porters,
many of whom stood in even greater need of an increase of salary
than the limited number who received this slight benefit. This small
unsatisfactory scheme was rendered all the more unsatisfactory by its
giving to the inspectors a really substantial increase amounting to 8
per cent. on their minimum, 25 per cent. on the annual increment, and 20
per cent. on the maximum. The inspectors who thus mostly benefited were
already regarded as comparatively a well-paid class, besides which they
as a body had contributed neither funds nor sympathy to the agitation
which had secured these benefits for them. What was intended as a sop
was only another fresh cause for dissatisfaction; and in any case it was
deemed necessary to prosecute the agitation with renewed vigour.

Thereupon Booth and his associates, with a view of strengthening the
Society and definitely proclaiming their character as trades unionists
pure and simple, got the Postal Union affiliated to the London Trades
Council. They hoped thereby to secure the co-operation of the various
trade societies, should at any time it be deemed necessary or expedient
to call for that assistance which they themselves were prepared to render
to others.

Again, some little time after this great public demonstration, the leader
of the agitation, Booth, found himself suspended from duty by order of
the Controller. It was not that impending dismissal had any terrors for
him, but he was determined to avoid if possible the humiliation of it.
With his usual readiness he decided to take the bull by the horns in
his own fashion. He conceived the idea that unless some such step as he
contemplated were taken at once, his dismissal, which he knew had been
recommended, would this time be certain. He hurried off to the printers
who usually did such work for the movement in those days, but was told
the men could not be prevailed on to work after the usual time. Booth
said he had a job which would engage them all night, and being told that
it was quite impossible, asked to see the men in a body. He came, he
saw, he conquered, and the men agreed to stop the night through for the
production of a cartoon which had been roughly sketched out. It took
three hours to prepare the lithograph-stone, three draughtsmen being
simultaneously engaged on parts of the sketch. During the night and early
morning four or five thousand copies were printed off, and by ten o’clock
they were being sold like hot cakes in St. Martin’s-le-Grand and all
over the City. To ensure their sale and circulation they were virtually
given away to the street-hawkers, who retailed them at a penny apiece.
The first batch was soon exhausted, and before the day was over as many
thousands more were sold. The pictorial lampoon had little of artistic
merit to recommend it; it was fearfully and wonderfully made; the drawing
was vile even for caricature; but the letterpress, the scriptural
quotations wittily applied, and the illustrations together, told. The
broadsheet contained four or five separate illustrations having reference
to the recent great procession of postal employés to Cannon Street Hotel,
“in defiance of official threats”; the question of Sunday labour, hit off
by the figure of a portly bishop offering a tract on Sunday observance
to an overladen postman; the recent postal petition to Parliament, and
cognate matters. Booth, suspended from duty, was represented by a figure
on a gibbet, intended as the mental vision in the mind of the official
who had ordered it; while disposed about in odd corners of the cartoon
was a “spy-glass,” “the bullet,” “ye sack,” labelled “Post-Office
persuaders.” It did not bear criticism, but as the work of a single
night it was interesting; and, what was more, it had some of the effect
intended. The suspended leader was restored to duty the day following.

What had now come to be known as the Postal Petition to Parliament
was from that moment never lost sight of by its promoters and their
followers. Booth and his little staff of lieutenants worked night and
day and every hour that their official duties spared to them to keep
the petition before the members of the House of Commons. One result of
their persistent efforts in this direction was that they had soon quite
a respectable number of Parliamentary friends who promised to support
the motion for inquiry when it came to be raised on the estimates. And
petitioners were not content merely with verbal promises of support,
for where possible they obtained an autograph letter embodying the
promise, which letters were put on record in the _Postman_, the organ of
the movement. Booth during this time was untiringly ubiquitous. He was
everywhere, and his hand was in everything, from getting out circulars to
lobbying M.P.’s. He undertook the duties of the orderly as well as those
of the captain.

Among the petty annoyances to which Booth had been subjected by his
zealous superiors was his being made to finish up his evening duty at the
furthest possible point from his home, his last delivery of letters being
by the Angel, Islington, he living at Brixton. But he now succeeded in
getting on a walk by which he had to deliver the Temple, where eminent
counsel and the élite of the legal profession most do congregate. He did
this with a motive, knowing that he might make friends among those who
could command influence. He soon found an opportunity of making himself
known to every legal M.P. who had chambers in this vicinity, while
those who were prospective candidates for Parliamentary honours no less
escaped his attention. In addition to making friends for the movement by
this means, Booth and his lieutenants—Hawkins, the secretary; Haley, a
fellow-sorter, and virtually second in command; and others, interviewed
eminent divines of every denomination on the sore question of compulsory
Sunday labour in the Post-Office.

Such were the number of promises of support they received from M.P.’s,
and such were their importunities, that at last it was resolved to hold
another conference in the tea-room of the House of Commons to discuss the
petition and decide on some action if possible.

Earl Percy took the chair, and among those present who had pronounced
favourably on the postal claims were Mr. Mundella, Mr. W. H. Smith, and
Mr. Roger Eykyn. A deputation of the aggrieved postal employés had been
invited to urge the points of the petition for a Select Committee of the
House, and these points provided arguments for better pay and improved
prospects of promotion, and the abolition of the hated compulsory Sunday
labour.

The conference listened attentively and sympathetically, as conferences
always do when they are composed of politicians out of office. In
the present instance the tea-room conference was composed chiefly of
Tories who coveted the seats on the Treasury bench then occupied by the
Liberals. There could be little doubt about the honesty of the intentions
of Mr. W. H. Smith, of Mr. Mundella, or of Mr. Roger Eykyn; they each
proved it in every manner possible. They each by this time were well
informed on the postal grievances, having been interviewed privately on
previous occasions. But at this stage of the proceedings the agitators
were not quite sure how far the good intentions of these gentlemen would
be carried into practical effect. For it has ever been a common practice
with the party in opposition, Liberals and Tories alike, just before the
eve of a General Election to gather up all the elements of discontent
throughout the country and promise support to each in turn. But at length
the men, having pleaded their various points, came away fully assured
that in the Tory party lay their principal hope of salvation, though
they were aware that some time must elapse before their petition could
come to be considered by Parliament. Their one aim now being a Select
Committee of Inquiry, their Parliamentary policy became more active than
ever, every by-election being assiduously watched and every candidate
approached by personal interview or by letter.

At this time, between 1872 and 1874, agitation was rife among all
classes of labour throughout the country, and the feeling of discontent
was principally due to the cost of the necessaries of life being out
of proportion to wages. This was followed by a general rise in wages
to meet the increased cost of living among the working population,
many employers, to their credit, voluntarily raising the wages of
their employés. This circumstance very materially strengthened the
postal claim for an increase on their wretched pay; but the Post-Office
as the greatest employer of labour would not concede one farthing
until compelled by the public and Parliament. The officials with
characteristic obstinacy defended the state of stagnation as to wages
and promotion prevailing in the Post-Office. On one occasion, about
this period, when the leaders of the agitation had reason to interview
the Controller on the matter, that official, who considered his wisdom
was none too well paid at £1200 a year, pointed to himself and reminded
them even he had to cut down his luxuries. This provoked the retort
from one of the poorly-paid men, that in his, the Controller’s, case it
simply meant a denial of luxuries, but in their case it meant a denial
of the very necessaries of life for themselves and wives and families.
This might have been dismissed with an official frown as only a mild
impertinence; but the Controller, a thick-set, burly, overfed man,
unwittingly growled out the brutal truth in his rejoinder, “WE don’t
engage your wives and families; WE only want the men!”

But the universal rise in wages everywhere outside the Post-Office could
not but provide them with a further justification for continuing the
agitation for an inquiry. They obtained further funds to carry on the
campaign, and more public friends rallied round them. Daily the postmen
were becoming more than ever objects of sympathy. Subscriptions flowed
in steadily from postal bodies all over the country, and a list of these
subscriptions was published in the _Beehive_ newspaper, which for some
time past had opened its columns to the budding literati of the movement.
The postal organisation had had for some time now an official organ of
its own, the _Postman_; but as it had not the weight and authority of a
public organ, circulating, as it did, among postal servants only, the
assistance rendered by the _Beehive_ was not inconsiderable. Edited by
George Potter, who of course was in full sympathy with the agitation, its
columns placed at the disposal of the postal cause were several times
contributed to by Lloyd-Jones.

One postal contributor to the _Beehive_, who was the literary champion of
the movement, was one of Booth’s lieutenants, a postman, who wrote under
the _nom de plume_ of “Silverstick.” The contributions of “Silverstick”
betrayed no small amount of literary merit, and were eagerly looked for
every issue by the men.

The hospitality of the _Beehive_ was fully taken advantage of at this
time (the official organ of the movement, the _Postman_, having now
fizzled out), and the agitation received no small support from its
powerful advocacy. George Potter, whose name will always be associated
with public reform, gave the postal advocates carte-blanche in the use
of his organ; and the secretary of the postal movement, Hawkins, who
was employed on it, was assisted in every possible manner to bring
postal grievances to the front. Besides the _Beehive_ there had been the
_Postman_, which exclusively devoted itself to the advocacy of their
claims, and which, to an extent, rendered valuable service by being
circulated among their outside public and Parliamentary friends. It may
here be mentioned that the _Postman_ had been started some few years
before, being originally brought out as a small printer’s venture. It was
started at the instigation of a postman named March, who was associated
with the small printer’s business in question, situated in Clerkenwell
Close, and he was principally instrumental in making the _Postman_ the
success it afterwards became. March, the postman agitator, was the
same March who, when he left the postal service built up a flourishing
business as a ballad printer, supplying hawkers and street singers with
topical rhymes, coupled with the publication of more innocent toy-books
and fairy stories for juveniles.

The _Postman_ was almost wholly contributed by the leaders of the
agitation, assisted by notes and scraps of interest from various
correspondents of the different branches of the service. The circulation
was kept going at this time principally by Booth and the others. It was
never allowed to be openly sold in the Post-Office, though means were
found to evade the vexatious prohibition, and the condemned publication
was all the more anxiously looked for when the day of issue arrived.
Booth generally directed special attention to it among the postmen. He
always managed to obtain advance copies, and, knowing the most important
item of news, gave the word to be passed round directly he came on duty,
“Look on page so-and-so of the _Postman_.” Before the duty was over it
had circulated all over the General Post-Office.

In connection with this organ of the movement it may be of interest
to mention that for a time it was machined at the same firm as was the
_Court Circular_ or _Journal_; and there was a story to the effect that
these pages of the two very dissimilar publications being of equal size,
on one occasion two “formes” of type got mysteriously mixed, and to the
amazement of the _Postman_ readers the next issue informed them, after
reporting some of the private doings of the Queen and Court, that her
Majesty had graciously seen fit to order an inquiry into the postmen’s
grievances.

The leaders now decided on a third big public demonstration. The same
preparations as before were made, bands engaged and public men written to
and interviewed to get their presence on the platform. Exeter Hall was
chosen this time as the place of meeting, and when the date, November
18, 1873, arrived the principal anxiety of Booth and his lieutenants
was as to where they should find room on the platform for all the
brilliant notabilities who had promised to attend. The chair was this
time to be taken by Mr. Roger Eykyn, M.P. for Windsor, while their old
champion, Sir John Bennett, was once more to appear with his well-known
and ever-welcome “So here we are once again, my postman friends!” The
district contingents as before met at Finsbury Square, and with brass
bands playing and colours flying they marched to St. Martin’s-le-Grand,
where at eight o’clock they were promptly joined by the men of the Chief
Office. Then defiantly striking up “Rule, Britannia,” they moved on
towards Fleet Street, the authorities meanwhile crowding at the windows
of the General Post-Office to watch the procession as it swept round
into Newgate Street. On reaching Fleet Street the greatest excitement
prevailed, the traffic had to be suspended, and crowds from all parts
joined in the congestion. The postal procession was this time preceded
by two red mail-vans, which, with the postmen in uniform, gave it a tone
of local colour. The band, during its slow progress towards the place of
meeting, improved the shining hour with “The Postman’s Knock” and “Work,
Boys, Work, and be Contented,” a musical sarcasm in the circumstances
much appreciated. Exeter Hall was not large enough to hold the immense
throng who sought admission, and an overflow meeting had to be held in a
side street. Exeter Hall platform presented a distinguished gathering
of public men supporting the chair, which was filled by Mr. Roger Eykyn,
the member for Windsor. Among those who crowded the platform was the
midget-like figure of the redoubtable George Odger, president of the
London Trades Council, who had brought with him a deputation of trades
unionists. There were a large number of members of Parliament, and the
principal labour leaders of the day, notably Mr. George Howell, who had
already endeared himself to the postal servants by doing an enormous
amount of work for them one way and another. The meeting was addressed
by Sir Antonio Brady and several distinguished M.P.’s, among the number
being W. Williams, M.P., W. Fowler, M.P., and A. Stavely Hill, M.P.

It was at this meeting that Booth determined to test once and for all the
right of postal servants to speak in public. He and one or two others
spoke, and Booth took means to get their utterances reported among the
speakers.

The result was as he had anticipated. He and the others were carpeted
before the Controller. That official said that his attention having
been drawn to the reported meeting, it was his duty to call on them to
explain. There was nothing very objectionable in the language they were
reported to have used, but the fact of speaking at all sufficiently
compromised them as Government servants. Booth and his associates were
called on for written statements, and they each defended their conduct
on the ground that they were exercising a common citizen right in asking
Parliament and the public for a redress of those grievances which the
department had refused to consider.

Within a few days they were again called up to listen to a severe
reprimand from the Postmaster-General. There was some protest to a few
public men, and Mr. Roger Eykyn interviewed the Permanent Secretary on
behalf of the men; but there the matter ended.

The men themselves, however, feeling that their speeches had been so
studiously modest and moderate, could not but regard such notice being
taken by the authorities as both arbitrary and unconstitutional, and
opposed to the spirit of English liberty.

Based on the resolutions passed at this public meeting, a monster
petition to the House of Commons was prepared on behalf of the
letter-carriers, sorters, porters’ assistants, rural messengers, and
others employed in the minor establishment of the Post-Office throughout
London, suburban, provincial, and rural districts. Having regard to
the increased cost of living and the rise in the value of most classes
of labour, they submitted that the time had arrived when such an
addition should be made to their pay as would constitute a more adequate
remuneration for their arduous and responsible duties. A Commission of
Inquiry was also strongly asked for to receive evidence on the questions
of promotion, Sunday labour, and general grievances not specified but
known to exist.

One of the principal planks in the platform of the postal movement
at this time was the abolition of compulsory Sunday labour for
letter-carriers; and in furtherance of this end Booth and the other
agitators interviewed the most eminent divines and religious leaders
of the day. Among those whose assistance was sought to procure a free
Sunday for postal workers was Cardinal Manning. A deputation of Booth
and two other postmen waited on his Eminence at his residence. He was
politic in discussing the question; he sympathised with them in their
laudable efforts to relieve Sunday labour; but he hesitated to pledge
himself to assist them; he must have time to consider the matter. The
deputation withdrew inspired with very little hope from their diplomatic
reception. The truth was Cardinal Manning hesitated to in any way assist
in hampering the Government while Mr. Gladstone was tackling the Catholic
University question. They interviewed Dr. Parker at the City Temple,
with a vague sort of hope that he might denounce postal Sunday labour
from his own pulpit. But Dr. Parker did not prove the rigid Calvinistic
Sabbatarian they imagined; he thought that certain forms of labour were
very necessary even on the Lord’s Day, and it was desirable to receive
letters from distant friends and relations at least once on Sunday. Even
Professor Fawcett and Mr. Charles Bradlaugh both concurred in thinking
this a weak plank in their platform, and tried to induce Booth to abandon
it for a time at least. But Booth would not be dictated to even by two
such men as these, and expressed his determination to try to carry it
through in spite of all opposition.

This question of compulsory Sunday labour, as it affected the rural
letter-carriers especially, was a very sore one. Some lines of verse
written by one of their number were about this time freely circulated.
The few lines selected will show that they possessed tolerable poetic
merit.

                        THE POSTMAN’S DAY OF REST

    We are toiling, we are toiling on each sunny Sabbath morn,
    We are toiling when the dewdrops sparkle on the white-robed thorn,
    We are toiling when the sons of toil have found a Sabbath blest;
    But for us no Sabbath dawning, no holy day of rest.

    We are toiling thro’ the dewy fields ere peeps the eye of morn,
    When the mist on pastures hanging makes the aspect so forlorn;
    Thro’ mud and mist, and mire, and rain we pick our toilsome way,
    While fellow-men are warmly housed upon the Sabbath day.

    If in the annals of the world your names unrivalled stand,
    Then cleanse so foul a blot from the escutcheon of our land,
    And a thousand hands shall cease from toil, and find a day of rest,
    And the God of heaven shall bless you, as He has our country blest.

                                                F. K. (_Letter-carrier_).

[An appeal from the rural letter-carriers of England, who are employed
delivering letters, circulars, and newspapers on the Sabbath day.]

While this question of Sunday labour was being pushed to the front, Mr.
Joseph Chamberlain, M.P., desiring to become Mayor of Birmingham, was
approached by Booth, who promised him the whole postal support of the
town if Mr. Chamberlain would in return direct his influence against
Sunday duty imposed on postal officials. The promise was given; Mr.
Chamberlain became mayor, but he now found it would be inexpedient in the
commercial interests of Birmingham especially to abolish Sunday labour in
the Post-Office.

Although the right to exercise the one privilege accorded to every
British citizen, that of presenting a petition to Parliament, had up to
now been their mainstay and the bulwark of their personal protection,
the agitators constantly found that they were the objects of departmental
attention. They had been particularly careful, for the success of their
movement, to proceed along thoroughly constitutional lines, and nothing
could have tempted Booth and his associates to depart from this. As has
already been shown, the disappointment induced by the protracted methods
of the Government, and the antagonism of the officials to the agitation,
was such that it might easily have risen to the point of rebellion had
the leaders been so inclined; but they were not; and as it was they had
frequently to exercise to the utmost their restraining influence on the
men. It was scarcely to be supposed that the authorities would give them
any credit for this, and as was only natural, perhaps the leaders were
held wholly responsible for the strained relations between the department
and its subordinates. Booth and his lieutenants therefore had no mercy
to expect from their superiors should they commit themselves. The very
surveillance, the constant spying, and every manner of testing and
trap-laying to which Booth especially was subjected, would have caused
any other man with less fortitude and with a more sensitive temperament
to have given up long before he did. But to all the insidious influences
to which he was exposed, Booth especially never showed the least
concern, but went about his work as though there were never an official
to dog his footsteps even to his own door, nor a band of the permanent
officials anxiously waiting and watching for the moment when they might
reasonably dismiss him with humiliation and degradation. In the official
mind in those days, whoever lent themselves to agitation within the
walls of a Government office could be little better than desperadoes and
conspirators, disloyal alike to the service and the public. It was not
to be wondered at, then, that they were regarded as playing a desperate
game, which, to go no further, even as yet almost brought them within
the clutches of the law. The agitators were not blind to the position
in which they stood, nor ignorant altogether of the desire of the
authorities to encompass their destruction. Already Booth had been most
unpleasantly made aware that his private correspondence had been tampered
with in its passage through the post; that, before reaching his hands,
the letters addressed to him had been watched for and “Grahamed”—to
use an expression which signified the secret methods of opening and
overhauling suspected people’s correspondence then, as a survival of
the “Espionage Room,” more or less in vogue in the Confidential Inquiry
Branch of the General Post-Office. While the department had such a
piece of machinery as this at its disposal, it was not going to confine
its use to such men as Mazzini and political personages disagreeable
to the Government, and allow the postman Booth, and others of its own
household, to escape. He had had cause to more than suspect that his
letters, addressed to those who were assisting the agitation, had been
intercepted, and their purport conveyed to the authorities who had
ordered it. To evade the prying curiosity of official detectives and the
“Grahaming” process, the letters exchanged through the post between the
leaders, and touching on questions of policy, were thereafter directed to
a fictitious “Mrs. Harvey” at various convenient addresses.

Nor did departmental antagonism, both open and concealed, to the
principle of combination rest here. That the ringleaders of the agitation
had all along pursued purely legitimate and constitutional methods to
obtain redress for their grievances, affording so few technical loopholes
through which they might be made answerable, was almost sufficient in
itself to cause the department to look on them as mischievous breeders of
wholesale contumacy and discontent, and agitators of the most dangerous
description. They might have got rid of them one by one “on suspicion”—a
process of dismissal which carried with it an implication of common
dishonesty—only that the men had now too many powerful advocates, and,
moreover, there might have been an outcry in the press against such an
obviously hollow pretext. They were so far saved from such a fate as
had befallen others of a lesser calibre. But they had, almost unknown
to themselves, narrowly escaped losing their personal liberty for the
part they had taken. It was only owing to an accidental hint dropped by
an eminent member of the legal profession and a member of Parliament,
who at the time was friendly disposed towards Booth and his movement,
that the whole of them were not made the subjects of a Government
prosecution under the odious law of conspiracy. Booth ferreted the
matter out, and learnt that the brief was already prepared. The postal
leader was given the comforting assurance that he stood to get two years’
imprisonment, and the others nine or six months apiece, and that the
writs would probably be issued within a few days. Such, at least, was
the information gathered, and circumstances made it extremely probable
that the Government contemplated delivering one blow which would not only
rid the postal service of a number of powerful agitators, but completely
demoralise and disorganise their followers for years to come. If such
was the motive, then the Government was checkmated in one simple move.
Booth at the time was on the Temple “delivery,” and it was due to this
fact principally that he obtained the interest and assistance of several
eminent counsel who had either already obtained or had an eye on a
seat in the House. After piecing his information together, so as to be
morally certain that some such _coup_ was intended, Booth the same day
hastily summoned a meeting of the executive of the postal organisation,
and before night handbills were in circulation advertising the fact that
Booth was now the sole official representative of the movement. Next
day he learnt the contemplated prosecution was to be abandoned, for
the sufficient reason that the Law of Conspiracy could not very well
be made to apply to one man only, it taking three at least to become
conspirators. After Booth’s adroit manœuvre they could not with decency
proceed against the agitators by legal action, and so nothing more was
heard of the matter.

CHAPTER VIII

    A TEST OF “THE LABOUR MARKET”—THE UGLY DUCKLING OF
    TRADES UNIONISM—MR. GEO. HOWELL’S ASSISTANCE—FURTHER
    DEMONSTRATIONS—THE DEPARTURE OF BOOTH.

Notwithstanding the numerous strong expressions of public opinion evoked
by the recent meeting of the 18th November 1873, the Government showed
no disposition to meet the moderate demands put forward in the petition
to the House of Commons. The authorities particularly seemed bent on
resisting the claims of the men. Acting on instructions issued in a
Treasury Minute issued under the previous Government, they extensively
advertised for persons to fill the places of the letter-carriers. Yet,
as a matter of fact, there were no such vacancies as alleged in the
public advertisements, unless the department contemplated dismissing the
existing staff wholesale. The ostensible reason given was an experiment
to “test the labour market.” There was a rush of applications, but there
was a cruel insincerity in the whole business. A large proportion failed
to pass the medical examination, while others who had passed were so
disgusted at the neglect they received, and the time they were kept
waiting in suspense, that they refused to attend for final approval.
There had been something like twelve hundred applicants originally,
and of these only nineteen were finally passed as suitable for the
situations. The fact spoke for itself, and confirmed the opinion,
generally entertained, that it was nothing more than an attempt to damage
and discredit the case of the men, and intimidate and discourage the
“agitators.”

If this experiment to “test the labour market” did nothing more, it
tended to promote still further the feeling of misunderstanding in the
minds of the general public, and assisted to obscure the issue.

However, the aggrieved postal employés, as represented on the London
Trades Council, were accredited trades unionists. The trades unionists of
the Metropolis, little as they understood their case, were compelled to
take them into partnership.

By this time the efforts made by the postal employés had attracted
considerable attention from every quarter; but trades unionists generally
were almost as much at a loss to understand the precise nature of their
claims as were most people, and there was much need for information.
From the press reports and allusions to the matter in Parliament from
time to time, a vague notion existed that postal employés were badly
paid, and wanted better treatment, but little was known as to the real
objects sought, or of the means by which they were to be obtained. The
peculiarity of their position, the fact of their not being handicraftsmen
in the generally-accepted sense of the term, caused their movement still
to be looked on as the ugly duckling of trades unionism, and many were
against allowing its claim for kinship. It was principally due to Mr.
George Howell that this feeling of misunderstanding was removed. The
condition of the postal employés and their battle for liberty was for the
first time brought prominently before the trades unionists of the country
at the Sheffield Trades Union Congress, January 1874. Mr. George Howell
was secretary of the “Trades Parliamentary Committee,” and as a special
delegate of the Postal Society, he read a paper which most clearly
and convincingly showed that postal servants were in need of sympathy
and moral assistance from the organised labour of the country. To the
majority present it came as a revelation that those in Government employ
were so restricted in the matter of civil rights. In thanking Mr. Howell
for his valuable paper, they desired to express their sympathy with the
movement of the postal employés for increased pay, better regulation of
the hours of labour, the abolition of Sunday work, and a just system of
promotion. The Congress recommended their cause to the trades societies
of the United Kingdom, as well worthy of support.

The first General Election of 1873-4 had come and gone, and Mr. Gladstone
found himself again returned to power, but with a majority of only forty.
He immediately dissolved the House, and forthwith appealed to the country
a second time.

The country was again in the throes of a General Election, and towards
the fag-end, and before the result was certain for either party, another
meeting of postal employés was called again at Exeter Hall. Meantime a
written letter was sent by the Society’s secretary, Hawkins, to every
Parliamentary candidate, asking for support in their demands. Nearly one
hundred of those who gave their pledge were eventually returned to the
new Parliament.

When it became known that preparations were in progress for holding
another meeting, the authorities issued an official edict threatening
with the penalties of insubordination any one found attending. They liked
the Cannon Street Hotel meeting but little for the unenviable publicity
it gave the department, but the prospect of the Exeter Hall meeting they
liked still less. The meeting was again “proclaimed,” but a full two
thousand attended, notwithstanding. Again there was music and banners,
and a procession through the streets, and two thousand or more filled
the vast space confronting the historic platform. Mr. Mundella took the
chair on this occasion, and was supported by several Tory M.P.’s just
returned triumphant from the poll. There was among them Mr. Ritchie, Mr.
William Forsyth, Captain Bedford Pim, and Sir Charles Dilke. There were
a number of eminent clergymen, among them the Rev. John Kennedy, D.D.,
and the Rev. Hugh Allen. The latter reverend gentleman generally prefaced
his remarks at postal meetings with the words, “Those who distribute the
correspondence of the country, distribute the wealth of the country,
and their pay should be in proportion to their responsibility.” This
agreeable sentiment was at once appropriated as the motto of the
movement, and it figured on the stationery, and more than once on their
banner. There was also the Rev. John Murphy, well known at the time as
the “Bishop of Lambeth,” who had assisted right through the struggle till
now. Altogether the platform presented a gathering of eminent men of
almost every degree.

Mr. Mundella, as chairman, was just about finishing his address when the
herculean form of Charles Bradlaugh was seen hurriedly pressing his way
on to the platform. As the heretic agitator took his seat not far from
that region of the platform sanctified by the presence of so many clerics
of different denominations, there were some signs of dissent among some
of the postmen in front. It almost immediately subsided with a wave of
the chairman’s hand; and at Booth’s request Mr. Bradlaugh was given
fourth place among the speakers, as he had to leave early. The several
other speakers spoke, and it came to Bradlaugh’s turn. But immediately
his huge form rose from the chair there was a hostile demonstration which
gradually swelled in volume. Mr. Mundella requested the postal leader,
who was sitting beside him, not to insist on Mr. Bradlaugh being heard.
Charles Bradlaugh himself, always considerate in the interests of his
friends and those whom he wanted to assist, thought his speaking might
mar the success of the meeting, and made as if to leave the platform;
the “booing” and groaning continuing meanwhile. They had not till now
been ashamed to listen to and take counsel from the freethought lecturer
“Iconoclast,” and many who now groaned at him had cheered him to the echo
when it suited them. The hostile demonstration was probably only their
way of paying a compliment to their reverend friends on the platform,
though there were one or two, at least, among them who had come to assist
in this good cause who would not have hesitated there and then to burn
the heretic amidst a bonfire of his own godless pamphlets kindled with
the light of sacred truth.

“You see, Mr. Booth, they will not hear him,” said Mr. Mundella, rather
testily. But “Bulldog” Booth, as he was now known among his intimates,
was not to be beaten. “Then dissolve the meeting, sir,” said he stoutly.
“But they will hear him.”

The chairman rose and succeeded in calming the storm; and Mr. Bradlaugh
essayed to speak. He had always been an active sympathiser with the
postmen and the postal movement. It was not the first time he had stood
before them. Once on his feet with a determination to make himself heard,
he would not be denied. A towering figure, a leonine head, and huge,
pale, clean-shaven face, with its mastiff’s mouth, he looked as ugly
as Mirabeau, and as tremendous. Yet there was the charm of simplicity
and a conviction of earnestness in his utterance, which made them feel
ashamed at his reception. He spoke for four minutes, and adjured them to
maintain the principle of combination; to stick together, to exercise
their rights as citizens and to use their votes, and to support those
who supported them. When he had finished, Bradlaugh received probably as
loud an ovation as any who followed. A number of the clerical friends
of the postmen naturally took the line of denunciation against forced
Sunday labour, and their utterances for the most part were curiously
reminiscent of those speeches on the self-same topic on that same
platform twenty-five years before.

Among other eminent labour leaders and Radical politicians of the day
there figured George Howell, who never failed the postmen in their need,
and who had interviewed perhaps more members of Parliament and the heads
of the Government than any other public man; for at this period it had
particularly fallen to Mr. Howell’s lot to represent their case in this
manner.

Shortly after this great Exeter Hall meeting the society published a
balance-sheet, which clearly showed the enormous amount of work involved
in the previous two years’ crusade. During the two years of agitation,
numerous meetings, both reported and unreported, had been held; they
had carried the war into almost every part of the kingdom, they had
interviewed public men innumerable, prepared and got signed three monster
petitions to Parliament, and attained to the dignity and importance of
occupying the time and attention of the House of Commons more than once.
The general correspondence of the society during the two years of its
existence had involved the writing of no less than 2546 letters; while to
the public press communications to the tune of nearly 2000 had been sent
out. But, altogether, during the two years nearly 14,000 communications
were addressed to Parliamentary candidates, M.P.’s, public men, and
others. Truly, the Post-Office had been made to direct its hand against
itself. Among the list of subscribers were the names of several public
men, including Canon Liddon and Sir Charles Dilke.

The organisation of combined postal servants was now being perfected in
various ways. Interviewing members of Parliament, both privately and at
the House, was now almost of daily occurrence; and Booth and the various
others were on terms of intimacy with most of the prominent men of the
day.

It was this time a Conservative Government in power, and those members
who wished to show a desire to redeem their promises convened a
conference of the known Parliamentary friends to the postal cause. For
the Exeter Hall meetings had had a marked effect on the press and the
public. The conference was therefore called at the Westminster Palace
Hotel, a stone’s-throw from the House itself. It was to be quite public,
and reporters admitted. A deputation of the aggrieved men attended to
urge their case once more. Mr. Roebuck was this time in the chair; and
Mr. Stavely Hill and numerous other influential and well-known M.P.’s
formed the self-appointed jury. Booth once more went over the old ground
of their grievances; and Haley, another postal agitator, also gave an
able exposition of their simple claims, which appeared to impress them
favourably. The immediate result of the conference was that Mr. Roebuck,
on behalf of his colleagues, promised to do an indefinite something as
soon as found convenient.

They so far redeemed their pledge and showed their confidence in the
justice of the postal claims as to privately urge the Government to take
up the matter. For a month or so there was a superficial quietude among
the discontented men. There were no meetings, but the postmen and the
letter-sorters were subscribing to the general fund. There was no further
interference on the part of the officials, probably from the fact that
they were now beginning to recognise that the movement was too strong,
and rendered stronger by press sympathy and public support. Eventually
Mr. Roebuck—“Tear ’em,” as he was called in reference to his pugnacity in
the House—brought up the matter of the postal case for inquiry on the
Estimates. Booth, Haley, and the rest of the leaders of the agitation
were found a place under the gallery, by the side of Sir John Tilly,
the secretary, and Mr. Scudamore; for in some things the House is no
respecter of persons. The debate was eminently interesting, and brought
out all the points of the postal case in a marked degree.

The reply of the Government was unfavourable; and the argument, which has
done duty so many times since, that there was really no just cause for
complaint, was then used for the first time, and set an easy precedent,
which nearly all succeeding Postmasters-General faithfully followed.

After the debate the leaders of the agitation crowded round the members
in the lobby, Roebuck particularly was besieged by the disappointed men;
but he shook himself free of them with the air of a man who had done his
duty, and was determined to court failure no further. “Tear ’em” Roebuck
was evidently chagrined and as annoyed as his clients, and he turned on
them almost with a snarl. “You see I can do no more; the Government won’t
interfere,” said he, and strutted away. The Government had left them
to their fate; but pressure was privately brought to bear on Lord John
Manners, who was now Postmaster-General. The refusal of the Government
to interfere on behalf of the oppressed and aggrieved postal employés
after all the promises of the Tory party, and after all the patronage
extended to them publicly, resulted in such a feeling of resentment and
disappointment among all classes of the service, that Booth the leader
had the utmost difficulty in holding his followers in check. There was,
indeed, one abortive attempt at a strike among the Hull postmen, and the
spark might have ignited the whole had Booth and his associates given
encouragement to it. It wanted but a breath from the agitators at this
moment to fan the whole into a blaze.

Booth during this time never lost heart; he was as indefatigable as ever;
scarcely a day passed but what he interviewed somebody or was himself
interviewed. He had carried the art of interviewing to such an extent
that he several times personated the secretary of the postal movement,
Hawkins, for the purpose of getting editors and pressmen to say a word
or two in behalf of the baffled, but as yet not defeated, agitation.
By personating his own secretary in getting himself interviewed he thus
evaded the official rule which forbade any postal servant communicating
with the press, and which there is little doubt would have been
mercilessly enforced against any one in the service caught doing it
too openly. But however little they had to expect from the permanent
officials, they felt that with a Postmaster-General as representative of
the party from which only recently they had received so much sympathy and
patronage, active hostility would not be allowed to be carried too far.
Moreover, they felt pretty safe in conjecturing that, come what may, what
the law officers of the late administration had hesitated to carry to a
completion would not in a hurry be resorted to under the new Government
of the party which included so many tried and pledged friends of postal
reform. True, the Conservative Government, which the postal vote had
in some measure helped to bring back to power, had so far disappointed
them in not at once taking up their case as they were led to believe it
would. But they were aware that their grievances were still occupying the
attention of a large number of the members on both sides of the House,
and that a large amount of influence was being brought to bear on the
Postmaster-General. From Lord John Manners there was still something to
be hoped for. And this hope was sustained by the plausible rumour that
the Government’s refusal to inquire into their grievances was only a
diplomatic way of empowering the Postmaster-General to do all that might
be found to be necessary towards ameliorating the conditions of the
service over which he had been put to rule. Yet the cloven hoof peeped
out in an unexpected manner, and sooner than was to be looked for.

Lord John Manners, so long as he was in opposition, had not declined to
be counted among the Tory supporters of Booth and the postal agitation,
he having replied in favourable terms to letters and circulars soliciting
his support towards obtaining the asked-for inquiry. There is perhaps
always some allowance to be made for one newly taking office, and
inconsistency is to an extent allowable, if not to be looked for. But
it came as a surprise and something of a shock to Booth especially to
learn that the new Postmaster-General, resisting all overtures from
those of his own party, was about to set his face uncompromisingly
against their claims and against the representatives who might urge
them. Certainly, on the face of it, it seemed a wonderfully gracious act
in a Postmaster-General to consent to receive a deputation of the men
for the purpose of hearing once more from their own lips the story of
their grievances he was already so well acquainted with. An application
for an interview had been sent forward, in itself perhaps a piece of
audacity almost unheard of, and to the surprise of the men themselves
it was intimated that the interview would be granted. It was granted,
but only with the condition that Booth should not be present. By the
time that this was announced Booth had got over his first surprise,
and was quite prepared for the intended snub, but scarcely for the
unjustifiable insult which followed. It had been previously arranged that
he should lead the deputation, but it was now officially conveyed to him
that the Postmaster-General, while willing to see a deputation of the
letter-carriers and sorters, must refuse to receive Booth “on account of
his official bad character.” There was a feeling among the force that if
the Postmaster-General would not see the leader the deputation ought not
to go forward, but Booth put himself out of the question, and advised
them to meet the head of the department and to obtain what advantage was
possible. It was therefore decided to do so; but the undeserved insult,
though inflicted on the man, was none the less felt to be aimed at the
principle of combination, and their hopes were overshadowed with the
suspicion that the interview was granted mainly for the purpose of better
marking the agitators for future reference. The Postmaster-General’s
treatment of Booth was scarcely likely to reassure them or to maintain
their confidence in his fairmindedness. Throughout the agitation Booth
had been careful not to run foul of his superiors on official matters,
and his official character had been good enough to please Lord John
Manners and his party before the last General Election.

The deputation to the Postmaster-General was memorable if only from
the fact that this was the very first occasion the public head of the
department had ever consented to receive representatives of the working
staff. It looked like a concession, and as such would read well in the
Tory press especially. But the men in their hearts were prepared for
the disappointment which was to follow, and anticipated that it was
the Postmaster-General himself who intended to get the most out of the
interview.

A few weeks afterwards, about the beginning of August, a scheme was
announced. But it proved to be nothing more than an inflated bubble
which, when pricked, contained only a few paltry advantages for the
letter-carriers. The advantages were small enough in all conscience,
amounting to some small increase in pay and benefits as to stripes for
good conduct.

But small as were the benefits, the letter-carriers so appreciated them
that they decided to continue the agitation no further, and Booth, not
without reluctance, resigned his position as the postmen’s leader. The
only return Booth got for all the labour and all the responsibility
he had taken on himself was that he was left with a debt of £35—a
no insignificant amount to one in his position. By the aid of one of
his friends he was able to obtain a loan, and with a characteristic
independence paid it off without troubling the men with his private
affairs. It was not that his followers proved ungrateful; they simply
did not know the condition in which the agitation had stranded him; and
perhaps he was too proud to inform them. There was the usual effort to
testimonialise him and those who had most assisted him; but the thing
was badly managed. An illuminated address was already prepared for
Booth, and it was shown to him at his private house. There was also a
purse of money subscribed, which would have proved a little fortune to
him in the predicament, but there was some little sordid dispute among
one or two who fancied themselves entitled to an equal share. This
treatment so aroused the contempt of Booth that, seizing the illuminated
address, which he regarded as more than conventionally insincere in the
circumstances, he passionately tore it to fragments before them and flung
it into their faces, ordering them to leave the house immediately. He
refused to touch a penny-piece of the money subscribed; but instead set
himself steadily to work to pay off the debts he had incurred on account
of his connection with the agitation. So far, if the department wanted
its revenge, it had it now.

Booth having freed himself from debt, shortly afterwards, owing to
failing health, applied for and obtained the small pension of about eight
shillings a week he was entitled to. And so departed one of the most
persistent as well as one of the most courageously-consistent agitators
the Post-Office or any other Government department has ever been troubled
with. Booth’s career as an agitator had been a brief one, but it had
been as brilliant as it was brief. And perhaps, after all, there was
some truth in his claim that he had largely assisted to overturn two
Governments and put in another.

CHAPTER IX

    FORCED LABOUR—A GENERAL POST-OFFICE RIOT—A POSTAL POET—THE
    WANING OF THE MOVEMENT—THE PUBLICATION OF A MEMORIAL—WHOLESALE
    DISMISSALS.

At this time, and for long previous, there was no definite eight-hour day
officially recognised for the working staff at the General Post-Office.
That was a privilege as yet definitely enjoyed by few besides the
clerical establishment. If there was any official rule regulating and
limiting the working hours of the rank and file, that rule and those
regulations were vitiated by the practice of the supervising officials.
The men were subjected to nothing less than forced labour; the hours
which should have been given up to sleep and leisure were extorted
from them; and forced contributions of their well-earned liberty were
remorselessly levied upon them. They were liable to be summoned back for
duty at any time during their intervals of rest. There was no assured
time for rest or proper sleep. They were compelled to dispose of incoming
foreign mails without remuneration of any kind. As the department had
decided such mail matter must be disposed of without cost, at first the
men had to rotate for this purpose, and it generally fell to their turn
about once a month. In former days this practice may not have constituted
a great hardship; but when, owing to the increased and improved means
of transit across seas, foreign mails arrived several times a week, it
became a very real grievance. American mails then arrived only about once
a month, instead of daily as at present; but there were other mails to
be taken account of, and their arrival and treatment were often delayed
for disposal by this cheap method. If the practice had stopped at the
monthly summons, or an extra attendance for every man every week or
so, the strong discontent arising from it might have been averted. But
the principle of extorting from men already too poorly paid and harshly
treated, this disgraceful poll-tax in time was still further extended
after a while.

The occasion which principally provided the officials with an excuse for
imposing on the force still further was the introduction of the halfpenny
post; and when this came to be recognised by the public as a boon, the
men became the victims and the sufferers. The reduced rate for newspapers
and circulars was soon taken advantage of by company promoters very
largely. The notorious promoter, Baron Grant, who did everything on a
colossal scale, sent in prospectuses, referring to the Emma Gold Mine, at
the rate of half a million at a time, completely swamping the Newspaper
Branch, where such correspondence was disposed of. The authorities’ only
method of meeting the emergencies which so frequently arose was to get
the extra work of the public (which already meant so much more profit
to swell the revenue) done by forcing the overburdened and underpaid
men to do it for nothing in the time which should otherwise have been
theirs. The method of forced labour, so analogous to that form of slavery
which aroused the righteous indignation of the civilised world when
practised a few years later by the Boers on the unfortunate Kaffirs, was
not only thought proper but persisted in by the officials of an English
Government department. Whatever excuses, if any, that might be made for
the rapacious East-End sweaters, could not be made for the profit-minting
monopoly of St. Martin’s-le-Grand and those who guided its machinery.

The men protested again and again, but without avail. Refusal to comply
with this form of tyranny or worse, imposed in the name of duty and
discipline, would have meant rank insubordination, punishable with
dismissal without character. Probably their protests never got beyond the
branch superintendent, to whom they complained; but the authorities ought
not to have been wholly blind to the men’s treatment. If there was no
Treasury grant of money to cover the cost of extra duty of this nature,
as was pointed out, then the parsimony and meanness of the authorities
was only to be excused by their utter laziness in not endeavouring to
get such a demand met honestly and fairly.

The grievance speedily attained to the dimensions and importance of a
grave scandal. Yet the authorities seemed determined that, kick and
struggle against the pricks as the men might, they should submit to it.
And the men, grown weary of complaining against the injustice, and losing
all faith in the fairness of those over them, were equally resolved that
it should not continue much longer without one last vigorous protest
from them. The climax of indignation was reached one morning in March
1873, when the whole of the force were ordered as usual to stay behind
their time. There were mails above and below in the Newspaper and Letter
Branches, and tons of circulars waiting in reserve. The men rushed to
their kitchens, and securing their articles of clothing, made for the
principal exit leading to liberty and the Post-Office yard. This they
found closed and bolted against them and guarded by a posse of overseers,
the official doorkeeper, and numerous amateur policemen—constables
disguised as sorters. They were sternly ordered back to their duties;
but by this time, even if they would, they could not turn for those now
pressing behind and thronging the lobby. The officials appeared on the
scene and exhorted them not to disobey orders; but the murmurs that arose
convinced them that at last the mutiny had come. The men demanded the
door to be opened and the removal of the constables. They took it as an
added insult that such Siberian methods should be put into force against
them, for whatever their humble position in the public service, yet still
they bore the name of free-born Englishmen. The officials, convinced they
were acting within their right, refused and repeatedly ordered them to
fall back. For half-an-hour or more the men, nearly a thousand strong
by this time, endured it; the heat was oppressive in the closely-packed
crowd, and the stubborn obstinacy of the men guarding the door was
making the crowd excited. There were cries of execration, and from the
rear came a hurricane of balls of twine with sticks of sealing-wax. The
officials retreated to safer quarters, leaving the men guarding the
door to carry out their duty or die. The lobby, which was a narrow neck
of space leading from the Letter Branch to the coveted doorway, was
becoming like the Black Hole of Calcutta, and many men were on the point
of fainting. The doorkeepers were pale but determined, and stood with
their backs to the coveted door. The situation was as serious to them as
to the mutineers themselves. With the men the injustice of the official
instruction to stay at their duties without pay might be sufficient to
palliate their disobedience to it, especially when there were nearly a
thousand of them to answer for it. But with those at the door it was
slightly different; they had to do their duty, and they looked like men
who were determined to sell their lives dearly if it came to it, though
it is probable that if they could have trusted each other the bolt would
have been quietly drawn. To those in the thick of the swaying, sweltering
crowd of angry and excited men the heat was getting unbearable. Some one,
or several at once, suggested rushing the doors; but to deliberately
break down the barrier seemed to spell mutiny of the worst kind, and
numbers of the front ranks held back at the prospect of afterwards being
named as ringleaders. The responsible officials retired to a distance and
watched with the grim satisfaction of schoolmasters who were “keeping in”
a refractory class of school-children. The realisation that they were
being kept prisoners at the behest of one or two of their superiors was
intensifying the impatience and the excitement of the sweltering crowd
behind, and impatience soon grew to desperation. The air was repeatedly
filled with groans and hisses, and the storm of groans was presently
turned by some one facetiously striking up a bar of “Britons never, never
shall be slaves!” That was enough, for the men behind especially. They
remembered they were Britons. A square of infantry with fixed bayonets
could not have stopped them now. They were solidly packed several
hundreds strong in one long stream, fed every moment by reinforcements as
they gained courage to leave the sorting-tables. Fortunately some one by
an adroit manœuvre had turned a line of heavy mail-trucks and trolleys,
placed there either carelessly or purposely, or the result might have
been disastrous to those in front. Menaces and shouts were directed
towards the men who barred their way; but neither threats nor appeals
would move them, and it seemed they would be flattened against the door
they were so zealously guarding, for those in front could no longer hold
against the mighty pressure of the hundreds behind. The crowd heaved and
rocked like a huge billow. There were shouts and groans and some were
real, a tremendous scuffle, a sound like the cracking of ribs, a crash
of woodwork, a shattering of glass accompanied with a louder yell; the
doors burst from their fastenings, and the hot perspiring stream of angry
men vomited itself into the open air and the daylight. Then the wild
mob’s several hundred feet scattered down the steps into the Post-Office
yard, and the men who had broken their red-tape bonds to assert the
liberty of the person again burst into such a roar of triumph that a
jaded horse on the cab-rank outside in Aldersgate Street took fright
and bolted. The untoward commotion stopped the stream of traffic in St.
Martin’s-le-Grand, and crowds assembled outside the Post-Office railings
while the police hurried to the scene from every by-turning. The general
traffic was disordered for half-an-hour, till the last remnant of the
imprisoned men issued from the gates.

As the result of the scrimmage several men got scratches and bruises,
and there were one or two bloody noses. It ought to have been as much a
matter for congratulation for the authorities as for the men that nothing
more disastrous occurred. But the officials chose not to see it in that
light, and several who had been grabbed in the rush by the doorkeepers
were haled up like escaped convicts before the presiding superintendent
and others of the smaller authorities to answer for the conduct of the
whole. Six men were there and then suspended from duty without pay for an
indefinite period, and with the prospect of dismissal before them.

It was only to be expected that the public would take an exaggerated
view of the incident; and the idea gained credence that a veritable riot
had taken place inside the Post-Office. Some, indeed, thought it meant a
postal strike. The evening paper came out with an account of the “Riot
at the General Post-Office,” which, it need hardly be said, was scarcely
accurate.

The humour of the situation was skilfully hit off a day or two later by a
parody on “The Light Brigade,” by one Tom Glamorgan, already recognised
as a postal poet. It was said the verses were scribbled hurriedly on
his shirt-cuff during moments snatched from the duty the same evening;
and being printed next day were sold for a penny a copy amongst the
sorters and postmen and others, the small sum realised being sent to
some charity. The actual verses perhaps would interest but few, but the
printed paragraph introducing the lines epitomised the whole incident
The print formed one of a short series of “Postal Fly-sheets,” and the
paragraph in question read as follows:—

    “INSUBORDINATION AT THE GENERAL POST-OFFICE.

    “On Monday morning, 31st March 1873, a large quantity of
    ‘Circulars,’ the postage of which amounted to some hundreds
    of pounds, were required to be sorted and despatched to their
    various destinations. The men, assistants, and boys worked well
    till 9 A.M. (having been on duty since 4.30 A.M.), at which
    time the juniors struck work and congregated around the lobby
    door to depart; several of the older officers were stationed
    there to prevent their exit, the ‘Acting Superintendent’
    on duty declaring they should not go till all the work was
    done. The assistants and boys replied to this by tremendous
    shouting, hooting, hissing, groaning, and pushing, declaring
    they would do no more that morning unless paid extra for it. At
    length some of the ringleaders, assisted by the crowd around,
    continued to push against the officers guarding the doors,
    striking at one of the ‘overseers’—_breaking hose from all
    order, discipline, and control_.…”

The six sorters, innocent or guilty of the charge against them, were
still suspended, but the resentment of the authorities did not stop
here. One of the official doorkeepers was pounced on to account for his
not successfully resisting the several hundred determined men who so
forcibly objected to be made prisoners of. The doorkeeper was rather a
small man, and built more on the lines of a jockey than of a gladiator.
But it was useless to urge such a fact on the official mind bent on
inflicting condign punishment. So the poor little man was pronounced
guilty of failing to perform a feat which would have baffled Hercules.
He was in consequence reduced to an inferior position entailing greater
responsibility; and failing to become competent in a duty which was
entirely new to him, he was incontinently bundled out of the service on a
starvation pension of six shillings a week. He did not long survive his
defeat, but died a little while afterwards of a sheer broken heart.

That the so-called riot at the General Post-Office was only one of the
straws which showed the way of the wind may be taken for granted. Whether
it could have occurred in a better-regulated service is perhaps doubtful.

The scheme which with its small benefits had given so much satisfaction
to the letter-carriers as to induce them, if not to remain satisfied,
to abandon agitation for the present, had caused corresponding
dissatisfaction to the letter-sorters. The only benefit derived from the
Manners scheme, if it could be called such, was the increase of sixpence
a year in the increment. The keenest disappointment prevailed, and a
movement was already afoot to find expression for that disappointment in
a memorial to the author, Lord John Manners. Yet, though the feelings of
the men were scarcely concealed, it had been officially represented to
the Postmaster-General and the Controller that the demands of the sorting
force were now fully satisfied, and that the men themselves acknowledged
it. This official misrepresentation was followed by an anonymous note
being pinned on the notice-board in the retiring-room. It was to the
effect: “Who thus misrepresents the spirit of the Inland Branch? As mild
a mannered man as ever scuttled ship or cut a throat.” The note was
detached and taken to the superintendent; and one of the men, Glamorgan,
who had already distinguished himself in the line of a satirical
verse-maker, was suspended for some days on suspicion of being its author.

At the end of November 1874 the dissatisfied sorters drew up a respectful
and moderate memorial to the Postmaster-General, pointing out that
“whilst grateful for the recent improvements made in … pay and prospects
of promotion, they were yet unable to accept so small a revision as a
satisfactory settlement of their claims to increased remuneration,” and
giving some very valid reasons for a reconsideration of their case. The
petition was signed by 140 men as representative of the entire sorting
force, and presented through their immediate superior. To the startling
surprise of every one, a copy of this memorial appeared in the _Times_
and other morning papers the next day, and from that moment the most
discerning could see that it was doomed to failure from the fact of being
published in the press before the Postmaster-General had had time to
consider it. For in those days especially such a thing was regarded as
a most unforgivable breach of official etiquette, to say the least. Its
publication at this juncture was therefore generally thought to be the
last blow to all their hopes of further revision. But few dreamed what
was to follow.

The text of that memorial is here reproduced, the better to mark the
perverted sense of justice of the Postmaster-General who could read
treason and conspiracy in an innocent appeal so temperately worded, and
exact so cruel a penalty for so small an offence as that of prayerfully
submitting that they still had grievances to remedy.

    “PETITION TO THE POSTMASTER-GENERAL from the Sorters of the
    Inland Branch, G.P.O., presented through their Superintendent
    on November 25th, 1874.

    “_To the Right Honourable_ LORD JOHN MANNERS, M.P., _Her
    Majesty’s Postmaster-General_.

    “MY LORD,—We, the undersigned sorters attached to the Inland
    Branch, beg most respectfully to inform you that, whilst
    grateful for the recent improvements made in our pay and
    prospects of promotion, we are yet unable to accept it
    as a satisfactory settlement of our claims to increased
    remuneration; we, therefore, beg to call your Lordship’s
    attention to the following facts: Prior to 1867 the scale of
    pay for our class was as follows: Minimum of second-class,
    23s., by an annual increment of 1s. to a maximum of 38s.;
    minimum of first-class, 40s., by an annual increment of 1s.
    to a maximum of 50s. After the revision made in June 1867, it
    stood thus: Minimum, 24s., by an annual increment of 1s. for
    six years, and then by 1s. 6d. to a maximum of 45s. In 1872 the
    minimum was increased to 26s., and in July of the present year
    the scale was again altered to the following: Minimum 26s.,
    with an annual increment of 1s. 6d. for six years, and then by
    2s. to a maximum of 45s. Thus it will be seen that whilst the
    minimum and annual increment have been increased in amount, the
    maximum has been reduced 5s. per week. The only benefit derived
    from the last revision was an addition of 6d. to the annual
    increment. In former memorials we have asked that the increased
    increment of 2s. per week may begin at the minimum of the scale
    instead of after six years, as at present; and also, that the
    maximum may be restored to the sum of 50s. per week, at which
    it originally stood, in accordance with the recommendation of
    the Commission of 1854, of which the present Chancellor of the
    Exchequer was a member. The scale would then have stood thus:
    Minimum, 26s., by an annual increment of 2s. to a maximum of
    50s. We respectfully submit to your lordship that, having
    regard to our length of service (most of us have served over
    nine years), the increased value of labour, and the enhanced
    cost of commodities generally, the above would not be more than
    a reasonable remuneration for the important duties we perform.
    We therefore pray your Lordship to give this Memorial your
    favourable consideration, and earnestly hope you will see fit
    to grant our Prayer. We are, my Lord, your obedient servants.”

    [Here follow Names.]

The resentment of the department showed itself almost immediately
after the illicit publication of the memorial in the public press. The
signatories were sent for by the Controller, and catechised as to what
they knew about its appearance in print before it had actually reached
the hand of the Postmaster-General. They were told it was a gross
breach of official confidence, only a little less heinous than offering
personal insult to the public head of the department. They would be held
responsible for sending it to the press for publication, and nothing now
remained but to go home and pray for forgiveness and await developments.
In vain the men protested their innocence, and pointed out that copies of
the proposed memorial freely circulated among the men for their approval
before it was submitted through the official channel; indeed any one but
themselves might have forwarded a copy to the _Times_. But it was to no
purpose they sought to defend themselves on these grounds, and they were
practically found guilty on the spot. That was one indictment only in
regard to this unfortunate memorial. The second was that they had dared
as the humblest servants of her Majesty’s Postmaster-General to convey to
him, by means of this aforesaid illicitly-published memorial, that they
could not accept as fully satisfying all their claims, the scheme which
he had so beneficently prepared for them. What right had they to say they
could not accept the scheme, or anything else which a Postmaster-General
had so condescended to provide them with?

The poor menials withdrew from the light of the official cadi’s presence,
abashed and crestfallen. They predicted that something was about to
happen to them, guilty wretches that they were; but they did not know
what.

While the case was pending, a paragraph appeared in one of the papers to
the effect that the indignation of the men in the General Post-Office
had now reached such a point that they had decided to petition for the
removal of certain supervising officials who had rendered themselves
brutally obnoxious to the men throughout. The ringleaders were again,
as a natural consequence, suspected of this fresh paragraphic insult to
the department; but the men themselves were as indignant as might be
the authorities themselves. They all solemnly protested to each other
that this foolish blunder was not theirs. The appearance of such a thing
at this moment could certainly effect no good purpose, and it seemed
difficult to believe that any one of them, knowing that suspicion would
most certainly fall on them, and discredit them still further, could have
been guilty of such foolishness. Still, repudiate it as they might, they
knew the shot would rebound on themselves. There were several among them
who did not hesitate to think, that both the memorial and the offensive
paragraph had been sent to the press by some one of the creatures of the
department with a malignant ulterior motive.

If the Postmaster-General had been shot at with a popgun he was going to
return it with a bomb; and the bomb, being ready, was primed for the 11th
of December. On the morning of that date it was thrown.

It took the form of a Postmaster-General’s minute, and was sent the
rounds of the Circulation Department by means of the general-order book.
It started innocently enough, but the sting, like that of the scorpion,
was in its tail. It was to the effect that the Postmaster-General had
received the memorial from the sorters, but not until it had been
improperly published in the newspapers. It proceeded to criticise the
terms of the memorial, and to remind them that in the previous July the
wages of the memorialists were readjusted by the Treasury, “after very
full and careful consideration.” A comparison between the sorters of 1854
and 1874 was then drawn to show that they were no worse off, and that the
reduction in the maximum was more than compensated for by the creation
of a new overseer’s class. So far, so good, or bad, as they chose to
think it; but now comes the cruellest part of it. The Postmaster-General
could not stay his hand here. In view of the recent settlement he felt it
incumbent on him not only to oppose and check the spirit which the terms
of the memorial and the course it had taken exhibited, but “to evince
in some unmistakable manner” that he would “not yield to clamour what
reasoned justice to the public would withhold.”

Accordingly he desired that the memorialists be informed that if their
present conditions of service were not suitable to them they were at
liberty to seek for other employment. And further, he would understand it
to be their intention to do so unless within three days they asked, in
writing, for permission to remain. This permission, however, he should
not give to those who, having signed the memorial, bore an “indifferent
character,” and were “not recommended by their superior officers for
retention in the service.” He understood that among those who signed the
wicked memorial there were a number of younger men who had “no claims on
the department, either on the score of service or otherwise”; and for
daring to become dissatisfied already, their names were to be brought
specially before him, in order that he might consider whether any, and if
so, which of them, should be retained in the service as an act of grace.
His lordship furthermore implied that the precious privilege accorded to
the more poorly paid of being allowed to add to their miserable incomes
by overtime, should relieve them of any cause for complaint in regard to
insufficient wages. His reference to their “liberty to seek for other
employment” was the bitterest mockery to men who had given so many years
to the public service, and for the first time gave expression to that
heartless theory of the department that the best cure for grievances
was the dismissal of those who dared to complain of them; for that
practically was its meaning.

Such was the message of Lord John Manners to the men who had been guilty
of asking for a redress of their grievances and a small increase of
pay. Such was the manner in which he requited the confidence reposed in
him by his humble subordinates, and such was the manner in which he set
about redeeming the fair promises of the party which had so sustained the
agitation while they were in opposition. The Postmaster-General’s minute
was almost as vile an instrument as that with which the late Government
had contemplated crushing combination and smothering the claims of the
aggrieved by prosecution, only that their heart failed them at the last
moment. It was virtually a demand for the heads of the ringleaders. It
provided a warranty for wholesale dismissal, and placed a weapon in the
hands of minor officials which, apart from their inclination, they were
fully authorised and expected to use against a certain number.

They were told that they were to consider they had relinquished the
service, but applications to be retained would be considered, though
there would be no guarantee. As was only natural in the circumstances,
the men, thinking of their wives and families, and knowing that refusal
to accept the humiliation meant instant dismissal, complied, and wrote
their applications as directed. An overseer was sent round to collect
them into a bunch, and then it was the poor men found themselves, as if
drawn into an ambush, basely betrayed. Their last lingering confidence in
the honour of the aristocrat who made blue blood only the criterion of
nobility was rudely shattered. The whole thirty men who as representing
their fellows had been induced to sign the memorial were suspended from
duty, with the prospect of dismissal, the forced humiliation of their
applications notwithstanding.

A fortnight before Christmas one hundred and forty men of the sorting
force were called up before the Controller for admonishment. These
included the thirty suspended men, who were taken last. They were all
admonished in much the same terms in the name of the Postmaster-General,
and to the majority it was intimated that the granting of their
applications would depend on their future conduct. But five of the men,
those regarded as more or less prominent in the recent agitation, were to
be dismissed; and the five condemned men were accordingly marched out of
the office, with a bitter winter and the world before them.

Lord John Manners triumphed, and the smaller officials had their
revenge. There was no doubt about that; the men went back to their
duties thoroughly cowed. It must have been a glorious hour for the
Postmaster-General, and doubtless he felt that he had routed the enemies
of society for ever. And so that the victory of the Postmaster-General
should be fully complete, a subscription to provide the dismissed sorters
with a Christmas dinner was stopped by order of the authorities. Cowed
as the men were, an attempt was made to send round a subscription-sheet,
but the movers were warned of the consequences, and they were officially
terrorised into doing nothing for the victims of Lord John Manners’s
discipline.

Several Parliamentary friends of the postal cause immediately set to
work to induce the Postmaster-General to reverse his harsh decision.
Particularly assiduous was Mr. A. J. Mundella, but he was doomed to
get nothing but humiliation for his pains. Mr. Mundella used the whole
weight of his personal influence with the Postmaster-General and the
permanent authorities, only to find himself bandied about from one to
the other till his sensitive nature became wounded and disgusted. The
studied discourtesy shown him by the permanent officials especially he
made a matter for some complaint inside the House, as he felt that more
consideration than had been accorded him was due to his position and
dignity as a public man.

These arbitrary dismissals destroyed the last vestige of confidence
in the Tory party for some years to come among the letter-sorters. If
the men had been dealt with merely for signing and sending forward a
memorial, there was no justification for such harsh punishment. There
would have been no justification for any kind of punishment, beyond the
refusal to accede to their request. But it was rendered too patent to
every one that it was seized on simply as a pretext for taking a revenge
for the part they had played in the recent agitation. There was no
discipline that demanded such a cowardly reprisal. It was worthy only of
the narrow-minded aristocrat whose principal claim to distinction was his
cherished little drop of blue blood, and whose contempt of the masses, of
all who worked for their living, and all that was plebeian, was rendered
shamefacedly notorious by his published lines. For Lord John Manners
was the author of that silly and impudent pretence at an epigram—which
shook the world with laughter, and covered the writer with derision and
scorn—even from critics of his own party. His disgraceful lines, which
ran—

    “Let Arts and Commerce, Laws and Learning, die,
    But leave us still our old Nobility!”—

of which he was so distinguished an ornament—were as much a perpetration
on decency and the canons of poetry, as his very first act as an
administrator was arbitrary. Where he had failed as a poet his party had
generously given him a chance to succeed as an autocrat. And his one idea
of autocracy presumably was to persecute the weak, as the only way to
convince them he was powerful.

Lord John Manners was a poet, and a poetic revenge was to be wreaked
on him by one of his victims. The generous impulse which had prompted
the defeated men to subscribe for a Christmas dinner for those who had
suffered for them, had been promptly strangled by the officials acting
under the direction of the Postmaster-General. So it was attempted
to raise a small sum for the distressed men by the sale outside the
Post-Office gates of a leaflet bearing the following impression:—

    THE LOCKED-OUT SORTERS OF THE GENERAL POST-OFFICE

    _To Lord John Manners, Her Majesty’s Postmaster-General_

        What ails my lord to seek his doom,
        Why hurl into the winter gloom
                      His slaves of Want and Pain?
        Art thou not of noble blood—
        And noble only to be good?—
                      Then why insult thy name?

        Didst thou not write with poet’s flame
        To save our ancient nobles’ name,
                      Their rank and chivalry;
        Then why disgrace that ancient shrine
        The only fount to _thee_ divine,
                      Why _damn_ their memory?

        Democracy will laugh with scorn
        And know a noble fool is born
                      To curse his pedigree.
        ’Tis this oppression and this shame,
        Deeds done beneath a _noble_ name
                      Will kill thy line for thee?

        Art thou of human love possest,
        With heart beneath thy silken vest,
                      To claim thyself a man?
        Art thou a husband, father, say,
        With _home_ that none can take away,
                      To bless thy earthly span?

        Bright jewels deck thy lady’s head,
        Thy children never wanted bread,
                      Born into luxury.
        Thy princely mansion so secure,
        Thy hands nor _head_ could ne’er procure
                      This gift of _destiny_.

        …

        The want and suffering that your hand
        Has brought a helpless, martyr’d band,
                      Will cry against your _deed_;
        The orphan’s tears will _burn_ your soul,
        And curse you to the final goal,
                      _Where mercy you will plead!_

                                 THOMAS HENRY GLAMORGAN (one of the men).

    LONDON, _January 1875_.

Glamorgan’s verse was as the last vehement cry of despairing freedom
in the Post-Office. The forces of discontent had been humbled and
demoralised, if not wholly scattered; and liberty, cowering in a corner,
was to remain dumb for many a day to come.

CHAPTER X

    INTRODUCTION OF BOY LABOUR—CONDITIONS OF SERVICE—DEATH OF
    COMBINATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES—POSTAL HELOTISM.

In the meantime, as if to contemptuously show that the agitating sorters
could be dispensed with at any time, or their work done by child labour,
the authorities, when the halfpenny post started in 1870, introduced a
number of lads recruited mostly from boys leaving school. This was the
introduction of the boy-sorter system, and while it presently assisted
the department to play off against the men who were fighting for a better
wage and other improvements, it efficiently furthered that principle of
economy which was to be the all and end-all of those who governed. The
department was henceforth to be run on commercial lines more than ever
it had in the past; the more profit the great machine produced the more
it might. The introduction of the boy-sorter system was yet another
experiment in levelling down, and yet a further depreciation of their
work, for which twenty years before the respectable salaries of clerks
were paid. It was justified in so far as it provided an outlet for the
telegraph messengers later on, whose only chance hitherto had been to
go as postmen; but that economy was almost the sole object with the
authorities, was almost proved from the miserable wage that was offered
these boys. Ostensibly, they were brought in to do the rough routine
work of assisting the sorters, and of carrying bags and gathering in the
correspondence for disposal. But in a very short while they were, in
addition to these menial tasks, put to the more arduous and responsible
duties of sorting, and work almost identical with that of the ordinary
sorters. For this these boys received six shillings a week—errand-boys’
wages. And the men who had been through all the rough times of the
service for ten, fifteen, and twenty years past were still agitating for
better wages and better conditions of work. This, to an extent, was the
answer of the authorities. The introduction of boy labour to displace men
discontented with their conditions was the best card they had yet played,
and one which they calculated to check the further operations of the
sorters, at least. It was not long, however, before there were some signs
of dissatisfaction among the poorly-paid youngsters themselves, besides
which it was becoming difficult to obtain the required number, and it
was soon necessary to raise their wages to nine shillings a week. The
responsibilities of their work increased proportionately, and soon there
was little appreciable difference between the work attached to them and
that on which ordinary sorters in the Newspaper Branch had been engaged.
The only sop that was thrown to the overworked and underpaid stampers and
sorters of this branch of the service was their being allowed to present
their sons as candidates for the vacancies; though whether it was that
they evinced too little sympathy with a scheme which might mean their own
undoing, or that they were too disgusted themselves with the conditions
of the service to think of bringing in their boys to share such
prospects, is not certain; but few availed themselves of the opportunity.
Not even the rise in wages to nine shillings a week for boys from fifteen
to seventeen years of age, constantly surrounded with temptation to
pilfer, and who were more or less saddled with work and responsibilities
for which more wages had been paid only a short time previously, was any
too generous for a profit-making public department. The boy sorters were
emboldened to draw up a respectful petition urging a claim for a further
improvement in pay. The petition was intercepted by a minor official,
who smelt sulphur in it at once, and several of the poor boys were
forthwith charged with leaguing themselves with the devil, or something
as discreditable. It was enough for grown-up men with wives and families
to ask for such things as higher wages and more considerate treatment,
but when infants in the service followed such a bad example it was time
to nip such juvenile ambitions in the bud. Possibly this little postal
Bumble, dressed in brief authority, who thus undertook to protect the
department from the predatory designs of these youngsters, fancied that
a higher wage might demoralise them, or tempt them to marry too early. A
number of these poor little Oliver Twists were admitted to examination
singly, and some were so frightened at the enormity of the offence of
asking for more that they timidly confessed on the spot that their humble
petition had actually been indited by a grown-up sorter named Jacobs. The
self-important little official gasped with astonishment, and prepared to
reach for his official club. The delinquent, Jacobs—“Gentleman Jacobs”
was his sobriquet among the force—was peremptorily sent for, and an
immediate written explanation demanded of him as to why he did, on a
certain date, in direct contravention of printed Rule No. 01565, incite
and encourage these junior officers of her Majesty’s postal service to
dissatisfaction in regard to their prospects and pay. Jacobs did as
requested, justifying himself on three sheets of foolscap. It was not the
incriminating “explanation” the official wanted. Jacobs flatly refused to
state anything but the truth about the matter. If the over-zealous little
official committed the folly of sending the case to the authorities,
nothing came of it.

The trifling incident is mentioned only to show how subordinate officials
with exaggerated notions of their duties may sometimes earn for the
authorities even more criticism among the rank and file than they merit.
The boy sorters afterwards were given twelve shillings a week, which
was a little more in accordance with their value to the department. The
treatment of the boy sorters reflected but little credit on those who
were responsible. Those who were not harried out of the service after
enduring its hardships for six months or so frequently survived only to
become premature wrecks, eventually disqualified by the Medical Branch.
Lads fresh from the country entering with high expectations, and it
might be said almost lured into the service under false pretences, often
fell early victims to consumption through their having to provide for
themselves on their meagre wage. In too many cases insufficient food, the
vitiated atmosphere of the sorting-office, the unnatural hours of duty,
the bullying and the nerve-strain put on them all told, and even left
their traces on them in after years. It was not to be wondered at that
so many of those who had been boy sorters were almost as soon as they
reached early manhood claimed by the White Death, consumption.

It was not long before this principle of cheap labour was further
extended, and the existing sorting force threatened to be swamped by
young recruits fresh from the ranks of the telegraph messengers or from
school. Doubtless it was partly owing to this as well as to the bitter
experience of the cruel dismissals that the men of the sorting force
continued to bear their grievances in silence. From that time forward
there had been a period of stagnation; the grumblings of discontent were
reduced to a discreet whisper, and anything of the shape of agitation was
now discredited. The sorters had not easily forgotten the sharp lesson
that had been taught them, the risk they had undergone, and the ordeal
through which they had passed. They knew they were now reduced by that
defeat to the condition of serfs, that they were slowly being deprived
of every right and privilege which goes to make the proud boast of an
Englishman. It was either submitting to this or risking, almost with the
certainty of further defeat, the bread and butter of their wives and
little ones. The department had scored; but it had not entirely scotched
the serpent of discontent. If the silence and inactivity of the men
were thought to indicate contentment and a cheerful acceptance of the
situation, the authorities were mistaken. Nowhere but in a Government
department, either in England or Russia, could such a state of things
exist. In no English workshop, where men had a trade in their hands and
a kit of tools to call their own, would they have submitted for so long
to the treatment meted out to them. For some considerable time after
the dismissals, the remainder of the force were treated like would-be
recalcitrants on whom it was necessary to keep a sharp eye, and on whom
it was as necessary to inflict humiliation for their own good. Their
convenience in the matter of sudden compulsory summonses for extra duty
was entirely ignored, while the pay for such extra duty was unfair
in the extreme. Commonly at the behest of a minor official they were
compelled to stay beyond their legitimate time without any pay whatever.
The growing intolerance of the smaller authorities towards the force
gave encouragement to the minor superiors to exercise to the full their
proclivity for bullying and browbeating the men on the smallest pretext.
And the boy sorters themselves met with the least consideration of all.
Being the juniors they were made to bear a more than proportionate share
of the hardships of their elders. Scores of them left after a few months
of it; and as many more had their dismissals procured by the merest
whim of an overseer, or the caprice of a tyrannical inspector. The boy
sorters had proved very handy to the department, both as a foil to the
possibility of further agitation among the men and as an economical
experiment; but they despised them; or if they did not actually despise
them they allowed others to, and were utterly indifferent to the manner
of their treatment. The majority of these lads were of an age too tender
to be withdrawn safely from the influence of the home circle; yet many
of them had only their bare wage of twelve shillings a week to enable
them to lodge, clothe, feed, and keep themselves honest upon. They were
of an age when the growing lad has all the appetites of the man, yet the
authorities did not think it unfair to expect them to keep up a certain
amount of respectability of appearance. The chance of supplementing their
income was that of a compulsory summons in the middle of the night,
or rather four o’clock in the morning, and from this hour till nine
o’clock, five hours in all, performed before their actual day’s duty
commenced; they were remunerated with one shilling, paid the following
week. Whatever excuse was to be made for the East-End sweater, openly and
professedly exploiting juvenile labour, there was none such to be made
for a Government department like the Post-Office.

So indifferent to the barest claims of humanity had the officials calling
themselves the authorities now become that the men could barely call
their souls their own. If they were allowed an ownership over their
spiritual being, that was only to suit theoretical requirements, but in
actual fact their personal liberty was more circumscribed than ever.
They had always to remember that they were postal officials first,
and men and husbands and fathers afterwards. Away from the office or
otherwise they were to regard themselves as still on duty, at least when
off duty they were to hold themselves always in readiness to respond to
a telegram summoning them to the office; consequently they must never
make appointments, except at their own risk. A man failing to respond
to the call of extra duty was not only set down as a shirker and one
unwilling to serve the department in an emergency, but he was very often
punished and insulted into the bargain. Superintendents and the “heads of
departments” in those days particularly were allowed unchecked to give
fullest vent to their own personal predilections, their own particular
likes and dislikes, and if it was that they were not allowed a larger
discretion than in these days, it was mostly due to the fact that the men
had no means of resenting such barefaced assertions of autocracy. While
the men bore it without a combined protest, a superintendent of a branch
might, if he chose, become a little despot, with the power to render
miserable the hundreds of men under his control. For as is the master so
are his stewards and bailiffs. The example set by one higher official is
eagerly imitated by his immediate subordinates, and those over whom they
have control are the sufferers.

That the apathy of the force in respect to combination for mutual
interest was taken advantage of by their immediate superiors, was shown
in many curious and significant ways. Excuses for late attendance or for
non-compliance with regulation, which would be graciously accepted now,
were then often treated with open derision and contempt. A superintendent
might either call a man with a ready excuse a downright liar to his face,
or he might, in his desire to be strictly official, display such an utter
want of feeling as to be guilty of conduct almost bordering on brutality.
It was the vogue of one official of this period to regulate everything
strictly according to rule. He thought himself too loyal a servant of the
department even to exercise that little discretion vested in him by his
superiors. Besides, he thought it was saving himself a deal of trouble to
do so, and the muttered imprecations of the men or their hidden scowls
never entered into his calculations. He never deviated a hair’s-breadth
from the rule laid down. If by an unhappy mischance there had been a
misprint in the rule-book or instructions to postmasters and others, that
a man found absenting himself from the sorting-office for more than the
usual period, should be “hanged” instead of only “suspended,” he would
have made no inquiry. He would have taken it for granted and had the poor
wretch hanged from the gallery forthwith in a coil of the red-tape so
dear to his heart. He was not the only one of his tribe. It was not that
the higher authorities either directly encouraged or were fully cognisant
of this sort of conduct on their part; if they did not know, they did
not want to know; these were trifles that did not concern them. Such
things have concerned them only when the men’s murmurs rose to a pitch
high enough to compel their attention. The men had ceased for so long to
murmur openly that perhaps the authorities were not so much to blame for
allowing petty tyranny on the part of the smaller to go unchecked.

While the men remained unorganised amongst themselves, the officials
could see no wrong in putting fresh impositions on those under their
control. The old device of forcing the men on extra duty, without pay
or return of any kind, was more freely resorted to than ever. The eight
hours’ day remained virtually unrecognised, and those who had attended
at four or half-past four in the early morning were more often than not
imprisoned like galley-slaves at the sorting-tables an hour, sometimes
two hours, beyond the time when they should have been free to go home to
obtain rest, and prepare once more for the afternoon’s duty.

The officials profited little by the experience of that occasion a year
or so previous when the men, goaded beyond the limits of forbearance,
took the law into their own hands and boldly broke through the
imprisoning doors, and asserted their liberty as free men in a free
country. These disgraceful rushes for liberty—disgraceful only on the
part of the authorities, who sought to imprison them like convicts,
forgetful that they were public servants in the service of the most
freedom-loving country in the world—were several times repeated. And the
men who dared to protest in this primitive fashion, which was now the
only one left to them, were as frequently threatened and punished. The
officials apparently thought that by singling out a few individuals here
and there they would terrorise the rest into an acceptance of this unjust
system of forced and compulsory labour without pay, and bolster up their
own authority. Whatever extra duty that was paid for was paid for on the
lowest scale possible, and, coupled with that, was in most cases rendered
compulsory between most inconvenient hours, so as to deprive the men
of either rest or recreation. After completing the half of their day’s
work they would find themselves, perhaps on their arrival home, suddenly
summoned back on duty right in the middle of the day, between 10 A.M. and
2 P.M. This, it will be seen, meant a serious loss of time to them, as
they were on duty again at 4.30 P.M., and for all this they were rewarded
with nothing better than payment equal to the “docker’s tanner”—sixpence
per hour.

There were two or three abortive attempts at rebellion against this
cruel system, but protests were vain in convincing the authorities
of its hardship or unfairness. The old official dictum that the
permanence of their employment as Government servants amply compensated
for every shortcoming, continually weighed with the authorities, and
was as continually advanced against the claims of the men. Because
the department had vouchsafed to them something like permanence of
employment, it took to itself the right of imposing any conditions the
caprice of its officials might devise, and of abrogating their menials’
privileges whenever they thought proper. Men who failed from whatever
cause to respond promptly to these domiciliary summonses were severely
reprimanded, and their conduct held in remembrance for use against them
in the future. Moreover, in answer to the respectful complaint that
sixpence an hour was a too unfair remuneration for those at the maximum
of their class, it was pointed out that there was no Treasury grant
sufficient to entitle them to more. But it is significant that on one
occasion when the sorters at last showed a more determined front than
usual by disregarding a peremptory summons of this nature, almost to a
man excusing themselves on the ground that the pay was far too little,
eightpence an hour was granted the following week; and the men wondered
all the more, as the smallest Treasury grant generally took more time
than the proverbial mountain in labour.

CHAPTER XI

    A PERIOD OF STAGNATION—THE BLIND POSTMASTER-GENERAL AND A GLEAM
    OF LIGHT—A MEMORABLE VISIT—THE FAWCETT SCHEME.

Lord John Manners had descended from his pedestal of office and returned
to the comparative obscurity and inactivity for which his attainments so
well fitted him. Before leaving the Post-Office he had the satisfaction
of knowing that, from one point of view, he had done at least one thing
well; he had stifled discontent and reduced the common herd of postal
workers to their proper level of uncomplaining Government serfs. Under
his régime had grown and flourished naturally a system of petty tyranny
and sycophancy which rendered open honest protest well-nigh impossible,
which compelled men to endure it or accept the alternative, resignation
or dismissal, and which made any attempt at combination as impossible as
in the prehistoric days before the penny post. The condition, so far as
the limitations on their liberty were concerned, was every whit as bad as
prevailed years before the agitation. Nearly all the reforms which the
late agitation had started so hopefully to attain had been left undone.
The violent _coup_ for which Lord John Manners was responsible had taken
the heart out of the men, and they had to take the postal service as
they found it or leave it for others to be forced into their places from
the stress of competition outside. The hide-bound official tenet that
the permanency of Government employment more than compensated for all
shortcomings was now being interpreted as if to mean that this quality
of “permanency” not only compensated for but justified and rendered
necessary the employment of petty persecution, the deprivation of almost
every claim to citizenship, and the curtailment of most ordinary human
rights. The utter contempt of the officials for men’s common rights
and privileges as human beings, their churlish indifference to the
common claims of manhood, have to some extent already been shown. Even
the “permanency” of employment was commonly nullified on the smallest
pretext, and seniority and long faithful service counted for little
against the whim of a tyrannical supervisor. If it was creditable to the
public service to have it manned by those who suffered from grievances
yet dared not complain of them; if it was profitable to the Treasury
to have the rank and file of the postal service remain underpaid and
forced labour exacted from them; if it was requisite that the woes of
the men should be hidden alike from the public and from the higher
permanent officials henceforth, most of the credit, most of the honour,
was due to Lord John Manners. If it was well that all inquiry should be
stifled and the men be kept in servile subjection by superiors whose
common conception of their duties was that of Russian jailers; if it was
necessary in the course of proper discipline that men should be treated
as though they had no soul to call their own, Lord John Manners, by the
one act by which he achieved this success, deserved the gratitude of his
country.

Thus it will be seen that nearly everything which the agitation had set
out to do, all the reforms which it had promised, were left for a future
generation. A long period of stagnation had set in, and but for the
faint echo of agitation occasionally coming from the telegraphists, the
Post-Office, so far as uttered discontent was concerned, might have been
wrapped in slumber.

Lord John Manners had departed for good, unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.
His advent and departure had witnessed no change in the conditions of
the service. Time in the Post-Office dragged its slow weary length along
till the year 1881 was reached. That year was to witness a glad surprise
for the dejected sorting staff at least. If Lord John Manners was the
one man who was to be bitterly remembered as having battened down the
hatches on the galley-slaves, set a seal on their freedom of action, and
put a premium on official exaction, Professor Henry Fawcett was the
one who came at last to offer them a fuller share of air and liberty.
Lord John Manners, belonging to the political party which had encouraged
their demands, and, in the persons of some of its most prominent men,
almost, it might be said, aided and abetted the agitation, so far from
carrying out the reforms which had been confidently expected of him, had
discouraged their aspirations by means of a whip of scorpions. They had
asked for bread, and he had given them something worse than a stone.
Professor Henry Fawcett had scarcely been approached, certainly not by
those who figured in the late agitation, yet remembering his promises
of bygone years, and with a generous desire to meet the necessities of
their case, he of his own free will, and almost spontaneously, offered
reparation for the long disappointment they had sustained. Mr. Fawcett,
though never taking a prominent part, or figuring too largely in the
letter-carriers’ and sorters’ three years’ agitation, yet had associated
himself with it to an extent, often giving his wise counsel to Booth and
the others, and always his sympathy and best wishes for bettering the
conditions of the service. He showed that he was not likely to forget now.

Discontent among the telegraphists had reached a somewhat acute stage,
and the new Postmaster-General busied himself for some time in arriving
at the inner facts of their case. He rose from his study of the
telegraphists’ troubles with a conviction that something must be done
to meet the justice of their demands. It was not clamour that weighed
with him, but a genuine inclination to do the right thing so far as in
him lay, and to put in order the household which his predecessors had
more or less neglected. He had the fullest desire to mete out justice to
the telegraphists, but there was the sister branch of the service to be
considered likewise. That portion of the Augean stable was, if anything,
in a worse condition, and he decided to ascertain for himself.

One evening, in his quiet simple manner, the blind Postmaster-General
presented himself at the General Post-Office unannounced and asked to
be taken over the sorting department, and to have things explained to
him. The scene was one of bustle and confusion; and the dull roar and
the clank of stamping machinery, and the movements of hundreds of men
in a confined space, filled the overburdened air. He was conducted to
a position on the gallery overlooking the busy, crowded Letter Branch,
which to ordinary eyes resembled nothing so much as an overturned
ant-hill. Mr. Fawcett’s form and features were not familiar to the
majority; but presently the whisper went round that the tall, silent
man, seeming to stare down upon them through the big black spectacles
which hid his closed eyes, was the Postmaster-General himself. For a
few moments strict discipline was forgotten in curiosity, and few could
really believe that one who could so intently follow the movements of the
throbbing machinery below, as he did, could be wholly blind. They did not
comprehend to the full the pathos of it; they did not know that this was
only a habit he had schooled himself into to hide his infirmity. Nor did
they know that in him they looked on the first Postmaster-General who
had come among them with an honest desire to prove their benefactor. It
chanced—or it may have been that Mr. Fawcett himself preferred it—that a
young junior sorter was deputed to take him over the building. The young
man acting as guide succeeded in so interesting him by his manner of
describing all that the blind eyes could not see that at last Professor
Fawcett asked him his position in the service, and further questioned him
as to his pay and prospects. Presumably from what he gathered on that
occasion he learnt much that set him thinking. A little while afterwards
an official circular announced that the Postmaster-General would be
willing to receive a statement of the men’s claims to better pay and
prospects.

The issue of such a circular was as unexpected as manna from heaven.
It was some days before the letter-sorters could realise their good
fortune in having a Daniel come to judgment at last after all their
privations. Although the circular was a guarantee of good faith on the
part of the Postmaster-General, the men still betrayed a certain amount
of timidity in responding to so generous an invitation, until four or
five of them, forming themselves into a provisional committee, called a
meeting in one of the kitchens, and the basis of a plan was laid down.
There were several such meetings with the sanction of the authorities,
who could not decently withhold it; there was much cackling before the
egg was finally laid, as there usually is. But at last a petition to the
Postmaster-General was formulated and sent on its mission. The claims