A history of postal agitation from fifty years ago till the present day. H. G. Swift
discontented, but always to remain faithful and loyal, well satisfied with the position in which it had pleased God and their patron to place them.
With the rank and file of the postal service composed of such men, brought in under such conditions, it is not surprising that discontent never raised its head, and that many a grievance went unredressed because it was silently endured. Nor is it surprising that the Post-Office, garrisoned by such an army sworn in in this manner, was almost the last citadel that it attacked with any degree of success. It would have been too dangerous for any man to have attempted to bell the cat in those days, and however strong may have been the desire in some, without the support and confidence of their fellows it would have been sheer official suicide to have taken the first step. They were men calculated to endure much. Petty official tyranny to such men meant no more than mild discipline. A grievance with them was but an evanescent thing, felt to-day, forgotten to-morrow; for they had a stake in the Post-Office. To express discontent would be to court certain dismissal, and that would have meant much to them, while it would mean the betrayal of the good, kind patron, their father’s master or landlord, whose powerful influence had placed them there. Indeed, it is easy to understand that no man would have felt himself either a spy or a renegade to principle in secretly or openly denouncing the rash fool who would endeavour to organise a meeting of protest against his superiors. Such were the conditions and such the temper of the men of the postal staff that must have long obtained prior to the fifties and sixties. From the introduction of the penny post in 1840, which practically organised the Post-Office on a new basis, there is no evidence of combined discontent worth recording till the early fifties, though through that period of eighteen years or so the leaven of discontent was slowly but surely working, till a desire to make their wants known at last became manifest.
Yet only a few years after the institution of the penny post the indoor working staffs and the letter-carriers were both given grave cause for dissatisfaction by the extension of Sunday labour. Whatever protest they may have made of their own accord counted for little; but it is interesting to find that so early as 1848 an influential and public-spirited section of the community took up the matter of compulsory Sunday labour on behalf of the aggrieved postal servants, the sorting-clerks and others, and publicly expressed that dissatisfaction which Government servants dared not themselves utter too openly.
At that time it was contemplated by the authorities to compel two attendances on that day as on other days of the week, and to abolish entirely for postal servants in London the distinction between the day of rest and ordinary working days. This was the origin of that question of compulsory Sunday labour in the Post-Office, which was to continue for thirty years and more as one of the prevailing causes of dissatisfaction to thousands of men. On the 8th October 1849 a great mass meeting was called at Exeter Hall to protest as strongly as possible against this desecration of Sunday. The meeting was convened in the interests of postal servants themselves as much as in furtherance of the Sabbatarian principle, and there is little doubt that the men of the Post-Office who were the principal objectors to the new regulation, were behind the scenes aiding and abetting in the success of the movement. A writer in the Patriot newspaper of that year, and one evidently familiar with the Post-Office machinery, drew a vivid picture of the possibilities of Sunday labour in the Post-Office. This article in the Patriot, probably from the pen of the first avowed discontented postal servant, did not a little to further the memorial for the cessation of the practice, which was afterwards drawn up by the Sunday-School Union, and forwarded to the Lords of the Treasury. The action of the authorities was denounced as sacrilegious, arbitrary, and tyrannical, by a number of clergymen and others speaking for the aggrieved men, while Rowland Hill, the postal reformer, the “Father of the Penny Post,” came in for a large share of hostile criticism, his name being repeatedly hissed at the Exeter Hall meeting. If the audience hissed Rowland Hill, they as loudly cheered the postal servants on whom this new official imposition was to be put, directly it became known that, to their honour, they had respectfully but firmly declined to submit, and that when the sheets for their signature went round the large establishment only two men could be got to sign away their birthright for the little extra pay. The name of the Queen was invoked to prevent this iniquitous violation of the “Pearl of Days.”
The memorial was forwarded to the Treasury; and the request for an interview with Lord John Russell to support the prayer of his memorial, met with only a curt refusal through his secretary. There the matter ended, so far. The Post-Office had its way, and compulsory Sunday labour in the Post-Office became an established, and in the minds of many, a disgraceful fact; to prove, however, a source of further trouble later on, and to provide one of the most substantial excuses for agitation during the next thirty years. Yet the comparatively feeble agitation by proxy, set on foot then in 1848, did produce, nevertheless, some little result; and on March 18, 1850, a Parliamentary paper was issued to show the “results of the measures recently adopted for the reduction of Sunday labour in the Post-Office.”
CHAPTER III
ECONOMICAL REFORM AND A LOWERING OF STATUS—AN ESTIMATE OF ROWLAND HILL—EFFORTS OF THE CIVIL SERVICE GAZETTE—THE CONDITIONS OF THE SERVICE, 1854–60.
From about 1854 it seems a new class of men were gradually being introduced. By the operation of what was known as the Elcho Scheme, there was a large reduction of the clerical class who had hitherto usually discharged the duties of letter-sorting, as well as the despatch and receipt of mails. But the authorities, beginning to awaken to the fact that the Post-Office was becoming a splendid source of revenue, therefore decided to cut down expenditure by introducing a more poorly paid class to take up the duties of those who had been in receipt of a much higher salary than it was proposed to offer the new entrants.
The work of sorting letters, for example, which had hitherto been performed by clerks, was now to be entrusted to men of an inferior grade. And the “Report upon the Post-Office for the year 1854,” in which this innovation is first announced, expresses the hope that such persons on an inferior salary would be able, as necessity arose, or on “occasions of any extraordinary pressure,” to take a share also in the duties of the clerks. This is perhaps one of the earliest indications of that policy of cheese-paring and depreciation of the value of official work, which, if it has not always justified discontent and agitation, has proved a fruitful source of it. From the introduction of the penny post, and probably from a long time before, the public correspondence was treated tenderly and disposed of conscientiously. So high was the importance attached to it that none were deemed worthy of being entrusted with it who were not servants belonging to the “major establishment.” Both the sorters of letters and those who despatched the mails belonged to the clerical staff, while only the work of “facing,” stamping, tying, and the work of conveyance and porterage was entrusted to the class of minor officials, who afterwards came to constitute the main bulk of the force.
From this period the clerks, who had been the only ones entrusted with the high responsibility of sorting and despatching letters, gradually became a restricted and exclusive class, while the lesser officials, who formerly had been scarcely allowed to touch the correspondence, were now trained to those superior duties, but without a corresponding increase of remuneration. It is worthy, however, of bearing in mind that the despatching of mails was still deemed of such a responsibility and importance that mere letter-sorters were not yet allowed to perform such duties, clerks only on a salary rising to £400 a year being thought worthy of that honour, although a few years later, when such duties became several times heavier and correspondingly more responsible, the inferior class of letter-sorters were compelled to take them up. It was the continuance of this anomaly for some length of time, indeed, which constituted one of the main elements of discontent, and came to be regarded as a distinct grievance among the letter-sorting staff especially.
As the growth of the Post-Office business necessitated a larger staff to cope with it, so a new class of men were being slowly introduced. The penny post was a reform so much appreciated by the public by this time that it had become even now, in 1854, the most flourishing business in the world. And Rowland Hill was not slow to take every advantage of his discovery that the Post-Office contained greater