A history of postal agitation from fifty years ago till the present day. H. G. Swift
or less directed was to provoke an inquiry into the authorship of what they chose to regard as a gross literary impertinence. The usual voluntary spies and amateur detectives were set to work secretly to discover by their own methods who could have been guilty of communicating the facts, or, better still, who was the actual author, and if he had any connection with the service. If the men knew anything at all, they kept the secret loyally. The authorities never got beyond suspicions which they failed to justify, and so the matter blew over. If ever there was a postal Junius in connection with the case, none but a few and the Civil Service Gazette knew his identity.
Before leaving the matter of these articles, of which such high hopes and expectations were raised, it may be worthy of mention as a curious item that the interest and enthusiasm of the men was for some time before kept alive by the surreptitious distribution inside the office and elsewhere of handbills issued from the publishers. Let the handbill speak for itself, and break the silence of nearly half a century:—
Read the “Civil Service Gazette”
Unstamped 5d.—Stamped 6d.
July 24th, 1858,
ROWLAND HILL’S LAST UKASE!
BREAK DOWN OF THE GAGGING SYSTEM!
WHITE SLAVES OF THE POST-OFFICE.
31st,
ROWLAND HILL’S JOB FRUSTRATED:
HIS GREAT REVENGE:
The Screw and Gagging System of the General Post-Office.
POST-OFFICE REFORMS
AND THE WAY TO GET THEM:
HOPE FOR THE LETTER-CARRIERS.
Coming Emancipation of the White Niggers.
August 7th.
POST-OFFICE MANAGEMENT:
OUR MISSING LETTERS AND OUR LATE DELIVERIES
THE LETTER-CARRIER’S “BILL OF FARE.”
14th.
POST-OFFICE REFORM BY MERIT:
REVELATIONS FROM ST. MARTIN’S-LE-GRAND.
HOPE FOR THE OPPRESSED.
THE POSTMASTER-GENERAL AND THE LONDON LETTER-CARRIERS.
These handbills with the articles were all that remained as sad mementos of a new experience and a great disappointment.
The day of postal deliverance was not yet. There were many hills of difficulty to climb ere they could hope even to catch a distant glimpse of the Promised Land.
CHAPTER IV
GROWING DISCONTENT AMONG LETTER-CARRIERS—PROHIBITION OF PUBLIC MEETING—THE FRANCHISE AMONG POSTAL SERVANTS AND ITS HISTORY
For another ten years practically the authorities allowed the malcontents to stew in their own juice.
There was, however, some slight attempt on the part of the letter-carriers to again bring their grievances under notice in 1858 by holding another public meeting in the south-western district of London. This meeting, in the newspaper reports of which the names of the speakers were concealed, for that reason principally, incurred the serious disapprobation of the authorities, and it was honoured with special reference in the Fifth Annual Report of the Postmaster-General. Therein the letter-carriers were severely rebuked for not adopting the same regular course which had hitherto failed to bring them satisfaction. One or two passages are instructive. Instead of the proceedings being “conducted in an open, manly, and respectful manner, the meeting referred to was held away from the ordinary place of employment, and speeches were made containing statements which the men who uttered them must have known to be false, but from the consequences of which they endeavoured to screen themselves by concealing their names.” Lord Colchester, the then Postmaster-General, took the opportunity to warn the letter-carriers “against the machinations of discarded officers who, reckless of the ruin they may bring upon others, strive to spread disaffection in the department from which they themselves have been removed.” Coupled with this warning there was a half promise that, though their position was, as was maintained, a very enviable one, their grievances would be further looked into—providing they complained no further and held no more meetings.
A year or so later, in 1860, owing to the persistent representations made by the various bodies comprising the circulating department, in which they complained of insufficient remuneration and other grievances, an Inter-departmental Committee of Inquiry was held, composed of the principal authorities, assisted by the Assistant-Secretary of the Treasury. This committee occupied itself with the subject matter of the memorials which had been presented. The result was a report in which they recommended a slight increase of force, and a small increase in wages. Whatever the increase of force that was recommended, it was not before it was needed. As for the increase of wages it was not only insignificant, but the manner of its application betrayed it at once as only a temporary stop-gap hesitatingly offered by a parsimonious department anxious to obtain the most credit out of the transaction. Before the public the letter-carriers were represented as coming in for another departmental legacy, but the microscopic benefit was still further diminished by being confined to the “men now in the service,” so that “men newly appointed to the minor establishment would come in on the old and lesser rates of pay.” Even this slight improvement in the conditions of the service was to be confined to the men who had agitated and put the department and its Inter-departmental Committee to some little trouble and expense.
In the year 1866 Lord Stanley of Alderley, then Postmaster-General, felt constrained to prohibit all outside public meetings which were called for purposes of promoting agitation among discontented postal officials. Lord Stanley issued an order prohibiting such open meetings on pain of dismissal. However it may have been justified at the period of its introduction, it is interesting to note that successive Postmasters-General allowed it to remain practically in abeyance for the next twenty-five years. Either Lord Stanley’s order was forgotten, even in the most stormy periods between 1871 and 1874, or the different public heads of the department felt a reluctance to reintroduce it. It was not till 1890 that a definite prohibition of the right of public meeting based on this order was issued by Mr. Raikes.
The London letter-carriers at this period of 1866 were in a highly-dissatisfied state, notwithstanding that on March 22, 1865, there had been a slight revision in the scales of pay for sorters, stampers, letter-carriers, and supplementary letter-carriers. The latter were in receipt of eighteen shillings, while two classes of letter-carriers went from twenty shillings to twenty-five, and from twenty-six to thirty shillings a week. In introducing this improved scale of pay in a circular memorandum, the Postmaster-General did not forget to impress on the lucky recipients that “the benefit of their places is by no means confined to their bare wages, and that this is especially so in the case of the letter-carriers.” They were also once more reminded of the amounts they received from the public “in gratuities at Christmas—a sum which, if divided equally and spread over the whole year, would produce on an average 5s. a week to each man.”
Yet though a beneficent and paternal department gave sanction to the indirect taxation of the public to bring up the wages of the letter-carriers, the letter-carriers themselves still found cause for complaint. On March 1, 1866, a small meeting was held in a public hall to decide on the best means of letting the public and the authorities know of the chronic discontent prevailing, and the adoption of the most effectual means of agitating for the purpose of obtaining a higher wage. The prime mover of this was a letter-carrier named Padfield, in receipt of twenty-five shillings a week, and his principal coadjutors were Sinfield and Booth. Some strong comments were made regarding the decisions of the Postmaster-General and upon the replies of the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the House of Commons, which utterances, as reported, were objected to by the authorities as exceeding the bounds of official license. Padfield, who called the meeting and filled the chair on this occasion, had been an active agitator for some