There are people who think that in a huge undertaking like the Post Office, which works largely by routine, personalities don't count for much. There are others who think that by minute organisation the success of a system can be guaranteed. The human factor, however, still has to be reckoned with, and the city or town is fortunate which has a wise and sensible postmaster. It has been said that “the most depressing thing in the world is a dull person administering faithfully an elaborate system; and one of the most inspiring sights is an original man making the best of an imperfect system.” The Head Postmasters of the General Post Office include both kinds of men, and sometimes when we are blaming the system it is the man who is at fault. And when we sometimes blame the man he is really doing his best with the system.
CHAPTER XXI
THE VILLAGE POST OFFICE
All post offices other than a Head Office are called sub-offices. The definition embraces busy town offices as well as the village post office. The sub-office is usually managed by a man or woman who has other visible means of support. In the vast majority of cases the sub-office is a shop. And comprising as the ranks of sub-postmasters do all sorts and conditions of men, it is not surprising if we find more variety among this class of official than among the Head Postmasters. The Head Postmaster is a Civil Servant; he has a tradition to keep up, and he looks at official matters with a sort of professional eye. The sub-postmaster, on the other hand, has, as it were, a foot in both worlds, the commercial and the official, and he comes to his duties with the training not of the Civil Servant but of the local tradesman. I sometimes think that it is a good thing for the Post Office service that so many of its servants should have this double interest; they are in close touch with the public, they know its peculiarities across the counter, and they are less likely to be strangled by red tape. The sub-postmaster is often, of course, a highly educated man, and can take a high place among any society of business men in his district; on the other hand, in a small district or village he may be a man of slight education who is only a degree above the working classes. A sub-postmaster is often very human and unsophisticated; he is not trained by the Civil Service Commissioners to write reports in proper official style, and he often shocks the staid officials at headquarters by the directness of his style. And considering the stock from which sub-postmasters are often drawn, it is sometimes astonishing how well the work of the Department is performed. For most of the duties proper to a Head Office belong also to a sub-office. The responsibility is perhaps less, but the sub-postmaster has frequently to be efficient in all classes of Post Office work, to be an accountant, experienced in banking business, and to know a good deal about telegraphy.
We are growing accustomed to the fact that any letter we write to the remotest hamlet in the Kingdom is certain to be delivered at the earliest possible moment; but it is only within a comparatively late period that this has actually happened. Up to 1764 the Post Office carried letters to post towns only, but did not undertake to deliver them at the homes of the addressees, and in London only was there a local post. This was the famous Penny Post, originally founded by Dockwra in 1680, and soon afterwards taken over by the Crown. In 1764 authority was given for the establishment of this Penny Post within the limits of any city or town, and thirty years later it was provided that any Penny Post might be extended beyond the former limit of ten miles from the town in which it was set up. But such posts were in fact only set up in about half-a-dozen of the largest towns in the Kingdom, and at that time neither benefited nor were intended to benefit the rural districts.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century there were no rural or village posts. Letters were conveyed by post to towns of any considerable size, and were fetched from these places by arrangement on behalf of the people living in the surrounding villages. Probably a village generally employed its own messenger, paying him in some cases a fixed sum as wages, and in others a penny or more on every letter carried. Sometimes a pauper was employed for this work. Wealthy people made their own arrangements. In 1801 the Post Office made efforts to reach the villages, but right down to 1840 the service was fitful and irregular, and was not uniform. The Government of Sir Robert Peel in 1843 decided that the principle on which rural posts should be established should be based simply upon the number of letters for each locality. “All places, the letters for which exceed 100 a week, should be deemed entitled to the privilege of a receiving office and a free daily delivery of their letters.” In 1850 this rule was still further simplified, and the rule was now that a post should be established when it would pay its way. Modifications of even this rule took place in successive years, and the network of rural posts extended so much that in 1862 the proportion of letters delivered to the addressees was estimated to reach 94 per cent. In 1871 the Postmaster-General was able to announce that he hoped “the time is not distant when a free delivery at least two or three times a week will be provided for every house in the country, however remote.” But it was twenty years before this pious hope began to be fulfilled. At the end of 1892 it was estimated that there were still about 32,000,000 letters a year not delivered by the Post Office. Nearly 8,000,000 letters were in the next year brought into free delivery, and the work of extension went on gradually until the day of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in 1897, when it was announced that a regular delivery of letters would be given to every house in the Kingdom. We can now scarcely understand any other state of things to be endurable for a day.
The rural sub-postmaster has had enormously increased duties thrown upon him in recent years, and it is possible that his pay has not kept pace with his responsibility. The Department naturally takes advantage of the fact that the work of the Post Office is a valuable addition to any business, and that a man is provided with a big advertisement for his particular trade when he is given the Post Office business. At any rate, there is usually a demand in every place for the privilege of running the Post Office. Still, the sub-postmaster is human, and he does not always admit the justice of this kind of indirect payment. Towards the end of 1907, many sub-postmasters were eagerly looking out for the Report of the Parliamentary Committee on their condition. Something good was expected. In January 1908, a new book of Rules for sub-postmasters was issued and distributed, and one sub-postmaster in a remote country district came to the conclusion that the book was the long-looked-for Report, and fresh from great disappointment, and, as will be seen, breathless with indignation, he wrote to his Head Postmaster as follows: at the end of his letter he placed his first full stop.
“Sir I have read the new book of rules all through I see by it that sub postmasters has gained nothing but lost all the privileges they had the cannot speak of any thing the cannot speak for a member of parlment county counceler or anything the cannot sell anything that does not belong to the Post Office the cannot take an agency from any one the belive that himself and his place all belongs to them the expect him to look after Postboys mail car bad coin watch everything night and day that belongs to the Post Office I have to keep the office opened for twelve hours every day do everything attend to every one no one person fit to do this or do what the Book expects them to do we have not sunday to ourselves we must stay till four o'clock in the evening to prepare the bag for the mail car we get no allowance for holidays one of us must stop at home from church on Sunday on our turn to attend for the car bees nearly always late on Sunday and gets no money for it I do not see how the expects us to do it for nine pence a day or how can the expect a man to live on it would be a fine thing for one to be a postman I would have more pay and clothes when my three hours was over I could go where I liked and had Sunday to myself there is no one under the goverment so bad paid as country sub offices and still we have more to do than any other one for we have to tie parsels rite the direction on letters and parsels for most of the people for the do not no how last year I had to sit up till 11 o clock at night riting after the 5 35 car came I had 34 regestered letters to compair with the list and check them put my Initels after every one of them fill 34 receats 34 counterfoils so the do not look to whet we have to do to prepare everything for the Postmen next morning we have to handle letters from every one take their money no matter what desease or sickness is in there house still we are not allowed a doctor if anything happens we are not alowed anything it is nearly a shame to be a country sub postmaster if the expect to do work they should pay us I have to pay a man 12 shillings a week for 6 days and he will oneley work 9 hours for me in summer and about 5 in Winter so I see that nothing is left us but to resign as it will pay no one we are not alowed to show our greevances in the press to the publick or through a member of parliment we must leave all to them no less than a pound a week would Pay to keep up to the new rules Keep marking time for Postmen marking and dating everything in the new book they should give us fair Play we waited with patience thinking the Commission would do something for us but it made us worse it must be there was no one to give evedence for us we have pens ink cealing wax too I think I have rote some of our Grievence to you as you are onely one left to us to write to your obedient servant.”
Here we have the duties and disabilities of a rural sub-postmaster all described picturesquely in his own words, and the only defence we can offer for the authorities is that the man has not resigned, and would regard it as the greatest injustice of all if he were relieved of his duties.
Yet sub-postmasters do deserve our sympathies. They endure much from an irritable and impatient public. Occasionally, the suffering becomes articulate. “I beg,” says a sub-postmaster, “to report that the man called at the office to-day. I handed him the book, and complied with your instructions. I hope I shall never see him again.” We can almost imagine the painful scene at the counter.
We are often ready enough to complain of the incivility and indifference of the man or woman at the post office, but we don't realise how trying we are to the much-harassed officials. A sub-postmaster was asked to explain why he accepted irregularly a deposit in an account which had already exceeded the limit. His reply showed that at least red-tape methods do not prevail at his office, even though moral courage may be lacking in the postmaster. “In order to avoid unpleasantness which appeared to be imminent, I accepted the deposit.”