The competitions arranged of late years by magazines and newspapers in the shape of missing words, Limericks, and puzzles have been felt nowhere more keenly than in the Postal Order branch. Some years ago a member of the staff in a private letter gave her experiences of a time of stress of this kind. “We are at present inundated with Pearson's Weekly. It is like the charge of the Light Brigade. Bundles to the right of us, bundles to the left of us, upstairs and downstairs. Pearson says in some interview that one of his female clerks counts the Postal Orders at the rate of 14,000 an hour with very few mistakes. The ordinary rate for the Post Office clerks who have had a good deal of experience, and who do it all day long, is between 3000 and 4000 per hour, and there are very few mistakes. I think any one who tried to count more than that would be a raving lunatic soon, and at any rate would not be able to continue at that speed (viz. 14,000 an hour) for six or seven consecutive hours. On one Tuesday morning a postmaster sent his ordinary requisition for a fortnight's supply, and over and above this asked for 250 at 1s. for some gentlemen who had already paid for them and wanted them urgently by Wednesday. When the competitions were announced to end several postmasters wrote asking for their stock to be taken back, as they were now overstocked. We ourselves helped to swell the number, and we have won occasionally, so that on the whole we don't mind the rush very much. There was one gentleman we heard of who having already sent up several words in one competition, thought of another at the last moment. He rushed out to the nearest post office, and asked a flaxen-haired damsel behind the counter for the necessary shilling Order. She had a scared look in her face, and she did not reply to the gentleman. She simply called out despairingly, 'Father, here's another,' and fled. And the father put the shutters up, turned the gas out, and the word never reached Pearson's.”

In the Postmaster-General's report for 1908 reference is made to the demand during 1907 for sixpenny orders in connection with “Limerick” competitions. The Postmaster-General is never flippant, nor does he feel bound as the head of a big business to deprecate this particular form of gambling: indeed there is almost a note of jubilation in the way he records an advance in the sales of Postal Orders of 23,000,000, largely due, as he says, to the competitions. And in his report for 1909 there is just a shade of disappointment in his manner of stating that the falling off in the sale of Orders, amounting to more than 10,000,000, is due to the passing away of the “Limerick” competitions.

Both in the Money Order and Postal Order Departments a great deal of the seamy side of our social life is revealed. Considerable numbers of Money Orders are sent to various lottery agents abroad, not a few go to firms of horse-racing bookmakers. Sometimes the public is unreasonable; it is curious how inquiries about money are usually expressed angrily and suspiciously. A payee was asked for full particulars of his Order, merely in order to trace it and help him to his lost property. His reply was on a postcard: “Why this humbug? I want my money.”

One man had sent an Order to purchase a performing dog, but wanted his money back, because “the dog that played tricks was a fraud, and could no more sham death than a dying duck in a thunderstorm could sing the National Anthem.” There was a twist in the man's mind which somehow led him to associate the Post Office with the dog having been palmed off on him.

A small boy altered the amount on an Order, and on being found out wrote up to the Secretary, “I am a Sunday School scholar, and have been to Sunday School all the days of my life,” and he wound up with, “O Lord, forgive me.” The father undertook to administer the cane to the young scholar, and the Secretary did not pursue the matter.

In spite of the huge number of posted Orders which are issued, a small percentage only go astray. Extra commission is charged on Orders not presented within a given time, and there are often cases when on an Order being presented it is found that this extra commission amounts to more than the value of the Order. In every recorded instance of this sort the payee has preferred to retain the Order! People have sometimes inadvertently thrown Orders on the fire, and have then collected the ashes in a little tin box, which they have sent to the Department as a guarantee of their good faith, and not with any hope that the Order can be identified from the ashes. Applications have even been received respecting Orders which have accidentally been “sent to the wash,” but the cleansing process has not been successful enough to obliterate the printing, and the Order can be cashed.

“They told me at the Post Office to go to the devil, and so I have come to you about my missing Order,” exclaimed an excitable gentleman as he entered the Inquiry Office.

We hear many complaints of the incivility of Post Office clerks, but there is often another side to the matter. Some day, perhaps, a literary counter clerk will give us his opinions on the civility of the British public. Think of the numerous inquiries and complaints which are addressed in an hour to the busy man or woman behind the counter on every conceivable subject of Post Office business, and we may wonder sometimes at the tempers which are not lost. In Household Words, many years ago, there was a description of the scene at a Money Order counter. “The clerks in this office ought to rival the lamented Sir Charles Bell in their knowledge of the expression of the hand. The varieties of hands that hover about the grating and are thrust through the little doorways in it are a continual study for them—or would be if they had time to spare, which assuredly they have not. The coarse-grained hand, which seems all thumb and knuckle and no nail, and which takes up money or puts it down with such an odd, clumsy, lumbering touch: the retail trader's hand, which clinks it up and tosses it over with a bounce: the housewife's hand, which has a lingering propensity to keep some of it back, and to drive a bargain by not paying in the last shilling or so of the sum for which her Order is obtained: the quick, the slow, the coarse, the fine, the sensitive and dull, the ready and unready—they are always at the grating all day long.” And the Post Office man or woman has to humour the possessors of these hands, to be patient with the foolish, to be restrained with the impatient, “to be merciful towards the absurd,” and to pay out or receive money all the time. Not all men and very few women understand the mysteries of change and commissions, and when they don't understand they suspect, and when they suspect they become unreasonable. It is difficult to say whether the public is most touchy when cashing or purchasing an Order. But in both cases it thinks it is being done by the long-suffering individual behind the counter.

CHAPTER X
THE POST OFFICE SAVINGS BANK

The extension of banking facilities for the upper and middle classes of this country during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries only benefited the working classes indirectly. If they wished to save anything out of their earnings they were either obliged to resort to the time-honoured expedient of hiding their money in out-of-the-way corners of their houses or gardens or they entrusted it to the care of private individuals or institutions, and were in consequence without adequate security. Even in these days the old method of hiding their savings is adopted by many people, but the treasure is now not always money but the Savings Bank deposit book. A man once wrote to the Controller of the Post Office Savings Bank to explain the loss of his deposit book, and he said: “How I came to lose my book was, in a fright I buried it in my garden with other valuables. The garden, unfortunately for me, is very large, and I could never remember afterwards in what part I put it. Within the last month I have sold the premises, and being so deep it is not likely to be found by any one.” The value of the Savings Bank came home to him when he realised that in burying his book he had not hidden his money. A new book was all that he required.