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.”