A few weeks afterwards, about the beginning of August, a scheme was announced. But it proved to be nothing more than an inflated bubble which, when pricked, contained only a few paltry advantages for the letter-carriers. The advantages were small enough in all conscience, amounting to some small increase in pay and benefits as to stripes for good conduct.
But small as were the benefits, the letter-carriers so appreciated them that they decided to continue the agitation no further, and Booth, not without reluctance, resigned his position as the postmen’s leader. The only return Booth got for all the labour and all the responsibility he had taken on himself was that he was left with a debt of £35—a no insignificant amount to one in his position. By the aid of one of his friends he was able to obtain a loan, and with a characteristic independence paid it off without troubling the men with his private affairs. It was not that his followers proved ungrateful; they simply did not know the condition in which the agitation had stranded him; and perhaps he was too proud to inform them. There was the usual effort to testimonialise him and those who had most assisted him; but the thing was badly managed. An illuminated address was already prepared for Booth, and it was shown to him at his private house. There was also a purse of money subscribed, which would have proved a little fortune to him in the predicament, but there was some little sordid dispute among one or two who fancied themselves entitled to an equal share. This treatment so aroused the contempt of Booth that, seizing the illuminated address, which he regarded as more than conventionally insincere in the circumstances, he passionately tore it to fragments before them and flung it into their faces, ordering them to leave the house immediately. He refused to touch a penny-piece of the money subscribed; but instead set himself steadily to work to pay off the debts he had incurred on account of his connection with the agitation. So far, if the department wanted its revenge, it had it now.
Booth having freed himself from debt, shortly afterwards, owing to failing health, applied for and obtained the small pension of about eight shillings a week he was entitled to. And so departed one of the most persistent as well as one of the most courageously-consistent agitators the Post-Office or any other Government department has ever been troubled with. Booth’s career as an agitator had been a brief one, but it had been as brilliant as it was brief. And perhaps, after all, there was some truth in his claim that he had largely assisted to overturn two Governments and put in another.
CHAPTER IX
FORCED LABOUR—A GENERAL POST-OFFICE RIOT—A POSTAL POET—THE WANING OF THE MOVEMENT—THE PUBLICATION OF A MEMORIAL—WHOLESALE DISMISSALS.
At this time, and for long previous, there was no definite eight-hour day officially recognised for the working staff at the General Post-Office. That was a privilege as yet definitely enjoyed by few besides the clerical establishment. If there was any official rule regulating and limiting the working hours of the rank and file, that rule and those regulations were vitiated by the practice of the supervising officials. The men were subjected to nothing less than forced labour; the hours which should have been given up to sleep and leisure were extorted from them; and forced contributions of their well-earned liberty were remorselessly levied upon them. They were liable to be summoned back for duty at any time during their intervals of rest. There was no assured time for rest or proper sleep. They were compelled to dispose of incoming foreign mails without remuneration of any kind. As the department had decided such mail matter must be disposed of without cost, at first the men had to rotate for this purpose, and it generally fell to their turn about once a month. In former days this practice may not have constituted a great hardship; but when, owing to the increased and improved means of transit across seas, foreign mails arrived several times a week, it became a very real grievance. American mails then arrived only about once a month, instead of daily as at present; but there were other mails to be taken account of, and their arrival and treatment were often delayed for disposal by this cheap method. If the practice had stopped at the monthly summons, or an extra attendance for every man every week or so, the strong discontent arising from it might have been averted. But the principle of extorting from men already too poorly paid and harshly treated, this disgraceful poll-tax in time was still further extended after a while.
The occasion which principally provided the officials with an excuse for imposing on the force still further was the introduction of the halfpenny post; and when this came to be recognised by the public as a boon, the men became the victims and the sufferers. The reduced rate for newspapers and circulars was soon taken advantage of by company promoters very largely. The notorious promoter, Baron Grant, who did everything on a colossal scale, sent in prospectuses, referring to the Emma Gold Mine, at the rate of half a million at a time, completely swamping the Newspaper Branch, where such correspondence was disposed of. The authorities’ only method of meeting the emergencies which so frequently arose was to get the extra work of the public (which already meant so much more profit to swell the revenue) done by forcing the overburdened and underpaid men to do it for nothing in the time which should otherwise have been theirs. The method of forced labour, so analogous to that form of slavery which aroused the righteous indignation of the civilised world when practised a few years later by the Boers on the unfortunate Kaffirs, was not only thought proper but persisted in by the officials of an English Government department. Whatever excuses, if any, that might be made for the rapacious East-End sweaters, could not be made for the profit-minting monopoly of St. Martin’s-le-Grand and those who guided its machinery.
The men protested again and again, but without avail. Refusal to comply with this form of tyranny or worse, imposed in the name of duty and discipline, would have meant rank insubordination, punishable with dismissal without character. Probably their protests never got beyond the branch superintendent, to whom they complained; but the authorities ought not to have been wholly blind to the men’s treatment. If there was no Treasury grant of money to cover the cost of extra duty of this nature, as was pointed out, then the parsimony and meanness of the authorities was only to be excused by their utter laziness in not endeavouring to get such a demand met honestly and fairly.