So indifferent to the barest claims of humanity had the officials calling themselves the authorities now become that the men could barely call their souls their own. If they were allowed an ownership over their spiritual being, that was only to suit theoretical requirements, but in actual fact their personal liberty was more circumscribed than ever. They had always to remember that they were postal officials first, and men and husbands and fathers afterwards. Away from the office or otherwise they were to regard themselves as still on duty, at least when off duty they were to hold themselves always in readiness to respond to a telegram summoning them to the office; consequently they must never make appointments, except at their own risk. A man failing to respond to the call of extra duty was not only set down as a shirker and one unwilling to serve the department in an emergency, but he was very often punished and insulted into the bargain. Superintendents and the “heads of departments” in those days particularly were allowed unchecked to give fullest vent to their own personal predilections, their own particular likes and dislikes, and if it was that they were not allowed a larger discretion than in these days, it was mostly due to the fact that the men had no means of resenting such barefaced assertions of autocracy. While the men bore it without a combined protest, a superintendent of a branch might, if he chose, become a little despot, with the power to render miserable the hundreds of men under his control. For as is the master so are his stewards and bailiffs. The example set by one higher official is eagerly imitated by his immediate subordinates, and those over whom they have control are the sufferers.
That the apathy of the force in respect to combination for mutual interest was taken advantage of by their immediate superiors, was shown in many curious and significant ways. Excuses for late attendance or for non-compliance with regulation, which would be graciously accepted now, were then often treated with open derision and contempt. A superintendent might either call a man with a ready excuse a downright liar to his face, or he might, in his desire to be strictly official, display such an utter want of feeling as to be guilty of conduct almost bordering on brutality. It was the vogue of one official of this period to regulate everything strictly according to rule. He thought himself too loyal a servant of the department even to exercise that little discretion vested in him by his superiors. Besides, he thought it was saving himself a deal of trouble to do so, and the muttered imprecations of the men or their hidden scowls never entered into his calculations. He never deviated a hair’s-breadth from the rule laid down. If by an unhappy mischance there had been a misprint in the rule-book or instructions to postmasters and others, that a man found absenting himself from the sorting-office for more than the usual period, should be “hanged” instead of only “suspended,” he would have made no inquiry. He would have taken it for granted and had the poor wretch hanged from the gallery forthwith in a coil of the red-tape so dear to his heart. He was not the only one of his tribe. It was not that the higher authorities either directly encouraged or were fully cognisant of this sort of conduct on their part; if they did not know, they did not want to know; these were trifles that did not concern them. Such things have concerned them only when the men’s murmurs rose to a pitch high enough to compel their attention. The men had ceased for so long to murmur openly that perhaps the authorities were not so much to blame for allowing petty tyranny on the part of the smaller to go unchecked.
While the men remained unorganised amongst themselves, the officials could see no wrong in putting fresh impositions on those under their control. The old device of forcing the men on extra duty, without pay or return of any kind, was more freely resorted to than ever. The eight hours’ day remained virtually unrecognised, and those who had attended at four or half-past four in the early morning were more often than not imprisoned like galley-slaves at the sorting-tables an hour, sometimes two hours, beyond the time when they should have been free to go home to obtain rest, and prepare once more for the afternoon’s duty.
The officials profited little by the experience of that occasion a year or so previous when the men, goaded beyond the limits of forbearance, took the law into their own hands and boldly broke through the imprisoning doors, and asserted their liberty as free men in a free country. These disgraceful rushes for liberty—disgraceful only on the part of the authorities, who sought to imprison them like convicts, forgetful that they were public servants in the service of the most freedom-loving country in the world—were several times repeated. And the men who dared to protest in this primitive fashion, which was now the only one left to them, were as frequently threatened and punished. The officials apparently thought that by singling out a few individuals here and there they would terrorise the rest into an acceptance of this unjust system of forced and compulsory labour without pay, and bolster up their own authority. Whatever extra duty that was paid for was paid for on the lowest scale possible, and, coupled with that, was in most cases rendered compulsory between most inconvenient hours, so as to deprive the men of either rest or recreation. After completing the half of their day’s work they would find themselves, perhaps on their arrival home, suddenly summoned back on duty right in the middle of the day, between 10 A.M. and 2 P.M. This, it will be seen, meant a serious loss of time to them, as they were on duty again at 4.30 P.M., and for all this they were rewarded with nothing better than payment equal to the “docker’s tanner”—sixpence per hour.
There were two or three abortive attempts at rebellion against this cruel system, but protests were vain in convincing the authorities of its hardship or unfairness. The old official dictum that the permanence of their employment as Government servants amply compensated for every shortcoming, continually weighed with the authorities, and was as continually advanced against the claims of the men. Because the department had vouchsafed to them something like permanence of employment, it took to itself the right of imposing any conditions the caprice of its officials might devise, and of abrogating their menials’ privileges whenever they thought proper. Men who failed from whatever cause to respond promptly to these domiciliary summonses were severely reprimanded, and their conduct held in remembrance for use against them in the future. Moreover, in answer to the respectful complaint that sixpence an hour was a too unfair remuneration for those at the maximum of their class, it was pointed out that there was no Treasury grant sufficient to entitle them to more. But it is significant that on one occasion when the sorters at last showed a more determined front than usual by disregarding a peremptory summons of this nature, almost to a man excusing themselves on the ground that the pay was far too little, eightpence an hour was granted the following week; and the men wondered all the more, as the smallest Treasury grant generally took more time than the proverbial mountain in labour.
CHAPTER XI
A PERIOD OF STAGNATION—THE BLIND POSTMASTER-GENERAL AND A GLEAM OF LIGHT—A MEMORABLE VISIT—THE FAWCETT SCHEME.
Lord John Manners had descended from his pedestal of office and returned to the comparative obscurity and inactivity for which his attainments so well fitted him. Before leaving the Post-Office he had the satisfaction of knowing that, from one point of view, he had done at least one thing well; he had stifled discontent and reduced the common herd of postal workers to their proper level of uncomplaining Government serfs. Under his régime had grown and flourished naturally a system of petty tyranny and sycophancy which rendered open honest protest well-nigh impossible, which compelled men to endure it or accept the alternative, resignation or dismissal, and which made any attempt at combination as impossible as in the prehistoric days before the penny post. The condition, so far as the limitations on their liberty were concerned, was every whit as bad as prevailed years before the agitation. Nearly all the reforms which the late agitation had started so hopefully to attain had been left undone. The violent coup for which Lord John Manners was responsible had taken the heart out of the men, and they had to take the postal service as they found it or leave it for others to be forced into their places from the stress of competition outside. The hide-bound official tenet that the permanency of Government employment more than compensated for all shortcomings was now being interpreted as if to mean that this quality of “permanency” not only compensated for but justified and rendered necessary the employment of petty persecution, the deprivation of almost every claim to citizenship, and the curtailment of most ordinary human rights. The utter contempt of the officials for men’s common rights and privileges as human beings, their churlish indifference to the common claims of manhood, have to some extent already been shown. Even the “permanency” of employment was commonly nullified on the smallest pretext, and seniority and long faithful service counted for little against the whim of a tyrannical supervisor. If it was creditable to the public service to have it manned by those who suffered from grievances yet dared not complain of them; if it was profitable to the Treasury to have the rank and file of the postal service remain underpaid and forced labour exacted from them; if it was requisite that the woes of the men should be hidden alike from the public and from the higher permanent officials henceforth, most of the credit, most of the honour, was due to Lord John Manners. If it was well that all inquiry should be stifled and the men be kept in servile subjection by superiors whose common conception of their duties was that of Russian jailers; if it was necessary in the course of proper discipline that men should be treated as though they had no soul to call their own, Lord John Manners, by the one act by which he achieved this success, deserved the gratitude of his country.