The thoroughly unbusinesslike spirit of the postal employees is illustrated still further in the following “grievance” laid before the Tweedmouth Committee by the official representatives of the postal employees, who spoke, not as individuals, but as the instructed representatives of their respective classes of public servants.
Mr. G. McDonald presented the grievance of the “news distributors,” who “are the picked men of the Telegraph Service, chosen on the ground of exceptional merit.” He complained that there was not sufficient opportunity for promotion, since [the automatic] promotion was limited to postmasterships worth from $1,000 to $1,250 a year, and there were not enough postmasterships of that kind. Mr. McDonald admitted that men under 35 years “by competitive examination,” could rise out of the class of News Distributors to surveyors’ clerkships; but he argued that since such promotion was attained by competitive examination, “it must be credited to the man himself who wins his position, and I therefore beg to suggest that it cannot count as promotion in the ordinary sense.”[414]
Another grievance of the News Distributors was that they were not “treated and classed” as Major Division Clerks, though they were paid on the scale of such clerks. They were compelled to work 48 hours a week, whereas Major Division Clerks worked only 39 hours a week.[415]
Mr. Alfred Boulden presented the telegraphists’ grievances as to pensions. He demanded that retirement on pension should be optional at the age of fifty; and that if a man died in harness, such deduction as had been made from his salary toward the pension fund, should be paid to his heir-at-law. Mr. H. C. Fischer, Controller London Central Telegraph Office, replied that “optional retirement at 50 years of age would result in the more healthy members of the staff retiring at that age, and seeking other employment to add to their income, leaving the less healthy and less useful persons to hang on in the service as long as they could.”[416]
Mr. A. W. North presented another grievance, namely, that a female telegraph clerk can become a female superintendent in 21 years, whereas a male telegraph clerk can reach the corresponding position only after 27 years of service.[417]
The Malingerers’ Grievance
Mr. J R. Lickfold appeared as the representative of the postal employees to demand that in the case of an employee having failed to appear for duty, the Department should accept without any inquiry whatever the medical certificate of any physician. At this time it was the practice of the Department to doubt the genuineness of the illness and the bona fides of a medical certificate only in case “the man had a bad record for frequent short sick absences,” “though it was a well known fact that private [physicians’ as distinguished from departmental physicians’] certificates could be obtained for 12 cents without even the doctor seeing the patient, but on a mere statement of his symptoms from somebody else.” In support of this request, Mr. Lickfold, as the instructed representative of the postal employees, could make no better argument than to cite the dismissal, early in 1894, of two railway Post Office sorters, W—— and J——. In the evidence in rebuttal, Mr. J. C. Badcock, Controller London Postal Service, gave the following account of the episode in question. W—— and J—— were absent from duty from January 8 to 11 inclusive. On January 10 they sent in medical certificates dated the 8th, but the date of one of the certificates had apparently been changed from the 9th. W——’s landlady testified that W—— and J—— had returned to W——’s lodgings on the 8th, shortly after the departure of the mail train, saying that they had missed the mail, but saying nothing of illness. She added that both men had been repeatedly at W——’s lodgings on the 8th and 9th. Both W—— and J—— were absent from their lodgings during the greater part of the three days from the 8th to the 10th. The Post Office inspector found J—— in bed on the night of the 10th. J—— told him he had not seen W—— since the 6th, gave evasive answers, and contradicted himself. The inspector also found W—— on the night of the 10th, and gave an equally unfavorable report upon W——’s answers. On the 11th, the Departmental Medical Officer found both men in W——’s room, and reported there was no reason why both men should not have been on duty from the 8th to the 10th.
Mr. Spencer Walpole, Permanent Secretary of the Post Office and a Member of the Committee, said to the witness: “Have you any doubt that the Department would not have taken the extreme course of dismissing any of its servants on the divided opinion of two medical men, if there had been no previous cases against them…? These men are described as deliberate malingerers?” The Chairman of the Committee added: “Do you not think it would be wise that before bringing forward a particular case of this sort, you should inform yourself thoroughly as to the nature of the case, and as to the character of the men to whom you refer?”[418]
A very large portion of the evidence presented before the Tweedmouth Committee, which evidence covered upward of a thousand closely printed folio pages, affords a melancholy comment upon the theory which is rapidly spreading from the German Universities over the English speaking countries, to wit, that the extension of the functions of the State to the inclusion of business enterprises automatically creates a public spirit which strengthens the hands of the political leaders in charge of the State, even to the point of enabling those leaders to reject the improper demands made upon them by organized bodies of voters, and to administer the State’s business ventures with an eye single to the welfare of the community as a whole, particularly the long-run interest of the taxpayers. The so-called Norfolk-Hanbury compromise, the appointment and Report of the Bradford Committee, and the appointment, in 1906, of the Select Committee on Post Office Servants—the last act not having the support, by speech or by vote, of a single man of first rate importance in the House of Commons—are melancholy instances of what that most discerning of statesmen, the late Marquis of Salisbury, used to call “the visible helplessness of Governments.”