In August, 1881, the House of Commons accepted the proposal of Mr. Fawcett, Postmaster General, to increase the pay of the telegraph operators, to count seven hours of night attendance a day’s work, and to grant various other minor concessions.[125] Those several changes raised the average sum spent for salaries and wages in the transmission of a telegraphic message, from 11.70 cents in 1880-81, to 13.72 cents in 1884-85.[126] Mr. Fawcett stated in the House of Commons that inquiry of “leading employees of labor, such as bankers, railway companies, manufacturers, and others” had led him to conclude that the telegraph operators were underpaid. He also mentioned the fact that while he was considering the arguments that the telegraphists had made before him in support of the proposition that their pay was inadequate, “outside influence” was brought to bear repeatedly upon the telegraphists, and that the aforesaid outside influence “went so far as to recommend the employees to resort to the last extremity of a strike.”[127]
Mr. MacIver replied that “he wished to say a word with regard to the imputation contained in the statement of the Right Honorable Gentleman, that he [Mr. MacIver] had exercised outside influence upon the telegraphists. In common with other members of the House, he had heard[128] the complaints of the telegraphists, and had thought it his duty to bring complaints before the House and the Right Honorable Gentleman, the Postmaster General, so that, if he had erred, he had erred in common with many others.”
The Treasury on Civil Service Pressure
In the course of the debate in the House of Commons, Lord Frederick Cavendish, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, said: “With respect to the telegraph clerks, since they had received the franchise, they had used it to apply pressure to Members of Parliament for the furtherance of their own objects…. If, instead of the Executive being responsible, Members of the House were to conduct the administration of the departments, there would be an end of all responsibility whatever. In the same way, if the Treasury was not to have control over expenditure, and Members of the House were to become promoters of it, the system [of administering the national finances] which had worked so admirably in the past would be at an end…. With regard to the position of the telegraphists in the Government Service as compared with their former position under private companies, what had taken place would be a warning to the Government to be careful against unduly extending the sphere of their operations by entering every day upon some new field, and placing themselves at a disadvantage by undertaking the work of private persons. He pointed out that the Government Service was always more highly paid than that of the companies and private persons, and in the particular case of the telegraph clerks [operators] the men themselves received higher pay than they had before.”[129]
Before the Postmaster General had introduced into Parliament his scheme for improving the positions of the telegraphists, sorting clerks and postmen,[130] Lord Frederick Cavendish, in his position as Financial Secretary of the Treasury,[131] had written the Postmaster General as follows: “…Admitting, as my Lords [of the Treasury] do, that when discontent is shown to prevail extensively in any branch of the Public Service, it calls for attention and inquiry, and, so far as it is proved to be well founded, for redress, they are not prepared to acquiesce in any organized agitation which openly seeks to bring its extensive voting power to bear on the House of Commons against the Executive Government responsible for conducting in detail the administration of the country. The persons who are affected by the change now proposed are, as you observe, no fewer than 10,000, and the entire postal service numbers nearly five times as many. Other branches of the Civil Service employed and voting in various parts of the United Kingdom, are at least as numerous in the aggregate as the servants of the Post Office. All this vast number of persons, not living like soldiers and sailors outside ordinary civil life are individually and collectively interested in using their votes to increase, in their own favor, the public expenditure, which the rest of the community, who have to gain their living in the unrestricted competition of the open market, must provide by taxation, if it is provided at all. My Lords therefore reserve to themselves the power of directing that the execution of the terms agreed to in the preceding part of the letter be suspended in any post office of which the members are henceforth known to be taking part in extra-official agitation. They understand that you are inquiring whether the law, as declared in the existing Post Office Acts, does not afford to the public similar protection in respect of postal communication, including telegraphs, as is afforded by the Act 38 and 39 Victoria, c. 86, s. 4, to municipal authorities and other contractors, against breaches of contracts of service in respect of gas or water, the wilful interruption to the use of which [by means of a strike] is hardly of more serious import to the local community than is that of postal communications to the national community. If the existing Post Office Acts do not meet this case, it will be for my Lords to consider whether the circumstances continue to be such as to make it their duty to propose to Parliament an extension to the Post Office of provisions similar to those cited above from the Act 38 and 39 Victoria, c. 86, s. 4.”[132]
In June, 1882, Mr. Fawcett, Postmaster General, said in the House of Commons: “The House would remember how, last session, he was pressed by honorable Members on both sides of the House to increase the pay of the telegraph employees … in spite of all that was done for the telegraph employees, he noticed that they were constantly saying that what they received was worse than nothing. All he could say was that if $400,000[133] a year out of public funds was worse than nothing, he, for one, deeply regretted that that sacrifice of public money was ever made.”[134] In March, 1883, Mr. Fawcett, Postmaster General, said: “The salaries of the telegraph employees have—I will not say by the pressure of the House, but certainly with the approval of the House—been increased [in 1881]. I do not regret that increase; I think the extra pay they receive was due to them, and if I had not thought so, no number of memorials would have induced me to recommend the Treasury to make such a large sacrifice of revenue.”[135] In April, 1884, Mr. Fawcett, Postmaster General, said: “$750,000 a year has been spent [of late] in improving the position of the telegraphists and letter sorters, and I say there never was an expenditure of public money which was more justifiable than that. If we had yielded to mere popular demands and thrown away the money we should deserve the severest censure; but I believe that if an increase of wages had not been conceded, it would have been impossible to carry on the administration of the Department; and I think there is no economy so unwise as refusing to increase remuneration when you are convinced that the circumstances of the case demand the increase.”[136]
In July, 1888, the following questions and answers passed between the Chairman of the Select Committee on Revenue Departments Estimates, and Sir S. A. Blackwood, Secretary to the Post Office. “With respect to the increase of salaries at the time when Mr. Fawcett was Postmaster General, I presume that those recommendations of his were founded upon recommendations addressed to him by the [permanent officers of the] Department?” “I can hardly say that they were. Mr. Fawcett held very strong views himself as to the propriety of making an increase to the pay of the lower ranks of the Department, and he carried out that arrangement.” “But the Department, I take for granted, was not excluded from expressing an opinion upon the subject?” “Certainly not. I became Secretary at the time [1880] when Mr. Fawcett became Postmaster General.[137] I never should have initiated such a movement, but I saw great force in many of the reasons which Mr. Fawcett urged in favor of such an increase; and, at any rate, the Department, as represented by me, saw no reason to raise a serious opposition, if it were at liberty to do so, to the Postmaster General’s views and determinations.”[138]
Before the Tweedmouth Committee, 1897, Mr. E. B. L. Hill, “practically commander-in-chief of the provincial postmen,” testified as follows upon that part of the Fawcett revision of 1882 that applied to the postal service proper. He said that previous to 1882 all the revisions of the wages of the postmen had been made on the basis of demand and supply; but that the Fawcett revision had departed from that policy.[139]