[167] Compare Report of Inter-Departmental Committee on Post Office Establishments, 1897; Mr. Lewin Hill, Assistant Secretary to General Post Office; q. 15,272.
On April 1, 1891, there were employed at 57 of the largest post offices in the United Kingdom, 2,614 first class and second class male letter sorters. In the next 5 years there resigned, in all, 95 sorters. Twelve of that number resigned in order to avoid dismissal.
On April 1, 1891, there were employed at 96 of the largest telegraph offices, 4,211 first class and second class male telegraphists. In the next 5 years there were 235 resignations. Of the men who resigned, 12 avoided dismissal, 23 left because of ill health, 38 went to South Africa, 28 obtained superior appointments in the Civil Service, by open competition, 11 enlisted with the Royal Engineers, 1 entered the service of an electric light company, 1 became a bank clerk, 2 became commercial travelers, 3 went to sea, 4 emigrated to the United States, and 48 entered the service of the British Cable companies, which pay higher salaries than the Post Office, but work their men much harder and demand greater efficiency than does the Post Office.
[168] Report of the Inter-Departmental Committee on Post Office Establishments, 1897, is the official title of the Committee’s Report.
CHAPTER X
The Tweedmouth Committee Report
The Government accepts all recommendations made by the Committee. Sir Albert K. Rollit, one of the principal champions in the House of Commons of the postal employees, immediately follows with a motion “intended to reflect upon the Report of the Tweedmouth Committee.” Mr. Hanbury, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, intimates that it may become necessary to disfranchise the civil servants. The Treasury accepts the recommendations of the so-called Norfolk-Hanbury Committee. The average of expenses on account of wages and salaries rises from 11.54 cents per telegram in 1895-96, to 13.02 cents in 1902-03, concomitantly with an increase in the number of telegrams from 79,423,000 to 92,471,000.
In the preceding chapter the narrative was brought down to the appointment in 1895, of the so-called Tweedmouth Committee.[169] That Committee consisted of Lord Tweedmouth, Lord Privy Seal and a Member of the Cabinet; Sir F. Mowatt, Permanent Secretary of the Treasury; Sir A. Godley, Under Secretary of State for India; Mr. Spence Walpole, Permanent Secretary of the Post Office; and Mr. Llewellyn Smith, of the Labor Department of the Board of Trade.
In the “Terms of Reference to the Committee on Post Office Establishments,” the Postmaster General included this paragraph: “In conducting this inquiry, I can have no doubt you will recollect that the Post Office is a great Revenue Department; and that, in the words of the Select Committee on Revenue Departments Estimates in 1888, it ‘is most likely to continue to be conducted satisfactorily, if it should also continue to be conducted with a view to profit, as one of the Revenue yielding Departments of the State.’”[170]