No Service like the Public Service
Before the Tweedmouth Committee Mr. Lewin Hill, who, as Assistant Secretary General Post Office, was the executive officer who had general charge of all the postal and telegraph employees outside of London, testified as follows: “My own view is that the time has come for telling the postmen, in common with the members of the rest of the manipulative staff [the telegraphists] in answer to their demand for a general rise of wages, that the Post Office Department is satisfied that the wages already paid are in excess of the market value of their services; that this being so, no general addition to pay will be given, and that if the staff are dissatisfied, and can do better for themselves outside the Post Office, they are, as they know, at perfect liberty to seek employment elsewhere.” The Chairman, Lord Tweedmouth, asked Mr. Hill: “Do you think there is any other particular class of employment which is comparable with that of the postmen [and telegraphists]?” Mr. Hill replied: “I thought of railway servants, whose work in many ways resembles the work of our employees. If they have not the same permanence [of tenure] as our own people have, they have continuous employment so long as they are efficient, but our people have continuous employment whether they are efficient or not…. In that respect all of us in the Postal Service stand in a unique position, from top to bottom our men are certain as long as they conduct themselves reasonably well to retain their maximum pay down to the last day they remain in the Service, and whatever their class may be, whether postmen, or sorting clerks, or telegraphists, or officers of higher grade, they continue, failing misconduct, to rise to the maximum pay of their class, quite regardless of whether they are worth the higher pay that they get from year to year.” The only concession that Mr. Hill was willing to recommend was, that in the larger towns the time required for postmen and telegraphists to rise from the minimum scale of pay to the maximum be reduced from 13 years to 6 years.[171]
Mr. J. C. Badcock, Controller of the Metropolitan Postal Service other than the Service in the London Central Post Office, and Mr. H. C. Fischer, Controller of the London Central Post Office, joined in Mr. Lewin Hill’s recommendation. Mr. Fischer added that the London telegraphists should be given better chances of passing from the second class to the first class than they had enjoyed in the last three or four years,[172] and that the pay of the London senior telegraphists, who were a kind of assistants to the assistant superintendents, ought to be raised above the existing scale of $950.
Mr. C. H. Kerry, Postmaster at Stoke-on-Trent, stated that if the Post Office Department “was willing to act, not only the part of the model employer, but of an exceptionally liberal employer; and it was thought after all that had been done for the staff so recently, that still a little further should be done,” the Department might reduce from 13 years to 5 years the period that it took the rank and file to pass from the minimum salary of their class to the maximum salary. But there was no necessity of doing anything for any one, “on a general consideration of the pay given elsewhere to persons performing duties requiring about the same amount of intelligence.” There was “absolutely no justification” for increasing the existing maximum of pay.
Mr. Kerry had entered the Post Office telegraph service in 1870, after having served with the Electric and International Company from 1854 to 1870. He said: “The speed at which the telegraphists had to work present, that is the speed per man,[173] because the telegraph companies kept only enough force for the minimum work, and when the work increased you had to catch that up by increased effort…. As a previous witness said, one of the laws of the service is that there must be no delay, but I think there is a well understood law, also, that there must be no confusion, and the arrangements made are now such that the maximum of work, as a rule, can be dealt with without undue pressure…. From 1870 to 1889, I was constantly in the Telegraph branch and witnessing from day to day, and almost from hour to hour, the work which the telegraphists performed….”[174]
This testimony from Mr. Kerry must be borne in mind when reading the complaints of the Post Office telegraphists that the salaries paid by the Eastern Telegraph [Cable] Company rise to $1,020 a year, whereas the salaries of first class telegraphists in London rise only to $950. The employees of the Eastern Telegraph Company have to work under so much greater pressure than the State telegraphists, that Mr. Fischer, Controller of the London Central Telegraph Office, was able to state: “I have never known a telegraphist in the first class to leave our service for that of any of the [Cable] companies. The cable companies draw very few men from us, and those drawn away as a rule, are young men in the second class who are receiving about $250 or $300, and are attracted by the prospect of an immediate increase of some $150 upon entrance into the service of the cable companies.”[175]
The Tweedmouth Committee’s Recommendations
Those telegraph offices which are not sufficiently important to justify the employment of telegraphists of the first class, are divided into four groups: B, C, D and E. The Tweedmouth Committee recommended that the maximum salary of the telegraphists in the offices of Group E be raised from $8 a week to $8.50: in offices of group D from $8.75 to $9; in offices of group C from $9.50 to $10; and in offices of group B from $10 to $11. It recommended furthermore that all provincial telegraphists should rise automatically and without regard to efficiency, to a salary of not less than $10 a week. Beyond $10 they should not go, unless fully competent. The Committee added that it placed “the efficiency bar at the high figure of $10 a week,[176] for the special reason that it may be rigorously enforced, and that all inducements to treat it as a matter of form, liable to be abrogated for the reason of compassion, may be removed.”
As for the telegraphists employed in Metropolitan London, the Tweedmouth Committee recommended that all telegraphists should rise at least to “the efficiency bar” of $560 a year; and that those who could pass the efficiency bar, should rise automatically to $800, the maximum salary of first class telegraphists. In the past, telegraphists in London had been promoted from the second class to the first class, only upon the occurrence of vacancies. In this case, also, the Committee added to its recommendation the words: “This efficiency bar has been placed at the high figure of $560 for the special reason that it may be rigorously enforced, and that all inducements to treat it as a matter of form, liable to be abrogated for reasons of compassion, may be removed.”[177]