By Command
Traditions of hard work and long hours linger still in the Post-office, though nowadays the periods of duty are generally reduced to moderate limits. Some idea of the service required to be rendered formerly by Post-office servants may be gathered from the following order, dating about 1780 or 1790. It refers to the Secretary to the Post-office in Dublin, but we ought perhaps to put a very free interpretation upon it:—"The duty of the Secretary is to carry on the general correspondence, and, under the direction of the Postmaster-General, to superintend the whole business of the office; to attend the Board, and give directions for carrying into execution the orders of the Postmaster-General. His attendance is constant, and at all hours by day and by night—generally from 7 until 10, from 12 until 5, and from 9 until 11 o'clock each day."
The postmasters of the United Kingdom are a very large class, numbering many thousands, and comprising every variety of individual from the honest country shopkeeper to the highly intelligent men who are placed in charge of the offices in our principal towns. The former have enough to do in mastering the various codes of rules under which the many branches of business are carried on; while the latter, in exercising discipline over their forces, carrying out changes of administration, and endeavouring to meet the wishes of a public ever wakeful to their interests and privileges, are something in their way like petty sovereigns, of whom it might not inaptly be said, "Uneasy is the head that wears a crown," though the material emblem itself be wanting
CHAPTER XXV.
RED TAPE.
The Post-office is no stranger to the taunt that it is swathed from head to foot in red tape; or, at any rate, that its operations are so trammelled with routine that no inquiry into irregularities can be made with anything like due expedition. Such accusations as these often come from unreflecting persons, or from those whose business operations are of a small kind, and who have no idea of the methods necessary for carrying on a huge administration.
An ordinary shopkeeper, for example, has under his own eye the whole sphere of his daily business; he has a personal knowledge of all purchases from the wholesale houses, and knows exactly the particulars of his daily sales; he has, moreover, the behaviour of his servants constantly under observation with a view to discipline; in fact, he is ever present in his own business world, the whole scope of which is within his individual purview. If a person of this class were asked a question in regard to his affairs, it would probably be in his power to afford an answer at once; and when he addresses an inquiry to the Post-office he expects a reply with like rapidity. Not receiving an answer with the looked-for despatch, as might very likely happen, the cause would be assumed to be needless routine—otherwise red tape.
Now it is proper here to observe, that between business or trade in the ordinary sense, and the administration of a department like the Post-office, there exists a gulf which forbids all comparison, and establishes a contrast of the most striking kind. A stranger, were he taken through the Secretariat of the Post-office at St Martin's-le-Grand, the brain of the whole Department, could not fail to be struck by the method which reigns throughout, and the way in which various subjects coming up for consideration are disposed of in different branches. In one quarter he would find inquiry going on into the characters and antecedents of candidates for appointments throughout the country, and preparations being made for their examination by the Civil Service Commissioners. In another room would be found officers exercising judicial functions in regard to cases of misbehaviour reported from the country— meting out arrest of pay or dismissal in accordance with the gravity of the offence in each instance. Then in other rooms questions as to new buildings, their fittings and furniture, and the increase of staff when demanded by provincial offices, are undergoing close examination. Inquiries for missing letters take up attention in one branch; various other kinds of irregularities are dealt with in another. The foreign mails branch, the home mails and parcel-post branch, the telegraph branch, with all their subdivisions of work, occupy separate rooms, and claim the attention of officers specially trained to their several duties.