Fortunately a more intelligent understanding and a better feeling now exist, and has existed for some years past. But even to gain this simple recognition that a postal official with a grievance battling against wrong was a man and a brother entitled to admittance into their ranks, was not easily obtained even when they sought it. Even the men themselves were chary of accepting the position of professed trades unionists, and it was many years before the objections associated with declared trades union principles and methods were waived by the men of the Post-Office. The fact is they remained for long uncertain as to their exact relationship to the general industrial and labour movement. There was some amount of mutual distrust between outside trade organisations and combination in the Post-Office, and both parties failed to see distinctly what there was in common between them. It must be admitted that despite their awakening so far, the postal agitators still preserved something of that reserve which may have been easily mistaken for pride or perhaps priggishness; and, indeed, felt that an open connection with trades unionism might damage their chances of redress, and alienate the support and sympathy of the few public men on whom they relied. Besides, it has to be considered that the trades-union doctrine was not sufficiently accepted to be yet accounted respectable. But all that is now past; it has been rendered both respectable and respected by almost universal acceptance, and postal agitation owes not a little to it. And if postal agitation owes more to the spirit of trades unionism than the latter does to any postal effort, then, to claim no more for it, perhaps trades unionism has no reason to feel ashamed of its poor relation who fought a battle in its behalf years ago. They maintained its principle within that most unlikely and unpromising of places, a Government office, against hostile officials who were backed up with inexhaustible reserves and the best artillery.
That the solid advantages gained through agitation have not even up to the present day fully compensated for the sacrifices made, the time, the trouble, the energy, and the money expended on it, can perhaps be freely admitted. Yet the same holds good of every other movement of higher pretension, social and political. Men with a purpose count the moral advantage as well as the material gain. If only considerations of this nature had always weighed in the past, our Merrie England would to-day be divided into slaves and slave-owners.