That the department has given as little heed as possible to the claims of postal servants, and far less sympathy, goes without saying. It has to be remembered that it is a public department, and, generally speaking, in a public department its niggardliness is in inverse ratio to its power of profit producing. It requires no argument to prove that a public institution such as this, run on the old conventional lines of red-tape and routine, and for the most part in the leading-strings of a watchful Treasury, would never spontaneously better the condition of its servants. If the same holds good generally as regards the relations between capital and labour, between the private employer and his man, it is more particularly so in a public department. Experience has proved that a betterment of the conditions of labour among the working staffs of public bodies as a rule have had to be forced from the authorities by every legitimate method which agitation can devise, by persistent petitioning, by deputation, by public meeting, often by taking the war into the enemy’s country, and getting M.P.’s to beard the Postmaster-General and the Treasury heads in their official lair, or by tracking them down in the House of Commons. And even then, after all this expenditure of force, there is often nothing but disappointment in return.
That it is not always the administrators of a public department who are to blame so much as the rule and the method which usage and convention have fossilised, must in all fairmindedness be allowed. It is easy to believe and understand that the various heads of departments, though never guilty of the unpardonable indiscretion of showing the smallest sympathy for agitation as such, none the less do often deplore the necessity of enforcing certain rules and regulations which act to the detriment of the men or which are productive of individual cases of hardship.
This point has only been touched on to show that the grievances which have given rise to agitation in various times have not been so much due to the action of officials as to the rules which they have had to administer. Hemmed in by such conditions, and bound to follow the customs prescribed by tradition and laid down by departmental etiquette, the natural inclination is to hold the reins tightly, to sit close, never to give way for fear of appearing weak, and never to willingly grant a concession merely because their private conscience may tell them there is some reason and justice in the demand. In such a situation the responsible public official has to face a higher tribunal than his own conscience. It is always fairly safe to refuse concession, but it is dangerous to grant it until you are compelled to. When the public, the press, and Parliament unite in saying such and such a demand must and shall be conceded, then it is time to act, not before. You bow with a good grace, and salaam and say, “Am I not my master’s servant?” And the public and the press and Parliament think none the less of you for your firmness, interpreting your stubbornness as zeal for the public service, though they would have turned to rend you for your incompetence had you given way sooner. Such to some extent is the trying position of those in authority in public departments, they needs must only when the devil drives, and not a moment before. They are more or less in the position of a constable whose duty it is to keep back a clamorous crowd testing a right of way; zeal and duty and anxiety for his position keep him firmly at his post till his superior and the law give him the nod and he has to fall back.