The sorters, introduced and led by Groves, the treasurer of the association, stated their case already so familiar, and in one or two instances received the compliments of Lord Tweedmouth for the clear and able manner in which they had made themselves understood. That, of course, so far as it went, was gratifying, and as each representative in turn was questioned as to whether he was not an officer of such-and-such an association, it was calculated to heighten the conviction that official recognition of their organisations had come at last. The hope, however, was only a temporary one, doomed to be obliterated by the growing realisation that this was only too likely to prove a solemn farce. The witnesses came and went, sorters, telegraphists, postmen, and others, and in every case with wearisome monotony came the iteration of that cold, metallic leading question from the Permanent Secretary—the spare man with the yellowish-white beard surrounding the cruelly sneering lips—“But is it not the fact,” &c. The question was always so framed that the counsel for the Post-Office very often wrung from a witness a reluctant or unwary admission afterwards turned to good account in the summing up.
The rebutting evidence of the officials as witnesses for the department was taken alternately with the completion of statements for each class or section of the service. The evidence of the Postal Controller was not altogether unfavourable, containing as it did some valuable admissions; but strong exception was taken by the sorters to his denials of undue pressure in the working conditions, while surprise was felt that he should seek to justify a lately-developed system of petty secret reporting and espionage, execrated and condemned by the staff generally as unworthy of an English Government department. The evidence of the chief medical officer was in most respects distinctly favourable, corroborating their evidence of unhealthy hours and conditions of labour and the insanitary surroundings of their workaday lives; and his evidence, so far, in a large measure helped to remove the bad impression prevailing in respect to the medical officials’ attitude towards the staff at St. Martin’s-le-Grand. The telegraphists found in their Controller a very friendly witness so far as his utterances went, and they felt they had cause to congratulate themselves; only they had yet to learn that fine words butter no parsnips. The hostility of the Assistant-Secretary, Mr. Lewin Hill, nephew of the founder of the penny post, was blunt and undisguised, and especially displayed itself towards the postmen, portions of his evidence being received by them with the strongest signs of dissent.