A TEST OF “THE LABOUR MARKET”—THE UGLY DUCKLING OF TRADES UNIONISM—MR. GEO. HOWELL’S ASSISTANCE—FURTHER DEMONSTRATIONS—THE DEPARTURE OF BOOTH.
Notwithstanding the numerous strong expressions of public opinion evoked by the recent meeting of the 18th November 1873, the Government showed no disposition to meet the moderate demands put forward in the petition to the House of Commons. The authorities particularly seemed bent on resisting the claims of the men. Acting on instructions issued in a Treasury Minute issued under the previous Government, they extensively advertised for persons to fill the places of the letter-carriers. Yet, as a matter of fact, there were no such vacancies as alleged in the public advertisements, unless the department contemplated dismissing the existing staff wholesale. The ostensible reason given was an experiment to “test the labour market.” There was a rush of applications, but there was a cruel insincerity in the whole business. A large proportion failed to pass the medical examination, while others who had passed were so disgusted at the neglect they received, and the time they were kept waiting in suspense, that they refused to attend for final approval. There had been something like twelve hundred applicants originally, and of these only nineteen were finally passed as suitable for the situations. The fact spoke for itself, and confirmed the opinion, generally entertained, that it was nothing more than an attempt to damage and discredit the case of the men, and intimidate and discourage the “agitators.”
If this experiment to “test the labour market” did nothing more, it tended to promote still further the feeling of misunderstanding in the minds of the general public, and assisted to obscure the issue.
However, the aggrieved postal employés, as represented on the London Trades Council, were accredited trades unionists. The trades unionists of the Metropolis, little as they understood their case, were compelled to take them into partnership.
By this time the efforts made by the postal employés had attracted considerable attention from every quarter; but trades unionists generally were almost as much at a loss to understand the precise nature of their claims as were most people, and there was much need for information. From the press reports and allusions to the matter in Parliament from time to time, a vague notion existed that postal employés were badly paid, and wanted better treatment, but little was known as to the real objects sought, or of the means by which they were to be obtained. The peculiarity of their position, the fact of their not being handicraftsmen in the generally-accepted sense of the term, caused their movement still to be looked on as the ugly duckling of trades unionism, and many were against allowing its claim for kinship. It was principally due to Mr. George Howell that this feeling of misunderstanding was removed. The condition of the postal employés and their battle for liberty was for the first time brought prominently before the trades unionists of the country at the Sheffield Trades Union Congress, January 1874. Mr. George Howell was secretary of the “Trades Parliamentary Committee,” and as a special delegate of the Postal Society, he read a paper which most clearly and convincingly showed that postal servants were in need of sympathy and moral assistance from the organised labour of the country. To the majority present it came as a revelation that those in Government employ were so restricted in the matter of civil rights. In thanking Mr. Howell for his valuable paper, they desired to express their sympathy with the movement of the postal employés for increased pay, better regulation of the hours of labour, the abolition of Sunday work, and a just system of promotion. The Congress recommended their cause to the trades societies of the United Kingdom, as well worthy of support.