The men were on free and easy terms with most of the business men in their locality, and presents and Christmas-boxes of a substantial nature often came to them in the form of provisions, &c., in recognition of services rendered in emergency. There was generally a telegraph office at the more important railway stations throughout the kingdom, and the railway officials commonly extended privileges to the telegraph companies’ operators. Railway fares were scarcely taken into account in the cost of living, and a telegraph operator attached to a telegraph office on any company’s line experienced little difficulty in obtaining a free pass for almost any distance. Such a precarious system of remuneration for their services was almost as unsatisfactory for them as it proved to be for the telegraph-using public; and it is doubtful if such a state of things could have lasted much longer when the requirements of the service broadened and developed. When it became known in 1868, through the passing of the Telegraph Act in that year, that the companies and the men together were to be swept into the Post-Office, it was very naturally expected that there would be some improvement in their prospects, even if no immediate benefit were offered them. The men, therefore, in anticipation that their future under Government service would be somewhat improved, put themselves on their best behaviour, and stiffened themselves up a little more. As was only to be expected among such an independent body of men, who, through all their career in the service of the old companies, had been allowed much liberty and discretion and those few privileges only possible in their employ, dissatisfaction soon followed on disappointment, when it was learnt that, after all, nothing was to be gained from the transfer. High hopes had been entertained by the telegraph clerks by the occurrence of one passage in the 1868 Act, to which great weight and importance had been attached. The clause read: “Such Officers and Clerks upon their appointment shall be deemed to be, to all intents and purposes, Officers and Clerks in the Permanent Civil Service of the Crown, and shall be entitled to the same but no other privileges.”