Men had still to perform overtime at inadequate rates of pay to supplement their incomes, and they were still inordinately punished for comparatively trivial errors and shortcomings. Altogether the service, in spite of this Scudamore scheme, became so unpopular and so unbearable for a number that, according to a special Parliamentary return, no fewer than 2341 out of 6000 telegraph clerks left during a period of eight and a half years, a large number joining the cable companies, where they received better treatment and more encouragement. Certainly there must have been something radically wrong to account for this extraordinary exodus, and for the fact that public servants were driven wholesale to seek refuge with private employers. Dissatisfaction became so rife that after about eight years, namely in November 1880, a fresh movement was set afoot. This time it was at Liverpool that the phœnix was to rise from its ashes. CHAPTER XIII DISSATISFACTION AMONG TELEGRAPHISTS—STARTING A NEW ORGANISATION—CONFERENCE AT LIVERPOOL—THREATENED TELEGRAPH STRIKE—THE FAWCETT SCHEME AND THE TELEGRAPHISTS. Electrical influences had been in the air for some years since the Manchester outburst, but a feeling partly of timidity partly of apathy had prevented section joining with section until some time after the Scudamore scheme. Nothing seemingly was done by the department to attempt to check the wholesale exodus from the service. One consequence of this “great retreat,” as it was called, was that those who remained to supply their places were worked the harder. Nominally the hours were eight, but fourteen, fifteen, and even seventeen hours were commonly worked in a single day when the exigencies of the service demanded it.