It was under the operation of this new rule that the letter-sorters’ organisation was publicly inaugurated at the Memorial Hall on February 10, 1890. But the leader of the Postmen’s Union detected in the second condition imposed by the regulation a direct blow at the right of combination, and an attempt to deprive the postmen of their accepted leadership. It was to test as much as to form the Postmen’s Union that this meeting was called on Clerkenwell Green in June 1890. Mr. Mahon had been one of the sub-organisers of the late dock strike, and on assuming authority over the Postmen’s Union he endeavoured to make himself the accepted mouthpiece of the men’s demands. But whatever qualities of leadership Mr. Mahon may have possessed, he lacked individuality. His personality was certainly not Napoleonic; he could deliver a good address, but there was always a something lacking in the uncommanding figure in the shabby blue serge suit. He was a thin-featured, pale-faced man, with a slight red beard, and pale blue eyes. The postmen, however, wanted an outside leader, and if Mahon was to prove their Messiah of postal labour they were to make the most of him and obediently follow. Nevertheless the members seemed possessed by a fear that they were doing something wrong and might only conduct their affairs in secret; precautions being taken to prevent the identity of members being freely known. Both officers and members were known only by numbers; and adhesive stamps were used to indicate the subscriptions paid; these stamps being supplied to members to affix them to their cards when they felt free from espionage. There was but one exception to this extraordinary secrecy; and that was in the case of Clery, the secretary of the Fawcett Association, who had become a member from sympathy with their objects. He stoutly declined to be known by a number, and advised the Postmen’s Union that they were perfectly within their right in combining openly and without this element of secrecy. He went further, and wrote a pamphlet on the subject of postal combination, which was published by Mr. J. McCartney, a member of the Fawcett Association, and issued from the offices of the Postmen’s Union. The postmen seemed so determined on following the dictates of the Labour Union, and so enamoured of an outside leader, that for the time Dredge, their quondam secretary, seemed forgotten. The manifesto which had heralded the birth of the Postmen’s Union invited them practically to come and have their grievances redressed by men not in the service, who could not be dismissed for speaking up for them. But the dismissed Dredge could have done all this as fearlessly and as ably as any of the Union leaders had he been invited to—and better for the postmen and better for him had the leadership been at this stage placed in his hands.