During the day the number of men who paid the inevitable penalty of their folly reached nearly three hundred. In the evening there was an attempt at a muster after the battle, and several hundred men again assembled on Clerkenwell Green. Mr. Mahon addressed them, and endeavoured to reanimate them by announcing that the real Waterloo was to be fought on the morrow, when the whole of the London postmen would be called out on strike. Every postman within the Metropolitan area was exhorted to obey the summons. The morrow came, however; and instead of the general rising and the consequent paralysing of the commerce of the country as was predicted, the postmen, realising the extremity to which they had been pushed and the failure of it, unconditionally surrendered, by going about their duties as usual. The whole movement had collapsed, and the Postmen’s Union was broken up. During the next two days the authorities were inundated with applications from the suspended and dismissed men for reinstatement, and therewith offering abject apology. In all 435 men were either peremptorily dismissed or suspended with almost the certainty of dismissal. Of these 263 belonged to the unestablished, and 172 to the established class. Mr. Raikes triumphed; but it brought him almost as much worry and bitterness of spirit as a defeat would have done. The postmen’s strike had ended in even more ignominious failure than had the telegraphists’ strike of twenty years previous. Once more the lesson had been proved that it was suicide for any single section of State servants to attempt to fight with the weapon of a strike a Government with inexhaustible resources, and without the assistance of an enlightened public sympathy on their side. CHAPTER XVII CONTINUANCE OF TELEGRAPHISTS’ AGITATION—NATURE OF GRIEVANCES—“TELEGRAPHISTS’ CRAMP”—AN OUTCOME OF THE SUNDAY QUESTION—THE CARDIFF EXILES—CONDEMNATION OF POSTMASTER-GENERAL—THE “NO OVERTIME” PROTEST.