revealed, and a human sympathy and a relationship as between new-found brothers all at once sprang into existence. Truly the Ridley Commission had not been called in vain. The men thus newly brought into touch with each other, like inhabitants suddenly coming out from the dim unknown, were invited to send a representative from each of their offices to a general conference. The conference was to be held at Liverpool, January 21. The strangers came out from the darkness; and those who at first were but names now met face to face in flesh and blood reality, the hopeful pioneers of a movement. The conference was held, and proved an unqualified success. There was an interchange of views, and a mutual understanding of their wants, on which they were enabled to formulate a series of resolutions; and on the lines of these resolutions George Lascelles, the secretary, was authorised to draw up a general statement of evidence for the Commission then sitting. It was decided to band themselves together in the form of an association for mutual support and benefit, to be known as the “United Kingdom Postal Clerks’ Association.” Like a gathering snowball the new postal organisation increased in dimensions, and rolling onward from Liverpool, presently included Manchester, Birmingham, and similar towns of importance, picking up the smaller places like crumbs by the way. Within a year the Postal Clerks’ Association had gone over the whole length and breadth of the land, and extended from the north to the south, and from the west to the east. Besides this their association was now represented in four or five of the most important towns in Ireland. The only parallel to this extraordinary response to the call for combination was that among their fellow-servants, the telegraphists, when the Postal Telegraph Clerks’ Association was formed in 1881.