The hardships suffered by the postal clerks at this period were as real and as acute as any that beset either of the other bodies of the service. Their grievances were general and particular. The hardship of compulsory Sunday labour pressed on them severely. This question of enforced labour on the Sabbath had been one which affected the service throughout, and had been made the grounds of the first agitation and the first public protest against postal administration. Postmen, telegraphists, and sorting clerks alike were the victims to this compulsory system; but with the sorting clerks, especially in some districts, the evil had grown to exaggerated proportions. In some offices, for example—Limerick, Cork, Aberdeen, Norwich, Worcester, and many other places—the clerks, in very large numbers, were regularly employed on duty every Sunday, and without receiving any remuneration. In a great many offices they were kept on duty three weeks out of every four, and only in a few instances were they off duty more than two Sundays in every month. It was a grievance with them that they were compelled to relinquish their day of rest, but it was doubly a grievance that they were denied payment for the time and work given. In many of the leading provincial offices the evil became accentuated, and at Manchester, Leeds, Exeter, York, and numerous other places where the staff of postal clerks represented in the aggregate 400 or more, they were graciously permitted, if the duty allowed, to take a Sunday off once in every four weeks. When it is remembered that these men, whatever their religious convictions or conscientious objections, were compelled to give this time for absolutely no remuneration, it certainly seemed monstrous in a Christian land.