There was one other class, however, which at this time claimed to have been overlooked and neglected, the Savings-Bank sorters. There was some amount of combination among them, and they had joined in the general agitation. They complained of certain anomalies of classification; loss of prospect owing to departmental alterations; the fact of the introduction of female labour displacing them, and minimising the value of their work; females in receipt of better pay than men with more service, and engaged on the same class of work; the smallness of the minimum and maximum, and numerous other things. They had been altogether overlooked in the recent scheme, and while the other little Jack Horners of the service were more or less congratulating themselves on the plums they had each secured, the Savings-Bank sorters were left entirely in the cold. Added to this, they were experiencing in an acute degree the compulsory overtime grievance, having to supplement their wages with more or less extra duty—this extra duty being however forced upon them, whether they liked it or not, often at most inconvenient times. This grievance on the overtime question was, after their exclusion from the recent scheme, so strongly felt that at the beginning of 1891 there was an indignant outburst among them. They had tried every legitimate method of ventilating their grievance by petition, by requests for an interview, and through the House of Commons, but their plaint fell on deaf ears. The feeling rose so high that at last, as a concession to their demand, there was a slight addition to the staff to reduce the amount of compulsory overtime complained of. But it was by no means effective, and on February 2, two hundred and fifty of them declined to accept the summons for extra duty. The result was that nearly the whole of them were promptly suspended. But they were a small body and standing almost alone, so that the struggle was of short duration. The Postmaster-General did not take a very severe view of the case, the whole of them being allowed to take up their duties on expressing regret, and promising never again to offend in a similar manner. The fluctuations of their work, it seems, precluded the possibility of abolishing compulsory extra duty altogether; but in April some arrangement was made, with a further slight increase of staff, by which a number of permanent volunteers were enrolled to meet emergencies as they arose.