afterwards to become notorious as the “Tweedmouth Committee,” was appointed, June 11, 1895. CHAPTER XXII PROGRESS OF THE TELEGRAPH MOVEMENT—CONSTITUTION OF THE COMMITTEE OF INQUIRY—ITS TERMS OF REFERENCE—FIRST SITTINGS—THE AWARD OF THE TWEEDMOUTH COMMITTEE—DISAPPOINTMENT AND CONDEMNATION. While the history of the letter-sorters’ agitation was progressing towards the point concluding the last chapter, contemporary movements in the service were passing through the same vicissitudes, and emerging from similar difficulties in their process of development. The Postmen’s Federation, independent and strong, had spread itself over a wide area, and extended its ramifications throughout all the ranks of postmen, till it now embraced a vast proportion of the rural letter-carriers, and numbered a roll-call of 20,000 or more. The postal clerks had likewise strengthened their movement in spite of the blow sustained by the deprivation of Lascelles, their founder and secretary; and by the importation of new men and new leaders in the persons of Paul Casey, Leo Brodie, and George Landsbery, their organisation continued to flourish and do able and useful work in the direction of Parliamentary inquiry for the general good. The telegraphists in the same manner had rendered a good account of themselves. By assiduous lobbying, circularising, and by private interviewing they had gained over to their side a numerous band of supporters in the House. The telegraphists had now quite a respectable literature of their own, their grievances being set forth in pamphlets and brochures innumerable; while through their organ the _Telegraph Journal_, and afterwards the _Telegraph Chronicle_, the merits of their case were kept well to the forefront by the most brilliant service-writers among them. The guiding spirits of the telegraph movement during this time, and for a considerable period before, were Hall of Liverpool, Scott of Manchester, and Nicholson and Garland of London. But one of the most remarkable effects of the appointment of the new Inter-departmental Committee of Inquiry was that new postal organisations, of which the rest of the service had scarcely ever heard, suddenly made their presence felt. The Head-Postmasters’ Association and the Sub-Postmasters’ Association had been in existence some time, but they had conducted themselves with such a studied decorum, eschewing anything that hinted at the dreaded appellation “agitation,” that it was confidently expected by many that they would never consent to lay evidence before a Committee of Inquiry that was born of sheer agitation or nothing. But they were to come forward none the less. And beside them, in a motley crowd, came associations of postal porters, overseers and supervisors, telegraph linesmen, tracers, writers, and others, a never-ending line of witnesses, all prepared with voluminous evidence on the long-accumulated grievances of their respective classes.