In this manner principally he got together meetings of men whose co-operation he sought, and though such gatherings were often secret and unrecorded, they were largely the means of setting the agitation on the move along definite lines. The agitation from this period may be said to have been started in a little coffee-room off Gunpowder Alley, in Fleet Street, and from Gunpowder Alley, very appropriately, most of the squibs to be directed against the postal authorities were prepared and fired. It was here that the first conference of postal servants was held, when Booth, having called together a body of representatives from the various district offices, besought them to assist him to form an organisation of postal employés for mutual benefit and maintenance of rights. It was the ambitious aim to unite the whole of the Post-Office and Telegraph employés, to assist in obtaining by legitimate means the abolition of Sunday work, increase of wages, and an honest and clearly-defined system of promotion without loss of pay, and generally to relieve cases of distress. The planks of the platform having thus been rough hewed, it remained to nail them together. For this purpose a small preliminary public meeting was called in a schoolroom attached to the Borough Road Congregational Church, which was lent by the Rev. G. M. Murphy, a notable preacher of the day, who became an active sympathiser with Booth and his efforts. This inaugural meeting in the little schoolroom took place on the 17th of May 1872, when the society was formally constituted and members enrolled. At the time the bare idea of a protective society of this kind within the ranks of the postal service was so novel and audacious, and the difficulties in the way of its complete success so numerous, that for some months it hung fire, and even many of those who had joined predicted an early demise. At any rate, the progress made was not very reassuring to Booth and his coadjutors, who were staking almost everything on the cast of the die. Nevertheless, the leaders worked with a will to pull the movement together and make it presentable before the public, and an enormous amount of work was quietly accomplished. An extensive correspondence was carried on with public men and others who were to be counted on as friendly, and who were likely to help and encourage them in the future. By this means they awakened an interest in their work among a numerous class of members of Parliament belonging to both political parties, and gave them that knowledge of postal wants which was expected to bear fruit when the time came.