The condition of the auxiliary letter-carriers was so pitiable as to cause wonder that the heads of the department could be so short-sighted as to set up in the persons of these men, many of them almost bootless scarecrows, such a damning and convincing proof of postal ineptitude and parsimony. With a class of men in the Government service working under such conditions, it is easy to see that they were not to remain unaffected by the prevailing epidemic of discontent. Almost from the first they sent forth ready recruits to swell the ranks of the disaffected. They were in themselves a reservoir of discontent, and provided the agitation with a fresh justification, enabling the agitators to make a stronger complaint than ever against the authorities. If anything were wanting to prove that the letter-carriers especially were a body of ill-used men, these auxiliaries supplied the last piece of material evidence. They presented a pathetic spectacle to the public eye. The idea of a man struggling to keep himself and a big family on fifteen shillings a week, the while to remain honest and irreproachable, was likely to awaken the public to it as a matter for its own concern. The auxiliaries had to attend, whenever their services were required, at a remuneration lower than that of a dock-labourer, being threepence or fourpence per hour, and but for the fact that they were compelled to engage in other callings many of them might have starved. The condition of the indoor staffs could not be so prominently brought under the public eye, but both letter-sorters and letter-carriers alike suffered from disabilities, and had grievances which fully entitled them to an inquiry and a hearing. It was not only that they were expressly forbidden by rule to hold public meetings to discuss their grievances and endeavour to enlist outside sympathy, or to take any public action whatever for the purpose of removing the wrongs of which they complained. To obtain redress of any grievance, the only course officially open to them was to apply through their immediate superiors; but this, with the so-called right of appeal to the Postmaster-General, more often than not begot annoyance and petty persecution from those of whom redress was sought. The right of appeal especially was rendered nugatory by the exercise of the power of damaging endorsement on the part of officials through whose hands such an appeal would have to pass on its way upward to the chief of the department. Indeed, their experience in the matter of petitions to the Postmaster-General had up to the present amply proved that the authorities were intended to serve as a breakwater or a barrier to resist all such appeals, and provide the public head with ample excuses for refusal or an ignoring of the claims of all humble subordinates. As has already been noted, it took many dreary years of waiting or slow climbing to reach what is to-day regarded as a decent living wage.