The rules of the department did not insist that a man should work more than eight hours in the twenty-four, but owing to the increase of work they were more commonly extended to ten and sometimes eleven hours in the working day, while these duties were usually divided into two, three, and four separate attendances, the intervals barely leaving time for meals and going to and from the office. All that the sorters had ventured to ask for was that these abuses should be removed; that their pay should better correspond to their heavier responsibilities and the increased cost of living; that their hours should be confined to eight in the twenty-four, and adjusted more humanely. The letter-carriers joined with the sorters in complaining that their pay, thirty shillings a week after fifteen or twenty years’ drudgery, was not a fair wage; that promotion was not only unequal, but too slow. A peculiar grievance with them then, as it has always remained, was that the fact that letter-carriers were given Christmas-boxes by the public had invariably been made a pretext for paying the men badly. Letter-carriers who were formerly eligible for sorterships had all such promotion closed against them; and practically they were left without any hope of ever getting beyond their thirty shillings a week, even if ever they got so far. A great and widespread source of dissatisfaction too was the way in which men who had been induced to enter the service with a fair promise of promotion had been bilked by subsequent alterations in the establishment. There were other causes of discontent not so broadly defined, but poor pay and lack of promotion were the main features. Man cannot live by bread alone, but the Post-Office made it its business to see that its servants never became lazy through over-feeding. It sealed their lips and prevented a public voicing of their grievances, and it almost dared them to open their mouths too widely either for talking or eating. CHAPTER VI BOOTH THE LEADER OF THE AGITATION—A MASS MEETING IN THE GENERAL POST-OFFICE—A PETITION TO PARLIAMENT