INTRODUCTION OF BOY LABOUR—CONDITIONS OF SERVICE—DEATH OF COMBINATION AND ITS CONSEQUENCES—POSTAL HELOTISM. In the meantime, as if to contemptuously show that the agitating sorters could be dispensed with at any time, or their work done by child labour, the authorities, when the halfpenny post started in 1870, introduced a number of lads recruited mostly from boys leaving school. This was the introduction of the boy-sorter system, and while it presently assisted the department to play off against the men who were fighting for a better wage and other improvements, it efficiently furthered that principle of economy which was to be the all and end-all of those who governed. The department was henceforth to be run on commercial lines more than ever it had in the past; the more profit the great machine produced the more it might. The introduction of the boy-sorter system was yet another experiment in levelling down, and yet a further depreciation of their work, for which twenty years before the respectable salaries of clerks were paid. It was justified in so far as it provided an outlet for the telegraph messengers later on, whose only chance hitherto had been to go as postmen; but that economy was almost the sole object with the authorities, was almost proved from the miserable wage that was offered these boys. Ostensibly, they were brought in to do the rough routine work of assisting the sorters, and of carrying bags and gathering in the correspondence for disposal. But in a very short while they were, in addition to these menial tasks, put to the more arduous and responsible duties of sorting, and work almost identical with that of the ordinary sorters. For this these boys received six shillings a week—errand-boys’ wages. And the men who had been through all the rough times of the service for ten, fifteen, and twenty years past were still agitating for better wages and better conditions of work. This, to an extent, was the answer of the authorities. The introduction of boy labour to displace men discontented with their conditions was the best card they had yet played, and one which they calculated to check the further operations of the sorters, at least. It was not long, however, before there were some signs of dissatisfaction among the poorly-paid youngsters themselves, besides which it was becoming difficult to obtain the required number, and it was soon necessary to raise their wages to nine shillings a week. The responsibilities of their work increased proportionately, and soon there was little appreciable difference between the work attached to them and that on which ordinary sorters in the Newspaper Branch had been engaged. The only sop that was thrown to the overworked and underpaid stampers and sorters of this branch of the service was their being allowed to present their sons as candidates for the vacancies; though whether it was that they evinced too little sympathy with a scheme which might mean their own