Of cabmen I do not propose to speak; the subject of their hours, conditions and rates of pay being so intricate that anything like a general view is difficult to present. I will content myself with indicating, by means of a paragraph from a Parliamentary Report, the kind of exactions to which cabmen are exposed. “Privileged cabs” are those admitted, upon payment of a fixed charge, to ply in railway stations. It appears that the lowest charge made by any company maintaining the privileged cab system is 1s. per week. The smallest number of cabs is “15, at Clapham Junction, and the largest number of cabs, 290, at Paddington, which at 3s. per week provide the Great Western Railway with the substantial sum of £2262 per annum.”[28] The railway workers of Great Britain are, as a class, men of excellent character, intelligent, careful, attentive and worthy of the trust reposed in them. They have a strong trade union, and their secretary now sits in Parliament. Yet this body of grown men, most of them voters, was so unable to secure from its employers a reasonably short working day that the legislature, unwilling though it has always shown itself to any direct regulation of the working hours of men, felt compelled in the interests of public safety, to intervene; and a special order of the Board of Trade has, for many years past, limited the hours of railway men. Yet, even now, there are porters, generally at small stations, who are on duty for 16 hours a day; and 8 hours, which should be the longest day of any signalman, are extended, except in the busiest boxes, to 10 and, in some cases, to 12. Many a porter works seven days a week for 16s., perhaps at some small station where “tips” are infrequent. In this connection it is worthy of note that such companies as pay additionally for Sunday labour find it possible to do with much fewer workers on Sundays. Of how much improvement the railway man’s lot is still susceptible may be judged from the programme of the union, drawn up at the close of 1906, and about to be submitted to the various companies. Its demands are as follows:— An eight-hour day for trainmen, shunters and signalmen. No railway employee to work more than ten hours a day. An increase of 2s. per week in the wages of all grades receiving less than 30s. per week. Sunday labour to be paid for at the rate of time and a half; and overtime at the rate of time and a quarter.[29]