[6] In the last Congressional investigation, dated May 26, 1896, the great telegraph inventor P. B. Delayner testified that the pay of American operators had fallen forty per cent in the last twenty years; and he said that, "while the British operator has had two increases of pay since 1891, his American brother has had four reductions, and to-day the British operator is better paid for the same amount of work, and by his environment occupies a higher plane of comfort and contentment, than the American operator. Good behavior and diligence in his duties warrant him a life position, from which the whim and caprice of no one can drive him. He is not an itinerant wandering from place to place looking for work and hired for a day or a week, to be again sent adrift, nor is he permitted to work overtime to the detriment of his health and the exclusion of another wage-earner from his share. His increasing years of service are taken into account in various beneficial ways. He has his yearly vacation. He is not cut off in sickness, and, most important of all, he is not 'turned down' in old age, but is retired on a pension, proportioned to his years of service" (Sen. Doc. 291, 54-1, pp. 4, 6). Some of the consequences will be the lifting of thousands to a higher plane of living, the annihilation of strikes by uprooting the causes of them,[7] the improvement of the service as already stated under the seventh sub-head of this section, etc., etc. [7] Joseph Medill, the publisher of the Chicago _Tribune_, expressed the opinion to the Blair Committee that, with a postal telegraph, there would be no strikes any more than among the clerks in the Treasury or the officers of the army. Government employees do not resign _en masse_. Their pay is good as a rule, and, anyway, they could not get it raised till Congress thought it right; and a strike would not be apt to hasten the achievement of their purposes, but would place them face to face with the limitless power of the United States. Instead of occupying a position of brave revolt against corporate oppression, impervious to petition, the strikers would place themselves in the position of deliberately departing from ready and hopeful redress by peaceful petition and discussion, to the very objectionable method of obstructing the public business, defying the people's government, and dictating terms to the nation."