Mr. Kearley supported his argument by reference to the telegraphists, who enter the service between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, as second class telegraphists, and in the course of fourteen years rise by annual increments from the wage of $3 a week to $10 a week. At the latter wage they remain, unless they are promoted to be first class telegraphists, whose wages rise by annual increments, from $10 a week to $14 a week--payment for over-time, and so forth, being excluded in all cases. Mr. Kearley argued that promotion from the second class to the first class was blocked, stating that in Birmingham, in the last 4-3/4 years, only 11 men in 168 had been promoted from second class telegraphists to first class telegraphists; and that in Belfast and Edinburgh the annual rate of promotion had been respectively 1.14 per cent. and 2 per cent. Those instances, said the speaker, were typical of the larger cities; the conditions in the smaller cities and in the towns being still worse. Mr. Arnold Morley, Postmaster General, replied to this part of Mr. Kearley's argument with the statement that there were in London and in the Provinces 3,308 second class male telegraphists, and that out of that number only 65 were both eligible for promotion and in receipt of the maximum wage of the second class, namely $10 a week. He added that the average wage of the men telegraphists who had been promoted from the second class to the first in 1894 had been $8.46. That meant that, on an average, the men in question had been promoted three years before they had reached the maximum wage of the second class. The Postmaster General characterized as "extraordinarily misleading" the source from which Mr. Kearley had taken his statements of fact, namely, a table in a pamphlet issued by the telegraphists in support of their contention that promotion was blocked. The compilers of the table had left out promotions "due to causes other than what were termed ordinary causes, namely promotions due to appointments to postmasterships and chief clerkships, to transfers from provincial offices to the central office in London, and to reductions of officers on account of misconduct." Thus at Birmingham there had been, not 11 promotions, but 16; at Liverpool, not 8, but 37; at Belfast, not 4, but 14; at Newcastle, not 5, but 24; at Bristol, not 6, but 13; at Southampton, not 2, but 8.