larger towns the time required for postmen and telegraphists to rise from the minimum scale of pay to the maximum be reduced from 13 years to 6 years.[171] Mr. J. C. Badcock, Controller of the Metropolitan Postal Service other than the Service in the London Central Post Office, and Mr. H. C. Fischer, Controller of the London Central Post Office, joined in Mr. Lewin Hill's recommendation. Mr. Fischer added that the London telegraphists should be given better chances of passing from the second class to the first class than they had enjoyed in the last three or four years,[172] and that the pay of the London senior telegraphists, who were a kind of assistants to the assistant superintendents, ought to be raised above the existing scale of $950. Mr. C. H. Kerry, Postmaster at Stoke-on-Trent, stated that if the Post Office Department "was willing to act, not only the part of the model employer, but of an exceptionally liberal employer; and it was thought after all that had been done for the staff so recently, that still a little further should be done," the Department might reduce from 13 years to 5 years the period that it took the rank and file to pass from the minimum salary of their class to the maximum salary. But there was no necessity of doing anything for any one, "on a general consideration of the pay given elsewhere to persons performing duties requiring about the same amount of intelligence." There was "absolutely no justification" for increasing the existing maximum of pay. Mr. Kerry had entered the Post Office telegraph service in 1870, after having served with the Electric and International Company from 1854 to 1870. He said: "The speed at which the telegraphists had to work present, that is the speed per man,[173] because the telegraph companies kept only enough force for the minimum work, and when the work increased you had to catch that up by increased effort.... As a previous witness said, one of the laws of the service is that there must be no delay, but I think there is a well understood law, also, that there must be no confusion, and the arrangements made are now such that the maximum of work, as a rule, can be dealt with without undue pressure.... From 1870 to 1889, I was constantly in the Telegraph branch and witnessing from day to day, and almost from hour to hour, the work which the telegraphists performed." ...[174]