"At this point I would like to state briefly my own experience.... Last year great pressure was brought to bear in the House of Commons on Members of Parliament, and, with thirty other Members, I was threatened with the loss of my seat unless I voted to meet the demands of the Postal servants. It was further intimated to me that the Postal servants' vote, 100,000 strong, would turn out any Government. A few minutes afterwards it fell to my lot to address the House on the question of increase of postmen's wages.... I ended my speech by declaring that civil servants who threatened Members of Parliament for refusing to vote them increased salaries ought to be disfranchised. Result--a meeting called in my constituency, my opponent placed in the chair, and a vote of censure passed on me. The London postmen came to Canterbury and addressed my constituents at the meeting. It is not surprising, therefore, that at the recent election my agents informed me that 46 postmen voted solid against me.[241] I do not blame the postmen; they were perfectly justified in using their power; but if I had not had at my back one of the most intelligent bodies of electors in the United Kingdom, I should have been defeated through the postmen's action. "It was some consolation to me to receive in the House of Commons, after my speech, hearty, though private, congratulations from hard-working, earnest workingmen representatives, who expressed their entire approval of what they were pleased to call my courage. But something ought to be done to prevent a recurrence of such a scandal." In view of Mr. Heaton's closing remarks, it is interesting to note that four of the eight[242] Labor Members voted, and that all of them favored the appointment of a House of Commons Select Committee. * * * * * [Sidenote: _Post Office Employees and the General Election of 1906_] In the campaign preceding the General Election of January, 1906, the several associations of Postal and Telegraph employees addressed letters to the candidates for Parliament, asking those candidates whether they would "support the claims of the Postal and Telegraph employees and vote for the appointment of a Select Committee of the House of Commons for the purpose of inquiring into their conditions of pay and service; and stating that on their part the workers pledged themselves to accept as final the decision of such a tribunal." At the annual conference of the Postal Telegraph Clerks' Association, held in March, 1906, the President of the Association said that nearly 450 of the 670 Members of the House of Commons[243] had pledged themselves to support a motion for a Parliamentary Inquiry into the position of the Post Office employees.[244]