In 1881, Mr. Fawcett, Postmaster General, created for the provincial towns the class of "telegraph clerks," who are recruited from the first class of telegraphists, and act as assistants to the assistant superintendents. Since the men in question were styled clerks, they immediately contended that their hours of work should be reduced from 8 hours a day to 39 hours a week, the hours of the clerks proper. The Department always has refused to recognize that claim. But Mr. Beaufort, Postmaster at Manchester, acting on a misreading of the rules, from 1884 to 1890 granted the telegraph clerks at Manchester the 39 hours a week. In 1892 the hours were raised to the correct number, namely 8 hours a day, with half an hour for a meal. In 1896, 9 telegraph clerks from Manchester sent a spokesman to the Tweedmouth Committee to state that they had become telegraph clerks in 1890, when the hours were 35 a week, and that they deemed it a "hardship" to be compelled to work 8 hours a day.[367] In November, 1902, Mr. Austen Chamberlain, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, stated in the House of Commons: "The town postmen at Newton Abbot were formerly paid on too high a scale [in consequence of an error of judgment made by a departmental officer]. The wages were accordingly reduced some years ago, but the postmen then in the service were allowed to retain their old scale of payment so long as they should remain in the service, and the new scale was applied only to postmen who entered the service subsequently. This will account for there being temporarily two scales for postmen at Newton Abbott."[368] [Sidenote: _Standard of Efficiency should not be Raised_]