The Department, in August, 1891, abolished the classification of the postmen, but it refused to raise the annual increment. It said that the rapid promotion from $4.50 to $6 that had characterized the past had been an accident, that it had not been foreseen, and that the men who had entered the service while it had obtained had not acquired a vested right to it. In 1896 the men who had been postmen prior to the abolition of classification appeared before the Tweedmouth Committee with the statement that they "were under the impression that it was an official principle that no individual should suffer by the introduction of a new scale of promotion or wages." They demanded compensation for the fact that they had lost, in 1891, the possibility of passing in less than the regular time from the wage of $4.50 to that of $6. They stated that they were prepared to show that "they had suffered material pecuniary loss ... amounting in some cases to about $500."[390] All of which goes to show that in the British Post Office service the abolition of a grievance can in turn become a grievance. [Sidenote: _Equality, not Opportunity_] Before the Tweedmouth Committee appeared also the representatives of the telegraphers, to demand the abolition of the division of the telegraphers into classes, with promotion by merit between the classes. They demanded amalgamation into a single class, in which each one should pass automatically from the minimum pay to the maximum, provided he was not arrested by the efficiency bar, to be placed at $800 a year. Mr. E. B. L. Hill, Assistant Secretary, General Post Office, London, began his discussion of this demand by quoting with approval the conclusion of the Telegraph Committee of 1893, which was: "We have taken great pains to investigate this matter. Almost without exception the provincial postmasters and telegraph superintendents were opposed to an amalgamation of the classes, and gave the strongest testimony to the value of the present division [into classes] as a means of discouraging indifference, and encouraging zeal and efficiency. We think ... that for purposes of discipline it is desirable to maintain the division of the establishment into two classes." Mr. Hill continued by saying that in the course of the last three or four years he had changed his opinion, and had come to the conclusion that amalgamation into one class must come. "The staff seems to desire, first of all, equality, and the abolition of classification seems to insure the fulfillment of that wish. At the same time classification is a valuable incentive to exertion and efficiency...."[391] [Sidenote: _Opportunities Rejected; Increased Pay Demanded_]