A growing proportion of the permanent clerical staff consists of women. At present they are restricted mainly to the account work of the Department; they keep the ledgers of the Savings Bank, they do work in the Money Order and Postal Order offices, and in the Accountant-General's Department. Their scales of pay are as a rule considerably lower than those of the men clerks, and hitherto they have been employed by the State mainly on account of economy. But the women have great ambitions; they have an association, the chief demand of which is equal pay for men and women, and entrance to the Service by the same examination. The advance and success of the woman's movement have had a great influence on the ambitions and hopes of the women clerks, and female employment in the Post Office is probably entering on a new phase. The economical advantage to the State is already not so marked as it used to be, as the commencing salaries of large numbers of the male staff have been reduced, and there is one department at least where the women in their earlier years of service are paid higher salaries than are large numbers of the men. If this latter policy is pursued it means the beginning of a revolution and the upsetting of the old-fashioned social order. The women do their work excellently, and they only ask to be allowed to establish their claim to be able to perform the highest duties that are given to clerks in the Post Office. The women also, it will be seen, are becoming possessed by _esprit de corps_, the note of the permanent staff of the General Post Office. I have only one word to say in conclusion. _Esprit de corps_ is a virtue I have claimed for the permanent staff; but this virtue, like all others, has its defects, and one of these is the state of mind which it induces in an official, to look at his Department as an organisation which has already done a maximum amount of good for the public. If you mildly suggest that much remains to be accomplished, he is apt to regard your remark as a want of confidence in himself. It is this attitude on his part which often explains the bad reputation which the term “permanent official” occupies in the minds of the public. CHAPTER XX THE HEAD POSTMASTER