A CASE FOR INQUIRY IN THE

POST OFFICE.

THE traveller in Rome is met with the following aphoristic comment on the absence of marble in the Coliseum: "What the Barbarians left the Barberinis took." It may be some distant echo of this aphorism which has led to the current saying in the Post Office on the causes of mortality among the employees. The generalised experience is summed up in the following grim sentence: "What consumption leaves the madhouse takes." This is perhaps not literally true, but it is a clear popular expression of the prevailing impression among the employees of the lower grades of the indoor postal service. Among the large bodies of sorters and telegraphists there is an iueradicable belief that consumption claims an abnormal tribute of lives, and among the telegraphists there is an equally deeply rooted belief that their work is productive of mental disease in all its forms, from the more severe and pronounced types which find treatment in an asylum, to those less serious cases which result in an amiable softness or express themselves in abnormal craving for alcohol. Nor are these beliefs confined to English postal employees alone. They are equally prevalent in the continental countries. At the International Congress of Telegraphists held in Como in June 1899 this became especially obvious. Delegates from Italy, France, England, Switzerland, and Austria made frequent references to the widespread belief, and their references were of such a character as to point to an underlying assumption of this as an incontrovertible

fact.

Up to the present the science of statistics has furnished no complete data by which these beliefs can be accurately tested. But it nevertheless remains a most remarkable fact that such a universal belief should exist, and it would be still more remarkable should it turn out to be unwarranted. The electrical condition of the atmosphere is known to affect abnormally nervous persons, hysterical subjects and the like, producing changes which result in depression or excitement. But no detailed investigation exists upon the influence of an electrically charged atmosphere upon normal persons. Dr. Damian, a French scientist, and Dr. Charles Feré, a physician of the Bicêtre Hospital, have both separately studied the subject of

the influence of the electrical condition of the surrounding air upon their subjects, and there is every reason to believe that very profound nervous effects result from changes in electrical tension. Dr. Arlidge, who died recently, collected together a considerable mass of information and published it in a treatise on the Diseases of Occupations. His book became a classic, and undoubtedly led to the reduction of the mortality of most dangerous trades. In a letter dated April 9, 1896, he tells me: "I had hoped to get some returns of the longevity, the health and prevalent maladies especially of those constantly engaged in connection with electrical agencies and instruments. . . I wrote to the officers of the Central Office, and was curtly told that it was contrary to the rule of the department to give information repecting the employees. Why it should be so I have never comprehended."

Far be it from me to assert that the electrically charged atmosphere is the chief or only cause of the insanity of telegraphists. I believe it to rest rather in other conditions of his work, chief of which is its monotony, I was discussing this question one day with a celebrated French electrician, and he said to me, "Imagine a man repeatedly writing or sending such phrases as 'Expect me at six thirty,' 'Shall be late to-night,' hundreds of times per day for years on end! Is it not enough to drive any man mad?" This is a very fair description of the mass of the telegraphists' work, and I am inclined to agree with the French expert.

Despite the refusal of official evidence on so important a subject it is still possible to get some figures, and these point wholly to the justification of the belief of the employees. If better statistics prove the contrary, which I doubt, it is obviously the duty of the postal authorities to produce them, and thus kill this bogey of the telegraph operator. An endeavour was made to kill the consumption bogey, which failed, and it remains incontrovertibly established that both in England and France hundreds of the postal employees die of preventible pulmonary disease.1

Let us look at the justificatory evidence for this widespread belief of the telegraphists. In 1885 and 1886 particulars were given in the Post Office Estimates of the causes of retirement among telegraphists. They showed in 1885 that of a total of 32 pensions granted 20, or 62.5 per cent., were on account of nervous disease. The following year the same heavy percentage was shown. There were, in 1886, 34 cases of pensions, of which 18, or 52.9 per cent., were for nervous complaints. The remainder were mainly respiratory complaints. These figures immediately attracted the attention of the medical papers in England and America, the Lancet being especially strong in its comments. The postal department shielded 1 Vide my paper, "Consumption in the Post Office," read before the British Congress on Tuberculosis on July 24 last.

But no

itself by discontinuing the publication of the details! inquiry was made, such as M. Millerand has recently instituted concerning consumption and its ravages among the French postal employees.

The postal service has an insurance association known by an official misnomer as the United Kingdom Postal and Telegraph Service Benevolent Association. It is in every respect an insurance association, and as all postal lives are carefully selected lives, in consequence of the medical entry examinations, all members of this society are selected lives. Pick up its reports haphazard and we immediately see the justification for the belief that consumption and the madhouse take all the lives. I pick up the Report for 1895. Forty-seven telegraph deaths are recorded, of which nine are from nervous disease and thirty-two from pulmonary disease. The last Report for 1900 shows a total of thirty-seven telegraph deaths, of which two are suicides, six from nervous disease, and nineteen from respiratory disease.

Such a condition is indicated each year by the Reports of the society. The official figures, published in the Postmaster-General's Report for the last few years, confirm the unofficial figures for consumption. It certainly behoves the postal department to publish well classified and detailed statistics on the nervous and other complaints of telegraphists.

CHARLES H. GARLAND.

THE CLERGY AND THE TEACHING

OF ETHICS.

IN the August number of the Nineteenth Century is a remarkable article by the Bishop of Hereford. It is entitled "Moral Influence

in Politics," and seeks to account for the vast gulf which the Bishop discovers between the standard of morals which guides the action of individuals, and that which directs the actions of communities and states. The cause of the moral improvement of individuals he traces principally, if not exclusively, to the influence of Christianity. How, then, he asks, is it that there is so much immorality in our internal, as well as external public life?

It is due primarily, we are told, to the fact that Christ's teaching was intended purely for the individual, and the famous dictum, "Render to Cæsar the things that are Cæsar's, and to God the things that are God's," is regarded as having the result of restraining the Churches from trying to directly influence the course of public and political life. And so, after the lapse of nineteen centuries of Christianity, Dr. Percival regards with pain and dismay the spectacle of a nation like England, whose public policy is too often dictated by selfishness, brutality, and the meanest and most ignoble motives.

To remedy this deplorable condition of things the Anglican prelate makes the proposal that manuals of practical ethics should be introduced into the schools, and that systematic instruction should be given with the object of directly elevating the character of the young.

Finally—and it is a most significant conclusion-“ we need,” he says, "a great deal more of the influence of ethical societies," and he proposes that these societies should become less academical in their nature and proceedings, and become more and more intimately associated with our every-day life.

Few thoughtful people will be disposed to deny the essential truth of Dr. Percival's criticisms of the public morality of the so-called Christian nations, especially as exhibited in the outside world in their relations with one another. It is a state of things which is more and more arresting the attention of serious politicians and

reformers, and party politics are becoming every day more and more influenced by this growing feeling of uneasiness due to an innate conviction that the continuous existence of such an evil condition is intolerable and fraught with the utmost peril to the interests of the community and of the world at large. It is the general conscience which is becoming, slowly, it is true, but still surely, more and more alive to the incongruities and inharmonies which are to be found between our professions as Christian peoples and our actual

conduct.

So far we can cordially agree with the Bishop, but we cannot understand how, if Christianity had really had the influence upon individuals claimed for it by its apologists, it comes about that the corporate life, made up as it is of individuals, should be so tainted and corrupt in its external manifestations. Is the Bishop sure that

the standard of morality set up by the individual for his observance is so much superior to that which inspires the action of all collectively as a nation? There must be some relation between the two; and it seems reasonable to suppose that if the general policy of a nation is corrupt it is due to a low standard of private and individual morality.

Let us take a case in point. The Bishop quotes the conduct of a certain South African statesman, who has earned for himself an unpleasant notoriety through his connection with an infamous conspiracy to overthrow the government of an adjoining state during a time of peace. This man was guilty of treachery and deceit, but owing to his social and political influence, due to the possession of great wealth and a forcible personality, he was able to disentangle himself from the miserable affair with an unblemished reputation in the eyes of the generality of his fellowcountrymen.

Do we not see every day the same phenomenon in private life? So long as a man has wealth and a commanding personality he can generally blind and pervert the moral sensibilities of his neighbours and townsfolk, however discreditable the transactions he is engaged in. The millionaires, who in America and other countries have built up their fortunes at the cost of the unremitting toil, and too often of the blood and tears, of thousands, are admired and worshipped by their fellow-countrymen; they are regarded as national institutions, and the stranger is invited to share in the general admiration of a social and political system, in which the existence of such fine flowers of our modern civilisation is rendered possible.

Beings of such an exalted station and with such ample resources at their command find little difficulty in satisfying every whim or desire without, as a rule, bringing themselves into open conflict with the law, which bears heavily only on those who often are driven by