§ MR. SUMMERBELLI beg to ask the Postmaster-General if he is aware that some of the rural mail cart drivers in Durham and Northumberland have to be up at 4 a.m., attend to and harness their horses in time to get the early morning mails from the railway station, and, while these are being sorted at the post office, they then get their mail carts ready and 715 start on their rounds, getting back to the head office between 7 and 8 p.m.; that they then wait for the making up of the night mails, which they drive to the station, and, by the time they have done this and put their horses up for the night, they have been on duty for about seventeen hours; will he say whether this is a daily record, summer and winter; and whether, seeing that the wages for such work are 18s. per week, or under 2d. per hour, he can see his way to an improvement in the conditions of such men.
§ THE POSTMASTER-GENERAL (Mr. SYDNEY BUXTON, Tower Hamlets, Poplar)If the hon. Member will furnish me particulars of the cases he has in mind, I will make inquiry respecting them.