until December 1911, when a tentative scheme was introduced in the
Money Order Department to hand over all the simpler duties to a new
class of Assistant Women Clerks with an eight-hour day and a wage
of 18s. rising to 34s. a week. The Association of Post Office Women
Clerks, the basis of which is "equal pay and opportunities for women
with men in the Civil Service," and which therefore necessarily
stands for simplification of the classes of employment, regarded
the restriction of a fresh grade of women to yet another water-tight
compartment at a low wage as in itself an evil. But apart from this,
they looked upon the scheme as a deliberate evasion of the Hobhouse
Committee's recommendations. So strong was the criticism levelled at
the new scheme, both by Members of Parliament and the Press, that the
Postmaster-General, Mr Herbert Samuel, consented to refer the
matter to the Select Committee on the Post Office (known as the Holt
Committee)[1], which was appointed in the early part of 1912, and
he gave an undertaking that no more appointments to the new grade
should be made in the Money Order Department until the Committee had
reported, The value of this concession was considerably lessened by
its limited application, and the fact that many Assistant Women Clerks
were subsequently appointed to the London Telephone Service, clearly
indicated the intention of the authorities to proceed with the
development of the scheme in a Department which provided an easier
field of operation in the shape of new work and a new staff taken over
from the National Telephone Company.

In 1897 the class of Girl Clerks was created, to undertake some of the
simpler duties in the Savings Bank Department, hitherto performed by
Women Clerks. They were subsequently introduced into the Money
Order Department and the Controller's Office of the London Telephone
Service, and there are approximately 250 now employed. They take
the same examination as Women Clerks, but at a lower age--sixteen
to eighteen--and are grouped apart for the purpose of marking. Their
hours of duty are seven daily, and their salary L42, raising by L3 per
annum, to L48. They are in reality a probationary class, and become
Women Clerks automatically after two years' service. The introduction
of this class was not considered by the Department to be an
administrative success, as the obligation to make them Women Clerks in
two years prevented their being employed in sufficiently l