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 and a better and more developed permanent way. The servants of the companies were the victims of this neglect, and under the existing law they had no means of redress. Not a single case of accident, fatal or otherwise, was attributed to neglect by the companies, and there was no legal guarantee of compensation for injuries or death. Incomplete returns of accidents were regularly made to the Board of Trade to hide the true facts, and the companies simply gave doles to the men's Provident and Mutual Insurance Societies. These gifts, the best of them, totalled less than one half-penny per servant per week, while the traffic receipts of the richest company were £9,320,977. "Any alteration in the law," said Mr. Findlay, General Manager of the London & North Western, "would make it, of course, no longer the interest of the Company to assist in carrying on societies for times of sickness, accident, or death." The Great Western, in 1874, employed 1,650 engine-men and firemen, each engineman contributed £3 18s. per annum, and each fireman £2 12s. per annum, to an insurance society, while the company only contributed one thirteenth part as much, and for two years had contributed nothing at all, so that the committee of the Society had to give notice of reduced benefits, and the end of payments to widows and orphans.

The men were keenly feeling these conditions, and at a meeting of South Eastern enginemen and firemen, held at Sultan Tavern, Mercers' Crossing, Bermondsey, on Sunday, April 20th, 1878, a report was given of a deputation waiting upon the directors of that company. The directors had agreed to fix a week's work of sixty hours, and that all over sixty hours be paid at the rate of ten hours per day; that all work done between twelve o'clock midnight on Saturday and twelve o'clock midnight on Sunday be paid for at the rate of eight hours per day. That the following be the rates of wages for drivers:—First year, 5s. 6d. per day: second year, 6s. per day; third year, 6s. 6d. per day; fourth year, 7s. per day; after seven years, 7s. 6d. per day. The amount of wages to firemen to remain as at present, excepting that no fireman start at less than 3s. 6d. per day, and must be over 18