GREAT BRITAIN: FEPC (Feline Branch)

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"The worst case of wage discrimination in the British public service," said the Manchester Guardian. "Certain post-office workers in London are receiving weekly wages 50% greater than workers doing exactly the same job in Manchester and the North. What is perhaps even worse is the fact that there has been no wage increase for either group since September 1873." The workers whose state so roused the Guardian were cats employed to keep mice from mutilating Her Majesty's mail.

The first post-office cats were hired in 1868 when London Postmaster Frederick-Roger Jackson, worried over "very serious destruction and mutilation of paid money orders," became "emboldened to suggest that three cats be acquired to deal with mice in my department." The postmaster general reluctantly agreed to lay on the new civil servants at an allowance of one shilling weekly for all three but only on condition that "if mice be not reduced in number at the termination of six months, a portion of this allowance may be stopped."

As time went on, the new hands became so proficient that one of them alone sometimes caught as many as twelve mice in a single evening. A few days before their probation period expired, their pleased employer asked his superior to give them a sixpence raise. The raise was granted—again reluctantly—and, with proper working conditions thus assured, cats became standard personnel in most British post offices. Four years later, Jackson's cats put in for another raise—one shilling per cat—and got it, bringing their salary to one shilling sixpence per cat per week, provided "the cat be employed in London." But "this," said the postmaster general sternly, "is positively the last increase."

And so it was. For nearly three-quarters of a century, the London cats have had to make do on their 1873 scale; the cats in Manchester have struggled along on a mere one shilling. The only other British workers so discriminated against, reported the Guardian, are Britain's £5,000-a-year high court judges, who likewise have had no raises since 1873.