LETTER WRITING

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 58, Issue 41, 27 November 1937, Page 3

LETTER WRITING

NEW ZEALAND’S ANNUAL TOTAL

NEARLY NINETY PER CENT CAPITA. The letter-writing habit of New Zealanders is extremely well developed and results in the Post Office dealing every year with mails of enormous proportions. The figures for last year in dicate what is rrow regarded as inevitable in these times, a further advance on those of the previous period, the total number of letters and lettercards, postcards, circulars, packets, newspapers and parcels posted and delivered in the Dominion reaching the formidable figure of just over 034 millions. This includes both articles arriving from overseas and those posted and delivered in the Dominion, so that the extent of the use of the mails by New Zealanders only must bo gauged from the separate statistics on the same basis relating to postings in the Dominion. These total 261,590.000. Some contrasts between the relative amount of postings in different parts oi the Dominion are possible by taking]

out of the analysis the particulars relating only to letters and .letter-cards, which constitute the principal feature. In the Dominion and its associated Pacific Islands the letters and letter cards handled last year totalled as follows: Posted 141,853,498, .posted and delivered 292,098,761. : The figures regarding postcards are not included in the above details, hut one point of interest about, them is that the total number handled last year showed a decrease, and if the comparison is extended over a longer period, the decreasing popularity of the postcard becomes more marked, last year’s total being 468,000 fewer than in 1916, when the picture postcard was in great favour. Although letter writing maintains impressivo proportions among New Zealanders, it is actually not so extensive as in former years, for when the millions quoted above are reduced to terms of letters per unit of population the results appear as follows: Letters posted per unit of population: 1930, 101.9; 1931, 90.55; 1932, 77.48; 1933, 81.79; 1934. 85.47; 1935, 86.53; 1936, 89.51. The reduction in the percentage shown in 1931 was due probably to the raising of the minimum postage rate to 2d, as a revenue-maintaining expedient during the depression. However, New Zealand resumed penny postage in June, 1932, after which the figures

commenced to rise, although they have not returned to the 1930 level. The principal reason for the apparently tardy recovery is probably that letter writing has to some extent been replaced by the more frequent use jr the telephone, especially for social purposes after business hours when induced rates apply on the foil lines. The number of toll calls handled last year was 13,143,171 while the number handled during the year ended March, 1917 was only 5,040,672. The Post Office can still point to a growth in the volume of its mails equalling over 50 million letters in ten years, and if the letters per unit of popidation are fewer, the business is being obtained in another way.