MANY MILLIONS.

Auckland Star, Volume LXVII, Issue 135, 9 June 1936, Page 9

MANY MILLIONS.

I N.Z. POSTAL RECORDS. I, . LETTER-WRITING FIGURES. BIG INCREASE FOR 1935. One branch of the Post Office where the business runs into millions is the postal division. Its record of work done last ysar has been compiled in detail, and from the mass of figures can be extricated the outstanding point that the postal packets handled in the twelve months exceeded 526,000,000 and that this immense' total shows an increase compared with the previous year of 39,290,079. The letter-writing habit of New Zealanders is particularly well developed, and it results in the Post Office handling a brisk business in postal articles equalling 311.9 for every unit in the population, or practically a letter or other article posted by or delivered' to every man, woman and child in the Dominion for every day in the year. . The total numbers of letters and letter-cards posted and delivered in the j Dominion during 1934 and 1935 were as i follow, the delivered including those received from overseas: — j 1935. 255,645,484 1934 275,063,943 Increase 1935 . 13,581,541 Auckland Leads. The Dominion is divided into eighteen postal districts, and separate statistics are kept for these and for New Zealand's Island dependencies, Earotonga. and Western Samoa. The activity in letter-writing and receipt in each of these districts can be gauged from the following figures of letters and lettercards posted and delivered last year:— Auckland 58,094,023 Blenheim 2,838,133 Christchurch 36,939,838 Dunedin 23,023,330 Gisborne 6,333,059 ! Greymouth 4,146.841 Hamilton 19,502,118 I Invercargill ........... 13,360,269

Napier J.3,6G2,552 Nelson ri,500,84() New Plymouth 10,124,912 Oamaru 3,019,013 Palmerston North 13,053,123 . Thames 7,133,893 Timaru 7,202,950 Willisana! 10,393,104 Wellington 51,652,894 Westport 1,814.22S Karotonga 105.22S I Western Samoa 140,538 ! Total 285,045,484 Over Thirteen Millions. The increase of over 13-i millions in the letters and letter-cards handled last year compares favourably with the pre - vious year's advance, which was 13! millions. Further comparisons would I produce ever larger contrasts, due probably to the stimulating effect of the j reintroduction in June, 1932, of penny postage, which was the Department's early contribution to lowered costs of business during the economic depression. One of the most striking developments in postal business last year was in connection with the carriage of printed and commercial papers, _ books, etc., the number of these packages increasing by 23,745,047 to a Vital of just over 191 millions. The Department' also put through the mails 34J million newspapers, an increase in the year of just over one million, and over 3J million parcels, an increase of 78,000, which, since the end of the year, lias already been • greatly exceeded owing to the revised scale of charges. Last year's ] cash vajue of the postal side of the I Department's business was £1,240,300.