Advertising on Letters.

Press, Volume LVIII, Issue 17634, 11 December 1922, Page 6

Advertising on Letters.

The community is, it appears, to be afforded another example of tho danger of admitting the thin end of the wedge, of permitting a sound established principle to be overridden for the sake of some purely temporary advantage or gain. During the war we became accustomed to seeing the Post Office print on our letters appeals to invest our money in war bonds. The object sought was an extremely worthy one, and almost, though not quite, justified- the means. For the business of the Post Office with letters oonnded to its care is confined, to their receipt and due delivery; it has no authority, except such as it has Assumed, for becoming the instrument of propaganda of any sort. The practice of 60 using the public's correspondence has been carried out by the Postal Department since the war, our letters to-day bearing exhortations to visit the Industrial Exhibition in. Christchurch. The ob"j*-ot ks again a laudable oiie, but these postal advertisements indicate that the wedge is being driven further in. Nothing, however, can be urged in favour of the Department's latest scheme, to let by tender the right to have imprinted, by means of the stamping machines in uso in all the principal post offices of the Dominion, two-line advertitements on all private letters and other articles passing through tho post. It cannot be argued, a* wa/s possible in the cases we have quoted, that to put the people's correspondence to such a line serves any national, purpose The only object of the scheme can be to rake in a little money, and we refuse- to believe that even that is justification for the proposed meddling with our private letters. If the plan is adopted, it will bo quite possible for the monthly accounts sent out by, say, a large drapery firm, to bear an offioially-stamped notification that a certain other the same •town sells-drapery much more oheaply than any of its competitors. There is no apparent reason why; tinder such a scheme, tho correspondence of the whole Dominion should not be employed by the Prohibition Party or "the Trade" for months before the next poll, for propaganda purposes. The Department's proposal has neither warrant nor excuse, and we are astonished that practically it has been left to a few papers to express disapproval of a development of Government trading which calls for the condemnation of .all business men. Among the very few'business organisations which Tiave referred to it, the South Canterbury Employers' Association put the arguments against the idea most completely. A recent meeting of that Association passed a resolution in: the course of which it said that it considered "that a letter is the pro"perty of the writer until it is de- " iivefed to the addressee, and that the "Government is entrusted with letters "as fh common carrier, and is not en- ." titled to deface them in any way." It also expressed the opinion that "it "would be grossly.unfair to make the "correspondence of one firm carry on " its covering envelopes tho advertis- " ing of any 4 othcr competing business." There is yet time—tenders for the district rights to advertise on letters do not close -until January Ist—ifor the commercial community to make its voice heard- on thi9 matter.