STATE MONOPOLY

Dominion, Volume 24, Issue 137, 6 March 1931, Page 8

STATE MONOPOLY

Handling’ of Letters WHAT LAW SAYS Privileges of Post Office ; NO PRIVATE DELIVERY From the nature of some of the private mall delivery schemes that have been suggested since the increased postage rates were announced it is obvious that many people do not know that the handling of letters and most of the other classes of mail matter is a monopoly of the Post Office. The legal position is made clear by Mr. W. J. Gow, Second Assistant Secretary to the Post Office. “The Post Office will protect its monopoly,” declared Mr. Gow last evening, when his attention was drawn to a proposal to establish a private delivery service. The Post Office, he said, had a monopoly for tbe delivery of letters, postcards, letter-cards, commercial papers, which Included accounts, patterns or sample packets. The monopoly did not apply to parcels or newspapers. Mr. Gow quoted section 23 of the Post and Telegraph Act, where the position is set out in brief, concise language. The section is as follows:— (1) No letter shall be sent or carried for hire or reward otherwise than by post. (2) Every person who so sends any letter, or carries It or takes charge of It for the purpose of Its being sent or carried, is Hable to a fine not exceeding £2O In respect of such letter. (3) The sending, carrying or taking charge of any letter to be carried otherwise than by post shall be deemed to bo done for hire or reward until the contrary Is shown. . Nothing In this section shall be so construed as to render unlawful:— (a) The sending or delivery, otherwise than by post, of any trade announcements, clrcu lars, printed extracts from newspapers, or advertisements that are not addressed to auy person: (b) the delivery of any letter by the servant of the sender or by a messenger specially employed by tbe sender for the purpose, and not being a person employed generally to deliver letThe term “letter” Includes any letter, postcard, letter-card, commercial paper, pattern or sample packet, and any other Sostal packet of a class declared by the overnor-Goneral-In-Councll to be letters. Experiences in the Past. In business circles the opinion, is freely expressed that the Government will not in the long run gain any additional revenue from the new scale of Increased charges. In the past the experience has been that a reduction of rates rather than an Increase has led to larger revenue. In its report for the year 1901, the year in which penny postage was introduced, the Post and Telegraph Department stated that notwithstanding the reduction, the gross revenue, which might have been expected to show a serious drop, was only less by £15,262 than for tho previous year. The penny post in its first year involved tho handling of nearly 13,000,000 additional letters. The next alteration in the postage rates was made in September, 1915, when the letter rate was raised to lid., an exemption being made in favour of correspondence for soldiers. In the year ending on the following March 81 postage of letters and letter-cards, which had been increasing by about five per cent, annually, increased by only 0.61 per cent. In 1916-17, the first year in which the whole of the increased war charges had been in force, £334,000 was estimated to represent the increase due to tbe special war tax on mall matter and telegrams. Furtlier Increase. A further general increase was made in rates and charges in August, 1920, aud for the year 1920-21 the department’s expenditure exceeded receipts by £1345. The letters and lettercards posted that year increased by 8.64 per cent., but the following year, when the full effect was felt, there was a decrease of 6.88 per cent., and the number of letters posted per head declined from 99 to 93. On February 1, 1923, the letter rate was reduced to lid., and in the following October penny postage was reintroduced. The annual report for that year showed an excess of receipts over expenditure of £568.369, and the second largest surplus in the history of the department. There was an increase in letters of 5.3 per cent. CHEMISTS BADLY HIT Heavy Fragile Charges All chemists do a considerable business through the post office, particularly in the country towns, and they and their clients will be exceedingly hard hit by the new postage tariff. From the chemists’ point of view the most serious aspect of the change in the postal rates is the increase in the fragile fees from Gd to 9d and from 1/- to 1/6. A leading Wellington chemist explained yesterday that under the postal regulations liquids must be marked fragile and packed in wooden boxes with sufficient sawdust around the bottle to absorb the fluid in the event of a breakage. “It will therefore be seen, ’ he added, “that a bottle of medicine is of necessity fairly bulky and weighty. The postage will be out of all proportion to the value of the bottle of medicine. It will kill any business done through the post from a profit point of view. The chemist will also be hit in another way. . “Most business men send out their accounts in open envelopes, but for obvious reasons chemists’ accounts are of a more or less confidential character and the majority of customers prefer to receive -them in sealed envelopes. It has cost me twopence to send out each account this week. I confess I received somewhat of a shock when I reckoned up how much extra it cost and it seems as if I will have to adopt a scheme for employing a boy to deliver the accounts in and around the city.”