INCREASED POSTAL CHARGES

Evening Post, Volume CII, Issue 33, 8 August 1921, Page 8

INCREASED POSTAL CHARGES

DEFICITS DUE TO WAR BONUS

NO CHANGE. IN PAPER RATES.

(PROM OUR OTTK CORRISPONDMT.)

LONDON, 16th June.

By dropping, at the last moment, in the interest of the British trade, the proposed double late on printed matter, the Postmaster-General is congratulated on having thus thrown over the bureaucrats who foisted this proposal upon him. The extra £300,000, which was all that the doubled rate was expected to yield, would have involved,a loss, to the Treasury of millions in in' come tax and in other directions, because,of the injury which, according to all/the expert authorities, it must have inflicted on British commerce.

The Times comments:," Mr. Kellaway got his chance and took it. He opened a little nervously, i but as he warmed to his subject the sentences acquired shape and body, and ha showed a quite remarkable power of handling figures. He ro3e in suerice and sat down in cheers. What a relief it is to have a man at the Post Office who is vocal and intelligible! The only fault of his speech was that sometimes he overdid it, as when te said that he had never met a bureaucrat in the Post Office, but the occasional over-emphasis may be a legacy of his journalistic days." The Morning Post: "Mr. Kellaway, the, new Postmaster-General, differs from most of his fellow-Ministers in having the gift of engaging candour." The Chronicle: "Mr. Kellaway has been given some tough jobs since he was called into the Ministry, but he clearly felt, when he rose in a silent Committee of Supply to explain the Post Office Estimates and the new charges, that he was. up against a real problem. • With courage as well as lucidity, Mr. Kellaway declaimed that the war bonus was the chief cause of the increased expenditure of the Department. 'If I got rid'of the war bonus, I could give back the halfpenny post and the half-penny postcard.' But, with imDaxtial earnestness, he defended the bonus as the Post Office share in a great , Civil Service compact. He was rewarded, at the close of an unflinching dissection of the whitfe postal bod,y politic, with a round of lordial cheeTs."

■Mr. Kellaway's speech was mainly figures, dexterously handled.' Every other Post Office had a deficit, and the 11| millions deficit in the United States was much the same as our own £3,500,000. There was a loss of £2,400,000 on printed paper, but the new charges would reduce, it by a million. The cost of carrying a postcard at present was over a penny, .and the new rate, allowing for a 10 per cent, diminution of the volume, would convert a loss of nearly half a million into a profit of about ihe same. .

But could you not get increased revenue by lowering rates and so increasing business? No, he said, because Nearly all the charges in the Post Office were handling charges. Supposing the reintroduction of the penny post brought back the 3£ per cent, volume of traffic which we had lost by the twopenny post, there would be a net loss of 10 millions by -the change. And that brought him to the causes of the losses in the last two years. The causa causana. was the war bonus, which was responsible for 28 millions out of the 42 millions by which Post Office expenditure had 'been increased. "It could," he. said, "be summed up in two words—war bonus.' He'fomid among all classes of/the community a great fear of what was called 1 the bureaucrat. He would have, a peti- | tion'addod'.tci the Litany : "From all bureaucrats and other superior persons, good Lord; deliver us." He would rather be governed by a devil thain by a bureaucrat. The bureaucrat had one vice; which 1 was the most intolerable which could beset 'any man having authority in a free country, 'and that was Ms desiTe to give the people what he thought was good for them, rather than what the neople wanted. If he found a bureaucrat he should be disappointed if tie did not find machinery for getting •rid of him

COUNCIL OF BUSINESS MEN. I

Believing it most essential that in a Government Department like the Post Office, there 'should be harmonious relations, arid a feeling of confidence, Mr. Kellaway announced his decision to establish a Post Office Council, composed of business men. The following had agreed to sit on the council :—Sir A: Anderson (joint manager, Orient Line, director, Bank of England and of the Midland Railway); Mr. H. Bell (managing director of Lloyds Bank); Mr. 0.0., Barrie, M.P. ;Mr. F. G. Blakemore (president National Chamber of Trade); Mr. A. Balfour • (president Sheffield Chamber of 1 Commerce); Viscount Bumham (presid'erit Empire Press Union'); Mr. G. Cheseman (National Union of Manufacturers); Lord Oolwyn; Sir J., Dewranee (president Engineering and National Employers' Federation) ;j Mr. G. Howard (chairman Baltic Exchange) ; Mr. V. Hartshorn, M.P.; Sir G. Lawson Johnston; Mr. R. Holland Martin (Bankers' Clearing House); Mr. E. Nanvillej, M.P.; Sir Peter. Rylands (president Fedei"ation of British Industries); Mr. Gordon Selfridge; Sir E. Stockton (president Manchester Chamber of Commerce) ; Colonel Satterwaite (secretary to " Committee for General Purposes, Stock Exchange); Sir T. Williams (late general manager, London and NorthWestern Railway). ' ' Postage increases which are to stand includie :—Postcards from Id to L}d; inland printed papers, from to Id; registered letters, from 2d to 3d; foreign letters from 2|d to 3d. Letters to the Dominions, 2d first ounce, l£d each additional ounce. THE LABOUR, ATTITUDE. The criticism that followed was "a mixed grill," and mainly concerned with detail. A characteristic Labour attitude was struck by Mr. Short, anxious to reduce the vote, who was all for the abolition of the (Sunday post if the loss of the worker was not "worsened," and his earnings reduced. Both he and Mr. George Roberts complained of the subsidy in. regard to press telegrams. So, too, did Mr. Wignall, to be told that some papers could not depend on money from Russia. The injury which the new rates would inflict on. the printing trade was voiced by Mr. Bowerman and Mr. Gilbert,', the latter suggesting .-k cheap local rate, such as Germany had before the war. • The increase of £15.000.000 j pre-wan- salaries to £70,000,000 now was' the text of a spirited attack by Sir Frederick Banbury; while another' Coalition critic was Sir Charles Oman, who lectured the Government on its habit of subsidising postal workers and miners while leaving the middle classes to bear. the pinch of war unaided. , Mr. Erskine, the anti-waste victor of ! St. George's, made his maiden speech, telling Mr. Kelaway that 'it was not in the interests of the' Post Office itself to make its goods so. dear that fewer'would be sold. That, perhaps, is the real kernel of the problem ; and it was all said in three minutes. Mr. Erslrine is evidently anti-waste in th» matter of words. , Mr. Kella-way said he made it p?xfe?U" clear that you could not expect Civil servants to -receive salaries equal to those received in the commercial world. But the salaries should not be such as would make it impossible to retain firstclass men. i