RURAL MAIL BAGS

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXX, 7 October 1936, Page 6

RURAL MAIL BAGS

EXCLUDED FROM RETRENCHMENT A TWO-WAY POSTAL SERVICE The Postmaster-General recently published reassuring proof of how the large State Department under his direction had recovered from the depression in respect of the telephone and savings-bank business, but there is one phase of the many sided business of the Post Office which hardly felt the economic stress. In March, 1929, the number of country residents who paid for the rural mail box service was 19,338. Then the depression came with the farmer feeling the worst effects of the decline in world’s prices of primary products. Constant economy became more and more insistent in the hope of keeping expenditure within the limits of a shrinking income, but the farmer could not do without the useful service of mails to his gate and the rural boxholders kept on increasing in number though the normal rate of acceleration was decreased. However, every year the total showed a widening of the range of the service until in March, 1936, the total number of rural boxholders was 24,723, showing that through a trying economic period there had been an expansion to the extent of 5385 subscribers. The old rate of acceleration has now been resumed, and at the end of July last the total had risen to 25,116.

Rural boxholders obtain a two-way postal service of unique character. Not only is their correspondence delivered at their gates in the. specially designed boxes which are such a familiar feature of the countryside, but the boxholders are able to utilise the rural mail contractor for the despatch of their correspondence and for other services which the town dweller can receive only by going to the Post Office counter. For instance, the rural mail boxholder arranges with the contractor to stamp and post outward letters and to purchase money-orders and postal notes. Thus the rural mail box system plays an important part in reducing the sense of isolation of country dwellers, while the post office telephone service provides a further link between tovV and country, reinforced by radio broadcasting, ijgnothfr State..service;. .