THE LETTER-CARRIERS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15610, 15 May 1914, Page 4

THE LETTER-CARRIERS.

Sir,—The public of Auckland are not ungenerous folk once they have assured themselves that a thing is just and necessary, but they arc a conservative people in "many ways, and while they" hang fire" and ignore things that virtually concern the individual, our poor letter-carriers trudge on through suburbia, up hills, down dales, through long winding paths, up long steps, around to back doors, all the while weighted down with our mails. A glad thrill runs through us when we read that heavy overseas mails are expected. Papers, advertisement packets, letters of pleasure and pain, business letters—not forgetting Cupid's numerous epistles. We expect them all and they come—and things whirl? we don't expect, such as samples of cocoa, which I noticed the letter-carriers were delivering the other day, when there was an extra heavy mail. It is on occasions like these that, in all justice, the letter-carriers deserve help commensurate to the extra revenue received. If the letter-carrier is a few minutes late we grumble; if he makes a practice of not getting us our business letters in time to fit in with our other business arrangements we report him and vet how few of us remember what we expect of the letter-carrier. He must of necessity be honest; he must be respectable ; he must have a fair education; he must be keen; and, above all, he must exhibit the patience of Job and be polite, even while he has a heavy bag of letters slung across his back, and a heavy bag of newspapers and packages bulging from his shoulders. Wo still oxpect him to hurry up oifr long steps and wait at the j

door until "our pleasure. 'Many, of ?us don't; dream of : fixing up a box at our front gate" to save him any, and we don't forget to remark that "if he isn't satisfied he can 1 - get -other work—there' are plenty to take his job." Very likely/but are we quite/willing to voluntarily . part with the men who have done us faithful service, . wet or , dry, ill or well ?' Besides, after , these men have spent some years at that work, it is both difficult to procure other work and hard for them to get into a new grooved' I feel, quite sure, that* were the matter intelligently put to the that. the letter-carriers ' need help, but ' that the people of Auckland desire that the lettercarriers should have some relief, if only a boy to help carry the mails on heavy days—then lam quito sure that they should get their desire forthwith. Forester Clarke. Remuera, May 11, 1914.