THE POSTAL DEPARTMENT.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1194, 18 January 1895, Page 38

THE POSTAL DEPARTMENT.

AN ANTIPODAL EXAMPLE. The second of the above headings is taken from an American journal, the Examiner, of San Francisco, which in its issue of December 13fcli last had an article on the Nv;w Zealand Postal Department. The article is so interesting as showing the attention paid in America, where the telegraphs are in private hands, that we reproduce it. The Auckland Star of September 28th contains an interesting review of the workings of the Post Office and Telegraph Department of the New Zealand Government, as compared with private management of similar enterprises. It finds in the returns nothing to justify the theory that better results can be obtained from private corporations than from public officials. “Here,” it remarks, “ we have an institution whose revenue for the year was .£344,670, under the management of an able executive head, whose salary is a modest -8700 a year.” In respect to efficiency and the amount of skilled work obtained for the money paid, the Star thinks that this branch of the public service will bear comparison with the returns given by workers in any other line of business life. In addition to doing all the work which is done by the

post office in the United States, the department in New Zealand received savings deposits last year amounting to .£2,386,087, which would correspond to nearly ten million dollars in this country, and carried on the entire telegraph business of the Colony. For the year ending March 31, 1894, the revenue of the department was .£344,676, and the expenditure .£293,704, leaving a surplus of <£50,092, or 250,000 dollars. “If we add to these earnings, as we are fairly entitled to do, the work done on behalf of the various public departments, amounting to .£63,838 for official correspondence and ,£28,317 for official telegrams, we have a grand total of .£142,128 as the net balance in favour of the Post Office and Telegraph Department.” In addition to handling the entire postal, telegraph, and savings-bank business of the colony, the Postal Department “ performs valuable services on behalf of the Land and Income Tax and Insurance Departments.” It does all this under the management of a head who receives a salary of 3,500d01s a year—about the pay of one of Mr Towne’s bookkeepers. Its surplus revenue is immense in proportion to its total volume of business, and all the profits go for the benefit of the public. Nobody is getting up subscriptions there for a competing service.