MILLIONS OF LETTERS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 52, Issue 3767, 10 June 1936, Page 5

MILLIONS OF LETTERS

BIG INCREASES OVER LAST YEAR. HAMILTON DISTRICT IN FIFTH PLACE. One branch of the New Zealand Post Office where the business runs into millions is the postal division. Its record of work done last year has been compiled in detail, and from the mass of figures can be extricated the outstanding point that the postal packets handled in the 12 months exceeded 526,000,000, and that this immense total shows an increase compared with the previous year of 39,296,079. The letter-writing habit of New Zealanders is particularly well developed, and it results in the Post Office handling a brisk business in postal packets equalling 311.9 for every unit in the population, or practically a letter or other article posted by or delivered to every man. woman, and child in the Dominion for every day in the year. The total numbers of letters and letter cards posted and delivered in New Zealand during 1934 and 1935 were as follow, the delivered including those received from overseas:— 1935 288,645,484 1934 275,063,943

Increase, 1935 13,581,541 New Zealand is divided into 18 postal districts, and separate statistics are kept for these and for the Dominion’s island dependencies, Rarotonga and Western Samoa. The activity in letter writing and receipt in each of these districts can be gauged from the following figures of letters and letter cards posted and delivered last year:— Auckland 58,094,023 Blenheim 2,838,133 Christchurch 36,939,856 Dunedin 23,023,350 Gisborne 6,333,959 Greymouth 4,146,841 Hamilton 19,802,778 Invercargill 13,360,269 Napier 13,662,552 Nelson 5,800,840 New Plymouth 10,124,912 Oamaru 3,019,013 Palmerston N. 13,053,123 Thames 7,133.893 Timaru 7,202,950 Wanganui ... 10,393,104 Wellington 51,652,894 Westport 1,814,228 Rarotonga 108,228 Western Samoa .„ 140,538

Total 288,645,484 The increase of over 13,500,000 in the letters and letter cards handled last year compares favourably with the previous year’s advance, which was 13,000,000. Further comparisons would produce even larger contrasts, due probably to the stimulating effect of the reintroduction in June, 1932, of penny postage, which was the Department’s early contribution to lowered costs of business during the economic depression. One of the most striking developments in postal business last year was in connection with the carriage of printed and conpnercial papers, books, etc., the number of these packages increasing by 23,745,647 to a total of just over 191,000,000. The Department also put through the mails 34,500,000 newspapers, an increase in the year of just over one million, and over 3,500,000 parcels, an increase of 78,000, which, since the end of*the year, has already been greatly exceeded owing to the revised scale of charges. Last year’s cash value of the postal side of the Departemnt’s business was £1,240,366.