AFTER 37 YEARS' SERVICE.

Press, Volume LXI, Issue 18402, 8 June 1925, Page 8

AFTER 37 YEARS' SERVICE.

RETIREMENT OF MR J. E. BROADFOOT. "When I was a boy in the telephone exchange at Auckland, on duty all night, and the only living person in the building—except the rats—l was scared out of my life. That was in IS9S. I wonder what the men would say to that nowadays!-" said Mr J. E. Broadfoot, Chief Postmaster at Christchurch, who retires on superannuation to-day, after '37 years' service, to a representative of '-The Press"' last night. In the course of conversation Air Broadfoot, who has made himself and his work v.-ry well and favourably kubwn among the business men of Canterbury, gave a short resume of his activities from the time he joined the service up till the present day. Mr Broadfoot started in 1883 at Auckland as a message boy. There were twelve of them altogether, and all the message work was done on foot, the boys having to cover from 25 to 30 miles a day. In 1898 ho went on to the postal side and through the various branches until 1907 when he went into the mail room. "On. my first day there," said Air Broadfoot, "the San Francisco mail was an exceeding big one. Ordinarily 1 was on duty, at 1 p.m., but on that day I had to g« on at 5 a.m. and I finished at 9.30 that night! Tho place was an absolute bedlam, and we had to carry bilge baskets of letters from one end of the room to the other. I'll never forget my initiation into the post office." After that ho went twice to 'Frisco as mail agent—in 1904 and 1906. "I just missed the big earthquake," he said, "by a couple of weeks. Curiously enough a doctor with whom I used to sit at meals in the hotel was killed in the In 1907 Mr Broadfoot went to Head Office and ths secretary's office, and was there from 1907 till 1918. During -that period he spent three years with the Defence Department, to whom ho- was "loaned" and sstarted the general records system. As many as 2000 men had to be dealt with in a week and tile work entailer! a good deal of travelling from camp to camp. The work was done under all sorts of almost impossible conditions—under canvas and in mud. Mr Broadfoot was aboard the troopship Athenic when she was ordered not to leave, and spent several hours in her cruising aimlessly round Cook Strait. In spite of the fact that on one occasion the men were ashore-, tho whole of the force was got away and only four or five names had to 'be added to the records at Hobart. In 1915 Mr Broadfoot broke down in.health,.and was'brdered three months' rest. On his Teturn to activity ho took charge of the correspondence in the pay office, where he. worked until 1917. From that he took a postmastership at Eltham. In 1918 he went to Feilding, and was there till 1920. Subsequently he became relieving Chief Postmaster, and was at various times stationed in Napier, Hastings, Invercargill, Timaru, Nelson, Masterton, Thames, New Plymouth, Wanganui. and Dunedin. He was then appointed Chief Postmaster at Christchurch, and has been here for three and a half vears, having taken up his duties in December 1922. During the first eighteen months spent in Christchurch, Mr Broadfoot concentrated on the city, bringing it up to a high' standard of efficiency. The rest of the time was spent mostly irt dealing with country matters. He al j ways considered that the town and country must.work together, as one depended almost entirely oh the other. Wherever compatible with expenditure, he was of. opinion that the country should have as much consideration as the town. - Last year the mail contracts expired, and the post office was deluged with applications for rural' deliveries. He made a special feature of meeting all town and country people in a round table conference, which he considereS was better than letter-writing. Referring again to the conditions obtaining in the Department when he first started, he said that when the Auckland Post Officfe was in Shortland street; the telephone exchange had about 360 subscribers. A terrific noise went on all the time —people calling to each other from one end of the room to the other. Boys took shifts in turn, from midnight to 8 a.m. That showed the vast improvement and change that had since come about in the affairs of the postal offices. Nowadays such conditions would not he tolerated for a moment. No boys are on dutv alone during those hours, and men are always on- the premises. Mr Broadfoot leaves to-day for the south, where he will spend a few days. Ho will return to Christchurch prior to leaving, with his wife and family, for Auckland, where they will make their home.