POST AND TELEGRAPH SERVICES

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 227, 20 June 1921, Page 4

POST AND TELEGRAPH SERVICES

OBSERVATIONS ON THEIR GROWTH.

In responding to the toast of.. iho Post and Telegraph Department, proposed at the annual smoko concert of tho Chief Post Office Pastimes Club on Saturday night, Mr. H. D. Grocott (Chief Postmaster, Wellington) made some interesting observations upon the growth of the post and telegraph services The Department, he said, was regarded as a progressive one. A progressive post office was an index to an active and enlightened community; it redected the condition of the, people. .In May 1840, the first poet office in New Zealand lias established at Kororareka the place known as Russell, m the Bay of Islands. A month later offices were established at Port Nicholson, Auckland, and Coromandel; and two or three months afterwards, Hokianga had its office. Th number of letters handled in the nine months of the year post offices were open totalled 0000, and the revenue was of nhich Wei lington had to its credit .£52 <s. ibe first important mail route opened in this country was that Welling- ' ion and Waiiganui. inaugurated in 184 L The Telegraph Department and th Postal Department were amalgamated i 1881 A couple of years /Hero an important innovation into the P e Pa ment in the shape of telephones. 11 telephone was such a novelty then that in Dunedin, he remembered, a number of mail room officers went down to South Dunedin a dav or two before the openthose in the mail room. i Times had now so changed that Department had advanced to the extent £ wiJno’ fplccraphs, which would irt y £ the general thing between, the. entll 'rhe old mail given srA’W® Ft failed last year no fewer than 340 000.00 show, ed signs of being superseded by nnrnnlalies. Alreadv a. service between the Old Land and the Antinodes by. air had been mooted, and ,he did not believe hat the New Zealand Po't Often would lag behind in the developments that were coming.