The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 1917. POSTAL "GO SLOW" MOVEMENT.

Taihape Daily Times, Issue 220, 17 April 1917, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

TUESDAY, APRIL 17, 1917. POSTAL "GO SLOW" MOVEMENT.

(With which is incorporated The Tai nape Post and Wuimarino Nows).

The postal system of this country has every appearance of now undergoing another metamorphosis. So far as it has progressed the transition does not give much promise of being particularly advantageous to the pub-

lic for whose convenience and benefit it came into existence. A new cycle of life is commencing in which the big brown mcl.ii is being i'ollowed 'By the rather veracious grub that takes all and gives nothing if it can help it.

riicse in our postal systen

IcAiq place just as unostentatiously a; they do in the insect world, being in: observed by all who do not pry info chat wonderfully complete erudit

publication the Postal Guide, with a; 1 its multitudinous supplements and addenda. So valuable is the space" in these publications that it is found necessary to state in black-faced type that "No announcement will appear mor e than once." From the frequency with which issues of one kind and an • other are published the clerical de partinent of the post office must entail the employment of considerable additional labour. Perhaps this assumption is in error, fcr it may be that

the drastic curtailment of work hitherto done in the despatch department, is enabling hands to be transferred therefrom to the fastgrowing literary department. For what the final result is to be the public can only wait and see. Most people whose business is done largely through the Post Office are still ruminating over the latest decree emanating from somewhere or somebody, which informs them that although the cost of delivering an .ordinary communication has been increased by fifty per cent, the postal authorities will not undertake to deliver it if the address does not give the number of the. house, as well as the name of the street in which the addressee lives, irrespective of whether the writer knows the particular, number, whether the house is numbered or not, in fact, .regardless of whether th e houses in a town are subject to any numbering system as evolved by th e local governing body in Avhose jurisdiction they are. This seems a big strain on the divination powers of most letterwriters, but there it is, if one doesn't know a number that has no existence th e postal magnates will not undertake to have the letters delivered. It

may be that in the delivery of correspondence th e authorities have in hand a scheme for supplanting intelligence with an automatum that will act under certain exact and definite circumstances which must all be present to make it reliable and effective. Whether this is so or not, we confess that the obligations placed upon us by the latest postal mandate are, at present, beyond our ability to comply with, and, therefore, when we have no knowledge of an addressee's house number, and in cases of writing to towns where houses are not numbered we shall have to take "Punch's" advice if the postal department really means all it says. But then, the decree is absolute; 1t states "eorre ; - spondence to be delivered by lettercarriers must show the number of the house as well as the name of the street,' 'and it is emphasised by the use of small capital letters. One begins to wonder whether the post office desires to ,do anything at all for the fifty per cent, put upon the delivery of correspondence. The.shirking of ■?. responsibility always hitherto accepted to a reasonable extent looks very like a scheme for the production of an indifferent class of letter-car-rier, and we hope in the public interest the authorities will reflect on this aspect of their latest notification Whether' the public will consider the excuse given entirely warrant's the drastic curtailment of postal responsibility we cannot say, but it seems to us that the fifty per cent. postage, increase should cover the cost of the little time taken to occasionally inquire which house an addressee occupies. While the carrier is at one deer it seems a simple, easy and speedy. matter to enquire whether a certain ; person lives near by. In any case the writer of a letter will naturally address as fully as possible so as to facilitate delivery, which in

business is oft-times of supreme importance. We would respectfully submit to the Postal Department that far less valuable time of letter-carriers is

caved by the newly-adopted regula

tion than will be required from higher paid officials in sending undelivered correspondence to the Dead Letter Office,,opening it, reading what is essential, reclosing it, re-addressing it, despatching it, and delivering it to th e person .who wrote it. We are not experts in postal matters, however, and we hope to be pardoned if we are wrong in assuming that a simple enquiry by letter-carriers would render it entirely unnecessary for them to carry a communication all round with them, finally delivering it to the Dead Letter Office, to go through the immensely more costly processes in being returned to the town and person from whence it emanated.