BUSY DECEMBER

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 December 1938, Page 9

BUSY DECEMBER

WHAT THE POST OFFICE EXPECTS. SOME IMPRESSIVE FIGURES. During December, every branch of the Post Office works at high pressure because this great institution is able to facilitate in many ways the pleasant activities associated with the festive season. There are presents which send up the parcel-post figures to great heights, the ordinary correspondence, including Christmas cards, and the telegraphic method of forwarding greetings. Last Christmas in a week the four chief post offices of the Dominion sold £12.000 worth of stamps. They handled inward over the counters 81,000 parcels and despatched 27,386 bags of mails. These figures are exclusive of the business transacted at hundreds of other offices. Throughout the year, postal business has been growing and much larger figures are, therefore, anticipated this Christmas. An estimate of the number of letters likely to be posted in time to be delivered in England prior to Christmas places the figure at not less than 900,000. Christmas and New Year greetings by telegraph will probably exceed the last year’s total of 380,500, and the Department will, of course, be carrying on its normal telegraphic business involving the handling of at least half a million messages during the month.

Telephone traffic also shows the Christmas spurt. The social use of the telephone traffic lines commences to expand early in December and reaches its highest point by Christmas Eve, when there is a heavy drop suggesting that all the goodwill messages have been exchanged and that thousands of the Department’s customers are commencing to enjoy a holiday without thought of the daily tasks with which the telephone is associated. Monetary circulation increases during December, and the Post' Office, which touches human activities at so many points, demonstrates this too in its greater volume of business. Last December there were 340,000 separate transactions in connection with the Post Office Savings-bank and 2;500 of its depositors carried their cash resources for holidaying by savings-bank letters of credit. Postal-notes paid during the month numbered- 325,000. The Post Office will £>e utilised towards the end of the month -to distribute superannuation payments and the various forms of pensions, the last-named involving thousands of transactions representing an expenditure of £572,000. Overseas inward mails will be heavy just before Christmas, and some of this year’s arrivals come very close to the point of highest pressure in the Department. No fewer than three overseas mails reach New Zealand on Boxing Day. z