“RUSH” FIGURES

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 January 1939, Page 8

“RUSH” FIGURES

CHRISTMAS POSTAL BUSINESS. The Post Office played so big a part in facilitating many phases of Christmas and New Year celebration that some of the preliminary figures of its business will be interesting to those who had the pleasure of receiving larger numbers of telegrams, parcels and letters during that busy period. In six working days prior to Christmas the Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch offices alone dealt with 74,300 parcels, this exceeding the business of the previous Christmas week by 9 per cent and indicating that the modest increases recently made in parcels rates were cheerfully paid by the customers of the Post Office. From the numbers of mail bags despatched some clue is given to the vast volume of general postal business. Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch in six working days preceding Christmas despatched 28,303 bags of mails, this being an improvement of 16 per cent on the experience of the previous Christmas period. On the telegraph side information has been collected from eighteen chief offices covering messages handled in four working days immediately prior to Christmas. The total of all classes of telegrams was 234,000, and the popular telegraphic Christmas greetings accounted for 160,000 of this number. The Wellington telegraph staff during this period dealt with 119,000 forwarded and received telegrams compared with 116,000 for a similar number of days prior to the 1937 Christmas and, in addition, handled a very heavy ' volume of transmission traffic directed : to other destinations.