The enormous increase in use of telephones due to the concessions made by Sir Kingsley Wood last year Ought 0 be a lesson to the Treasury of the undoubted fact that reduced taxation more than pays for itself. Since the reduction of telephone charges more than 1,000,000 additional alls. per week have been put through. In the London area alone exchange lines have increased. from 4477000 to 08,000 which is double the Increase shown In 1993. Lower Fentals brought. 1,600 new tines into service on October 1, and before the fend of that month 10,000 new tines, both figures being a record Tt 4s announced to-day that the Post Ofte intends (o spend an extra £84,000,000 during the coming flancial year, of which £9,500,000 will 40 to improvements of the telephone service, Telegrams, it is also definitely stated, are' to be cheaper. Sir Kingsley Wood foretold this some months ago. But it not yet Jenown whether we shall be allowed more words for the shilling or the same number of words for a smaller sum. "Probably the latter course would be more popular and therefore more profitable, Many messages can be sent in less than twelve words and a shilling seems a large sum.
In spite of automatic telephones, the working staff has risen" from 10,000 to 10,500, Fifteen hundred ow members had to be taken on, largely due to the number of who left to get married. What a human touch!" So commonly one thinks of the telephone girl as just a voice, sometimes perhaps a tittle Severe on our infirmities, that it Is quite pleasant to realize her as a human being, liable to the affections and frailties of all of us,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.