Tolls & Nibs

In Sir Kingsley Wood Britain has found its perfect Postmaster-General. A solicitor and Member of Parliament, he has all his life stood four-square for Health, Education, Housing and Insurance. By go-getting advertising for the telephone and telegraph systems, which belong to His Majesty's Post Office, he had built up by December 1933 a record profit of -L-10,000,000.

Last week, to make his telephones really popular, he recklessly reduced telephone rates on the British mainland to all-time lows. The daytime price for a call from Penzance in Cornwall to Thurso in northeastern Scotland, a distance of nearly 1,000 miles, will be four shillings ($1). The top price after 7 p. m. anywhere on the mainland will be one shilling. In the U. S. the cheapest comparable rate for the same distance (New York-Chicago) is $1.80. Estimated loss of British revenue the first year: -L-500,000. By that time, Sir Kingsley figures, Britons will be "telephone-minded."

Sordid indeed to a man like Sir Kingsley is the memory of how, when he distributed 2,000 holders and 9,000 stainless steel nibs last year to branch post offices, more than 1,200 vanished in the first month. Undaunted, Sir Kingsley last week planned to distribute 10,000 more pens. But these will be bright red, stamped conspicuously with the monogram, G. P. O.

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