Railway Freight Concessions.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20100, 2 December 1930, Page 10

Railway Freight Concessions.

Cabinet's decision, against the recommendation of the Railways Commission, not to raise the freights on agricultural lime and artifiqipl manures will be a relief to farmers, who need every scrap of relief that they can get. In a statement reported yesterday, the Minister estimated the value of the two concessions together at about £175,000 a year, a sum which the railways cannot well afford to lose. It is of course only an estimated loss: nobody can be quite sure that the quantity transported would not have fallen away considerably under the increased charge. But whether the Department is giving up £175,000 or £IOO,OOO, it is giving up a large slice of prospective revenue, when it desperately needs to feam more and pay out less. The fact that the most distressed as well as the most vitally important industry in the country derives tha benefit justifies the concession, as

nothing else could justify it; but the question should perhaps not re3t there. It is exceedingly important that the Dominion should know, year by year, how railway finances stand. If results are to be intelligible, according to business standards, then allowance should be made, and shown, for the effect of any political decision, such as this. The taxpayer is no longer satisfied with general explanations of the developmental value of railways, as if that made good every working loss. He wishes to know, and has every right to know, how the railways come out as a business enterprise; and this cau never be known if the cost of uneconomic services, undertaken for special reasons external to the Department, is unaccounted for. The tariff should be a business tariff, fixed by the proper experts. When the Government wishes to make concessions, they should be paid for, even if this is only a matter of book-keeping, by the Department in whose province they fall: in this case, the Department of Agriculture. The fewer these political interferences are, the better; but when they are made the cost ought not to be hidden in the railway accounts and become pai-t of a railway deficit, vaguely explained away as the price of an unmeasured and probably immeasurable development.