PLACE AFTER WAR

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 235, 1 July 1944, Page 5

PLACE AFTER WAR

N.Z. Shipping Industry

(By Telegraph.—Press AUCKLAND, June 30.

‘‘■'The war has awakened among the engineers ’and artisans of Auckland a sense of pride in achievement in all the tilings that pertain to the building, equipping. and repair of ships.” said Sir Ernest Davis, chairman of the North Steamship Company, at the annual meeting of

the company held today. He asked what was to become of this shipbuilding industry in peacetime. Wits it to languish and die. aud were the shipbuilders to be compelled to think only in terms of the smallest craft for pleasure cruising?

Dealing with the necessity for planning. Mr. Davis reiterated the need for efficient and representative authority io devise means anil produce a scheme for the economic co-ordination and most successful

use of the Dominion's transport services. Goods and foodstuffs were the mainstay of transport, and transport was the arterial system of the nation. How deserving of condemnation was that system under which the Government-owned railways competed with coastal shipping, and up til! recently with motor transport, and under which rate cutting became so rampant, in suicidal and grossly inefficient lack of order, that freight was all too frequently carried al non-paying rates