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Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3911, 1 February 1884, Page 2

While wo quito agree with all that has been said and, written concerning the favouritism that has been shown to the grain growers of the other Island by the railway authorities, we must protest in the interests of fair play against unjust charges that are so repeatedly made to make the Railway Department unpopular. One of our contemporaries has chosen to say that "quite recently, without any official alteration of tho tariff, the rates for the carringo of logs on the Hawke's Bay lino have been so largely increased that the tariff is now all but prohibitory." This may or may hot be the case, and, indeed, we are inclined to think that a reduction in the freights for all goods: and live stock would haA'O a tendency to increase the traffic. Our contemporary, however, goes on to make out a case against the Railway Department by which it would appear that by some arbitrary rule of measurement a log is made to pay a freight greater than the tariff charge for tho timber it contains. Now this is not the case. The alteration, if it can be called an alteration,.is nothing more nor less than the result of the dis ?overy that, for Borne time past, baulk timber has been carried for a freight that should only cover Hquared logs. Thus, for very little more than what country saw-mill owners have to pay for the carriage of their sawn timber into town, the town saw-mill owner gets his logs,. giving him an immense advantage over the country mills* A moment's consideration will show that by such an arrangement the log can he cut into boards, and tho outside slabs ai'e, as it were, brought carriage freo into town to be disposed of as firewood. The alteration in the tariff is simply this, that the log will have to pay freight according to the timber it contains, instead of a freight that only represents the boards and scantling that can be cut out of it. We fail to see that there is any ground for complaint in this. Where there may be just cause of complaint is in tho freight tariff itself, which, as we said, before, could bo lowered with very great advantage to traffic.