The Evening Star SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1873.

Evening Star, Issue 3291, 6 September 1873, Page 2

The Evening Star SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 6, 1873.

As we imagined, the railway workshop question has turned out to be a purely commercial, and not an engineering question, and the Provincial Executive, not Messrs .Reynolds and Bathgate, have had the blame thrown upon their shoulders by the Minister of Public Works. Like all other Executives, they have their difficulties to contend with, and complicated questions to decide : they have to administer the affairs of the Province, so that justice may be done to every portion of it, and to take care that no one district shall be enriched or aggrandised at the expense of the rest. When, therefore, they set a certain price upon land in or near Dunedin as a site for the railway workshops, they only fulfilled their duty as administrators of the public estate. The land revenue of the Province is shared in by all districts as well as Dunedin; the expense of reclamation was acceded to by the Provincial Council, not merely as a profit to the City, but as a payable operation to the Province; and therefore the Executive would not have been justified in selling it for less than could have been obtained for it had the necessary aiea been disposed of at public auction to private purchasers. On the other hand, the General Government are to be exonerated from blame in the matter in not giving an extravagant price for what conveniences they could have acquired for a much less cost, all other things being equal. The question really is, are they equal? On this point we have not the same light to guide us as is possessed by the Public Works Department, Mr Richardson said that the first idea was to place the workshops at Green Island, but that was before the Port Chalmers Railway was purchased. We can see very manifest advantages and some disadvantages in that arrangement. Land at Green

Island might be acquired at a fair valuation for railway purposes, and although possibly the owners would set a high price upon it, as is the common practice when railways, Government or jointstock companies are the purchasers, we cannot suppose it would have been onetenth that of the same area on a business site in Dunedin ; and on submission to arbitration, perhaps not one-twentieth would have been awarded. Then, at Green Island, fuel is on the spot. We speak this, however, with qualifications, for we do not know whether its quality will justify its use in iron works ; but, at any rate, it would have been available for steam power. So far as economical working is concerned, therefore, Green Island presents many advantages, and we do not know why it should have been rejected. The next site pitched upon was near the Gas Works, Dunedin. This certainly would have been sufficiently removed from the “ heart of the City ” to have prevented any nuisance from the operations conducted there. We have heard the objection of 11 nuisance ” raised again and again j but what does it amount to ! If we are so fas-' tidious as to exclude all manufacturing operations from our midst because our noses, eyes, and ears are likely to be offended, we must bid farewell to every prospect of commercial greatness. Or if it be such a very offensive matter to Dunedin to have a forest of tall chimneys pouring out their industrial smoke, why, we should like to know, are the people of Port Chalmers to have it inflicted upon them 1 On such a principle as that, the various iron foundries in the heart of the City should be compelled to close and to find location elsewhere. What would Birmingham, Sheffield, Manchester, Glasgow, Wolverhampton, Derby, Leeds, Bradford, Huddersfield and Halifax have been, had this refined policy been adopted! What would London or Newcastle-on-Tyne be without their tapering columns wreathing their summits in dark masses of cloud, telling of the glowing furnaces doing more than a giant’s work below ? UnJess a better reason can be rendered than that, for rejecting Dunedin, it would have been more creditable to have withheld than to have uttered it. Equally weak and trashy is the argument that the workshops at Mussel Bay will be near the Dry or Graving Dock. When we read so absurd a reason offered, we could scarcely believe our eyes, and yet hope that the telegraphist must have been in error. What earthly connection can there be between railway workshops and a dry dock ? One would imagine that our engineer-in-chief contemplated turning some of his bogies into the dry dock to be caulked. Had there been a wet dock there, where ships unloaded plant more conveniently than at the railway pier; and had the workshops large quantities of plant to deal with, there might have been more of a shadow of an excuse; but in prospect of the contemplated Harbor Works, the argument would have been more valid with regard to Dunedin than to Mussel Bay. Then we have a set of very kind-hearted philanthropists among us, who tell us that it is nothing but selfishness on the part of the people of Dunedin to desire to monopolise the advantages of concentration of commerce and labor within its boundaries. We do not know that we shall iii the slightest degree damage our cause by saying, “True, it is selfish j” and then we ask, “ What prompts you, professed philanthropist, to advocate taking the works to Mussel Bay ? If it be through a desire to punish us for and purify yourself from selfishness, recollect that in so doing you are injuring your neighbor, by either reducing the value of property in which he has invested money, or, in preventing its attaining that value to which increase of population has a tendency to raise it. And you do this by enriching a few individuals at Mussel Bay, who are equally selfish with the inhabitants of Dunedin. So that in punishing the selfishness of one section you reward that of another. But you do more than this : you render necessary, either a large outlay in the construction of dwellings for the families of workmen contiguous to the works, or you entail upon them the loss of at least an hour daily that might be devoted to recreation or study, through the necessity for travelling backwards and forwards from Dunedin morning and evening by train. Apart from the cost of dragging them to and fro, you deprive them in the last case of many comforts they might otherwise enjoy, and in the first of many opportunities of improvement that residence in Dunedin affords them, and which they cannot have when transported to the colony of Mussel Bay, You lay them under the necessity of buying many necessaries at great disadvantage because of a limited market for supply, when they might have been able to choose froSi the best supplied stores in the Colony. The flint is that the selfishness you condemn may be very unamiable either in individuals or masses, but it is the very best thing for the Province and the Colony. It is only the aggregate effort on the part of everyone to get rich, and we see no reason why the half-dozen men holding property at Mussel Bay, or the few hundreds at Port Chalmers who bought property under the selfish idea of profiting by it, and who will profit by it, should he considered in preference to the thousands in Dunedin who acted under the same motives. At any rate, my shallow philanthropic friend, no man, however selfish, can | enrich himself alone, and as the greatest

result attainable with the least expen* diture of labor is the best for the Province, we believe tflkt this is to be realised by having the workshops in Dunedin j and until better reasons are shown to the contrary than have been urged, we shall continue in that belief.” Dunedin must act in this matter, and promptly.