The Evening Star SATURDAY, APRIL 15, 1876.

Evening Star, Issue 4098, 15 April 1876, Page 2

The Evening Star SATURDAY, APRIL 15, 1876.

Mr Gordon’s report on harbor improvements is too elaborate a document to be disposed of without careful consideration. We have no doubt that a little study of it will enable us to understand its true value, fiut there are two circumstances which must strike everyone with amazement. The first is that some eight or nine men of business could conceive it possible that any engineer, however skilful, could by any possibility

offer an opinion worth a rush on so difficult a question as harbor improvements, tvhose only opportunity of observing the work necessary to be done and the difficulties to be overcome was limited to some few hours. The second and still more extraordinary one is that an engineer, who values his reputation, should commit himself to such an opinion for the sake of LIOO or Ll5O. Of this hereafter. The Harbor.Board meetings develop character and prejudice equally with the scientific and economic acquirements of its members. Unheard of theories find exponents, and all past experience fades before the light that is thrown upon the effect of what has

1 been done, and what is to be done. For instance, Mr Donald Reid has found out that the first work to be done is to form a deep channel, and not until that is completed to devote attention to the construction of wharfroom for the accommodation of vessels using it. He has discovered that reclamation of land, from which revenue can be derived for future operations, will be a curse rather than a blessing, if it induces simultaneous construction of wharves and a channel. | He has arrived at the conclusion that Mr Thomson’s scheme of taking mud from the bed and laying it on the sides of the channel, instead of utilising it by placing it where it may help the work of reclamation, is a cheaper and better plan than the reproductive work determined upon; beside other opinions calculated to show that engineers do not

understand their business, nor the rest of the members of the Board finance. Mr Reid certainly did not enter fully into the matter, but only gave an outline of his views, and therefore it is to be presumed he is capable of giving better reasons for what he stated than those curt generalities in which he condemned all that was resolved on prior to his gracing the Board with his membership. It appears he has found out jsdiat nobody ever doubted : that interest’must be paid on borrowed money, so that if little capital is laid out little interest will have to be paid. So much for the debtor side. But he forgot that the creditor would be nil until the wharves were made, and that in the end the amount of interest paid would be the same, while some one or two years’ revenue from wharfage beside many indirect advantages to the City would be altogether sacrificed. We do not suppose any member of the Board will think for a moment of spending money in making a wharf or wharves until there is a prospect of jetty room being needed, but it would oe the height of absurdity to cut a ditch that no vessel would use, because on arrival at Dunedin the only means of loading or unloading would be by means of lighters, or by waiting until room was made by the sailing of some loaded ship. As for Mr Thomson’s

scheme of deposition of dredged material by means of shoots, it is a mere question of cost. That it can be done by that means, even if the stuff had to be conveyed a mile or more, no engineer will dispute; that it can be better done at much less cost of time and with less power, and consequently expense, of machinery is equally demonstrable. Mr Reid has no doubt reclamation can be more cheaply effected by filling in from the shore than by deposit of spoil from the dredges. We doubt it very much, but it is a matter to be determined by tender; while taking mud out of a channel and throwing it into the water to be washed back again looks too much like doing and undoing to commend itself to men who are not gifted with Mr Reid’s extraordinary engineering talents. Some of the members of the Board appeared so charmed with the economic theories of the Secretary for Public Works that they acknowledged a new light had been thrown upon the matter. For our own parts, unless very much clearer light is shed upon the theory of the “ curse of revenue,” and not being ready for traffic, nor for increased industrial works, we shall be disposed to act upon the good old maxim of trusting to men who know their business rather than to amateur engineers. Mr Reid’s light seems very like darkness to us. We have no desire to. see a channel without a wharf, nor Dunedin without ground whereon to construct warehouses. It may suit a policy of stagnation, but we were in hopes that Mr Retd had seen the folly of that. Our notion is that the sooner the channel is deepened, wharves constructed, and the reclamation completed, the better it will be for Dunedin, Otago, and New Zealand. As matters have been arranged, each process helps the others; bydoing a bit at a time, cost is increased, time lost, and material wasted. The railways of the Province converge upon Dunedin as a centre, and therefore more wharf room, more warehouse room, and more room for factories and industrial works in convenient situations is required. T'here has been enough of dawdling in t'imes past. It was once stated to us by o;ae in authority that the Provincial Council was better able to manage the harbor than the Harbor Board. We never thought so, nor do we think so yet. It is now sixteent or so years since first the idea of improving the channel was brought before the Council!, and it is a standing condemnation against Provincialism that nothing was done. We trust that the werk begun will be energetically prosecuted without wavering or party spirit. The only genius needed is that which any merchant or manufacturer would apply to cheapening the cost of carrying on his business. Mr Reid may be a politician, but we would not trust Jiim as an engineer or a financier.