THE NEW HAULAGE LICENSE PROPOSAL.

Feilding Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 39, 14 August 1896, Page 2

THE NEW HAULAGE LICENSE PROPOSAL.

TO THE EDITOB. Sir, — If you can spare a portion of your valuable space, I should like to express the gratitude that I, and I am sure all connected with the timber industry, must feel towards the gentleman who has so considerately proposed to put a tax of £2 per month on all wagons, and £1 per month on all drays, hauling timber within the Manchester Road District. Of course it is obvious that this will necessitate combined action on the part of sawmillers and an advance in the price of timber, and any legitimate excuse for an advance will be welcome, even if the tax has to be paid oat of it. N.B.— There will be a margin left. That when the general public realises this fact it may not quite relish this proposal, is not at all to the point. The proposer of the resolution will be pleased, and the sawmilling industry benefited if it only becomes law. There is one little difficulty to be considered in fixing the amount of advance to be put on the timber, and it is this:— lf the Manchester Road Board carry this proposal, why should not the Pohangina, Kiwitea, and other boards ad infinitum, follow suit ? And, if they do, will a carter have to get a £2 license from each and all in order to use their roads ? On this point we naturally feel some anxiety, because a contract carter, with, say, two wagons on the road and travelling in two disi tricts might find £8 per month a serious item in his expenses not calculated upon at the time of signing the contract. But there is another view of the quesI tion. If a timber wagon or dray should be taxed, why not one carrying firewood or wool 1 And if a firewood dray, why not a buggy carrying a heavy weight of authority in the person of a Member of a Road Board 1 Then again I feel sure that one of the points in this proposal not yet folly detailed will be that " hereafter any person carrying timber on a spring trap shall be liable to fine or imprisonment." This would be only common justice to the license holders, and would prevent unscrupulous persons dodging the Act by making three or four trips over the same roads to carry the timber that a dray would carry in one. Now that the good work has been so ably taken in hand, let us go the entire animal, and tax proportionately every wheel that rolls along our roads from perambulators and bikes upwards, and when the overflowing coffers of the Board prove the Solomonlike wisdom of the move, proceed then to tax every other thing that runs, walks, flies, or, in places, swings along the roads under the watchful care of " the powers that be," and the innovation will doubtless be hailed with shouts of joy by a grateful community. I am, etc., A. Cahtkk. Manchester Block, August Bth, '96.