MIDLAND RAILWAY.

Gisborne Times, Volume V, Issue 131, 13 June 1901, Page 2

MIDLAND RAILWAY.

(By Telegraph—Press Association.) Wellington, last night,

At the Midland Bailway Commission to-day, the addresses of counsel were heard.

Mr 8011, summing up the ovidenco on behalf of the Crown, said that the gross earnings during the Company’s period ought to be reduced by the further annual sum which ought to have been expended in maintenance, and he suggested that the increase in the earnings during the last year but one of the Company’s period might possibly be accounted for by the exigencies of the Company, which demanded extreme economy of even necessary expenditure. The normal earnings of the railway, averaged over a period of eleven years, were considerably less than £3OOO per annum. Dr Findlay, for the receiver and debenture holders, urged the Commission to give the debenture holders a benevolent and fair consideration of the evidence, to give them the advantage of any reasonable doubt when evidence was secured that was equal or uncertain, and in particular, in determining the future prospects of the railway, to make every fair assumption that could be made in their favor, so that as far as was consistent with substantial justice the Commission should be generous rather than restrictive. The present position of the railway was, ho urged, not due to anything for which the company or debenture holders were responsible.