Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star FRIDAY, JULY 11th, 1919. THE RAILWAY TROUBLE.

Hokitika Guardian, 11 July 1919, Page 2

Hokitika Guardian & Evening Star FRIDAY, JULY 11th, 1919. THE RAILWAY TROUBLE.

In connection with the statement made ’by tiie General Manager of Railways, in defence of the Department against the * charge that its present difficulties are due |o a lack of foresight, a Christchurch' paper says it would be glad to be able to think that the Department did all that could be done to conserve supplies, but the Manager’s statement does not incline us to change our opinion. The Manager sets out th© facts which are familiar to everyone—the dislocation of industry and the disorganisation of ocean transport caused by the war, the decrease in the total output of coal, and finally the strike of seamen in Australia. The Bail way Department, he says, in common with other industries came under the control of the Coal Trade Board in 1915, and he suggests that it was rationed, and, indeed, kept on short commons. The figures contained in tables in the report of the Board of Trade on the coal industry are not such as to make it appear inevitable that the Department’s stocks would run out. The focal output of coal did decline during the war, although the Manager is widely astray in saying that the reduction was as much at 750,000 tons per annum. The total amount available for consumption—the output added to the (balance of imports over exports—has fluctuated a good deal, j The annual average for the five years 1909 to 1913 was about 2,120,000 tons. In 1914 it rose suddenly to the unusually high figure of 2,490,000 tons, and in successive years it fell steadily until in 1918 it was 2,104,000 tons. The pro- 1 sent situation is not due simply to an i aggravation of the shortage of local output intensified by the cessation of imports, and in any event the balance of imports had not on the average amount- ! ed to more than 3 or 4 per cent of the total consumption. There is nothing in the Board of Trade’s statistics to indicate that the Railway Department could not have maintained something 1 like its normal reserves. The reduced services, which we wero led to he- 1 lievc were necssitatd only by a short- j age of man-power, should have more j than counter-balanced any difficulty ex- I perienccd by the Department in main- j turning its reserves out of slightly reduced supply. There is no doubt that j the present very acute shortage presents insuperable difficulties, but if the (Department had maintained the reservo stock's—the available statistics indicate that ifc could have done so— ' and had introduced slightly modified services months ago, it would have boon able, when the present acute difficulty developed, to carry on without j ' any further substantial reduction of services.