The Hokitika Guardian FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28th, 1921. THE RAILWAY SLUMP.

Hokitika Guardian, 28 October 1921, Page 2

The Hokitika Guardian FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28th, 1921. THE RAILWAY SLUMP.

Tim railway returns again sliow the turnings of the lines throughout the Dominion in both the North Island mid the South, to ho extremely unsatisfactory and obviously the cut in services has done little to improve the positio wind either this remedy is not the right one or if hits been wrongly

applied. For ourselves, we me inclined to lake the former view. Years ago. Sir William Russell, a ‘‘Tory” leader, alien ever the Radicals of his day have true reason In remember with gratitude, speaking ol course, without- the responsibility ol otlice, urged that railway faiwt and freights shall be so low that everybody could travel and gel hi. predme to market or to the nearest shipping port tit. a merely nominal charge. His idea wu.s to induce lieople to move out of the towns into the country and lend a baud in the pioneering work upon which -so much of the future of the young colony then depended. lue suggestion was given tin very definite shape and was treated as a jest in I’arlia-ineut. but a decade later Sir Joseph Ward gave 'sane recognition to its germ principle that settlement we,, of more toiisenueiice than revenue !iv accepting 3 per cent as ill" limit of the earnings of the lines. But just now neither the eountiv nor the politicians are in any humour for the revival of a bold . policy of this kind. A\ ith the scarcity of money on the one hand and the clamour for economy on the other, the Government is driven to every possible expedient fur saving expenditure. For the moment at any rate, it is making no pretence of enterprise. Air Massey's appeal for ‘•production, more )>rodiutioii. and still mure production,” bears a strong family resemblance to Pharoah’s demand" that the ancient Hebrews should continue to maintain their toll of bricks wiitlroiit straw. But there is one nspout of the accentuated railway slump which the Government persists in ignoring. Our Auckland and Wellington friends are never weary oi telling us that the North Island lines are doing much hotter than are the South Island lines. They mean. ol course that they are doing less badly, but it pleases them to make the comparison in more euphemistic terms and we are quite prepared to let them have it their own way. If they told the story friilli the beginning, however, they would have to admit that tha relative improvement in the returns from the North Island lines began only with the completion of the Trunk Railway in their part of the Dominion. It is to tile enterprise, courage, and. one may almost say. the chivalry of the South Island that the North owes the early realisation of its great pot-.-ntialiliesi Ahead of the North in population ami wealth, loaded, bridged, am! to a large extent, mi led by its own unaided efforts, had the South taken a parochial view of its rights and its opportunites it might- have completed its own Trunk Railway between Riutt and I’ieton long before the i-onncet-ion between Wellington arid Auckland was established. Had it done this and secured the connection between its Fast and West Coasts it probably would have maintained its supremacy in population and wealth for another fifty veins.

Hot it waited not only lor the opening of the North Island Trunk. Imt also for the Wellington-Napier and the Wellington-New Plymouth lines and. so far as its own two great arterial railways are concerned’, still is waiting. This is the explanation of the story, told hv the railway returns. The South is feeling the railway slump more severely than is the North because it has not the same transport facilities and because the great gap in its trunk line and the delay in the completion of its Const connection are keeping many of its resources and much of its enterprise undeveloped. In the circumstances it is scarcely edifying to contemplate mil' North Island friends’ constant disparagement of the expenditure of money upon public works in this part of the Dominion.