The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. THURSDAY, JUNE 14, 1928. A HEAVY TASK.

Hokitika Guardian, 14 June 1928, Page 2

The Guardian And Evening Star, with which is incorporated the West Coast Times. THURSDAY, JUNE 14, 1928. A HEAVY TASK.

As an exchange puts it, the job of making the railways system profitable and efficient i 9 not one which many men would care to undertake. The new General Manager, Mr Sterling, was, however, quite optimistic when be spoke to the commercial travellers in Auckland at the week-end. His job would be an easier one—indeed, it would hardly have been a- job at all, and Mr Sterling would not have been required—if the language he used, and the attitude he adopts, had been used and adopted by those responsible for the management twenty or thirty years ago. And indeed, there is no real reason why the Railway Department should not even then have recognised, admitted, and even proclaimed that it was a business concern dealing with more customers than any other business in the country. In the course of some severe criticism of railway administration in the past, a newspaper, which is prominent in the support of the Government of the day, goes on to say that actually the Department behaved for decades almost as if it had no more interest in the public than the weather has. Within its almost hermetically sealed walls it wound and unwound miles of red tape, its eyes fixed upon pennies and voluminous files, its chief concern, a faithful. and foolish devotion to rigid rules. It was laborious, impervious to new thought, hopelessly out-of-date. It did not give the public its confidence, and it did not care for tile public’s opinion. The public was simply something or other that was happening outside for the Department’s benefit. Three decades of this has made far from easy the task which the new General Manager has undertaken, namely the running of the Department as a' business service. A beginning, of course, has been made. Within the last two or three years the controlling officials have striven, and in some directions with notable success, to act as if the Department existed for the public, and not the public for the Department. The. railways are still losing money, all the same. Nobody ’expected that thirty years of dull, mechanical, unbusiness like management could be cured overnight. All that the public lias asked for has been some earnest of new intentions and enlightened ideas, and it would be unfair not to admit that the Department has given signs of having a new spirit. There is still an enormous lot to be done, however, and a very urgent call for the new broom which Mr Sterling almost promises to be. This sweeping review of the position, however, does not take into account the change which time is affecting in conditions. First, there came the war period with all the difficulties enforced over thqt time.

There was the dearness and scarcity of supplies and the mounting of the wages hill, without any abnormal increase in business. On top of that came the opposition in transport from motor traffic, .something which the experience and necessities of the war period had made possible. This opposition, steadily growing in strength and range, had a subtracting influence on possible business. It was not easy to adjust a great concern like the railways to the altered conditions. The political element entered into tho issue. Districts did not want trains cut out even if non paying, and business in such localities bail to be carried on at a departmental loss. Reorganisation of staff in numbers and wages was equally, an impcbsi'bility from the same cause—.the political aspect. Probably these two issues are still waiting settlement. If so,, Mr Sterling will require all his courage to cut the gordian knot tying up the railways in financial difficulties. We hear a good deal about the enterprise of the Department in regard to services, and much inyprovlement is manifesting itself for the betterment of public convenience,. We hear little, though, of special economics in the administration whereby real savings are being made. Certain jugglery with the accounts is going on by which the public funds are lieing called on to make good deficits on “non-paying lines,” but this is only playing with the position. Mr Sterling, therefore, has a heavy task before him to redeem the situation satisfactorily. He lias the job which was assigned hitherto to a Board of three. The responsibility cast on the new General Manager is certainly not a slight one, and he will deserve all the sympathy and support public opinion can give him.