The Manawatu Herald. TUESDAY, APRIL 30, 1907. N. Z. N. I. M. T. R.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXIX, Issue 3763, 30 April 1907, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. TUESDAY, APRIL 30, 1907. N. Z. N. I. M. T. R.

New Zeaeaimd is a land of progress. It is, too, an example to the world especially in railway construction. It is going to,have a North Island Main Trunk Railway. Mr Hall-Jones says that the Auckland citizens in 1908 will be able to go to Wellington by rail. This optimism in Ministers is highly commendable. Sir Julius Vogel in 1870 was optimistic on the same subject. Nobody knew until 1883 or thereabouts the route the proposed railway waS to take although the Government of the day had started to scratch up the ground in the direction it supposed might lead to somewhere. Since 1883 the railway has progressed at the enormous rate of nearly seven miles per year, so that if George Stephenson had made his wierd joke.about a ‘coo ’ on this line being in danger of death at the buffers of a possible engine, he would have been laughed at for his lack of knowledge of the longevity of the ‘ coo. ’ In the far off days the railway was regarded merely as a vote-snatching concern by the Governments. It was mot} taken seriously. Up to the time the Ballance Government took office half a million pounds had been spent in this system of vote snatching. John Ballance believed that the railway was needed for traffic and not alone for vote gaining. He asked for a vote of ,£130,000. He got it. Since which the railway has crawled along. Its history is one of crawl and blunder, loss of money, too expense contracts. The Government picked a few stones out, erected a bridge here and there and then went into the scrub and slept while the grass flourished on the completed sections and men got bushed in the scrub that grew between the metals. The Governments have all along believed in Government work and the ‘ ‘ Government stroke. ’ ’ While it would have been impossible for a private concern to snail along for twenty odd years it was entirely possible for a Government to crawl slower than a tortoise. A private concern would have gone into the bankruptcy court. A Government can go to the London pawnbroker. In the meantime instead of pushing this line through at the ordinary rate other young countries twenty-five or thirty

miles a year the Governments used to hear of a squatter who wanted to cart his wood out and desired a railway to do it on. Throughout this colony, silly little railways curl away to nowhere in particular mainly because a few people who don’t matter at all have desired it. The Main Trunk Tine being a national asset and an essential to all the people has been neglected. At the rate of “progress” of the past, the railway will be finished in 1904 or 1906. In 1900 there came a voice from the House that assured the whole world that people would be riding between Auckland and Wellington in 1904. The Government solemnly called a body of experts who were paid enormous fees and who said that it certainly would be finished by 1904. The Government was a bit worried about money. It thought it might not get it. Still every halfpenny it asked for was voted. Little bridges for which the contracts were let five years ago were completed last year. In 1903 the Government voted ,£250,000 for the carrying-on of the work. The Government didn’t spend half of it. It appeared to be keeping the people sweet by firing promises at them. In 1905 the Government said loudly that it had never made a definite promise before, but it was now in the position to do so. Their railway would be finished in 1908. Mr Hall-Jones never misses an opportunity of saying at the present' moment that the railway will be finished next year. There are at present no indications whatever that the Government intend to keep the promise and the possibility is that the present Government will never see the line completed. The next Goverment will, of course be able to begin all the promises over again. The Government last year saw that something ought to be done about it. So it gave the High Commissioner instructions to send out a couple of hundred tailors, grooms, drapers, shop assistants, and other highly-skilled wielders of picks and shovels in order to placate the angry mob. Some of the navvies drowned themselves in waterholes and some drifted into the town and applied for charitable aid. the general display of tremendous energy takes place just before an election and always at that time of the year When enegry is no use. If the Government thinks of putting more mm on the line it likes to put them on in June or July, so that they may work up to their necks in mud and do one eighth of the work they could do in. January or December. It is safe to bet any money you have that the Government will increase the staffs on the line pretty soon, because the country is getting nice and damp. Give the Government till mid-winter and watch the Labour Department s advertisements. Persons interested in the progress of that railway have discovered that seven miles a year is not the highest rate of railway construction in the world. One engineer has discovered that the railway from Mombassa to Uganda —in tropical Africa is six hundred miles long, that in three years 362 miles were completed besides fifty miles of formation, the cost being three millions. There was no proper survey at the start, the country presented the greatest engineering difficulties, the climate is the worst in the world, the water bad and the country infested with wild beasts, reptiles and wild men. The Buluwayo Railway to Kimberley—South Africa took eighteen months to complete and the distance is 580 miles. Still, of course, New Zealand can teach these foreigners things. One would imagine there would be enough pride in the constitution of the New Zealand Government to keep its promises, to try to approach within a thousand miles of the skill and enterprise of other people and to retrieve their lost reputation as ordinarily truthful men. One thing that holds the line back is that any person who has made a hash of things in town be he tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, is looked upon as the very person required to shift mullock on the railways. The average contractor who had the whole job to put through in a given time wouldn’t run the thing on a philanthropic basis. He would have to pay good wages to get good men, he would “sack” incompetents, and he wouldn’t go into the bush and sleep for a year or two at a time. An engineering authority believes it will take eight more years at the present rate of prdgress to link Auckland with Wellington —but engineers, like Ministers, are often too, optimistic.