FOXTON WHARF.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 1591, 25 July 1916, Page 3

FOXTON WHARF.

AN ANALYSIS OP THE FINDING OF THE ROYAL COMMISSION.

THE RATING AREA

(By “Veritas,” in the Manawatu Evening Standard.) Ail those people in this district who are interested in ogtaining control of the Foxton wharf and ending the anomaly of the Railway Department seizing the harbour revenue and gulping it down its capacious maw, must have been very pleased at the finding of the Royal Commission. We do indeed owe an immense debt of gratitude to those three gentlemen, Sir Robert Stout, Mr Ilannay and Air Cyrus W'ilhams, for the trouble they have taken in the matter, for the fairness and breadth of mind with which (hey review the position at large, for their unhesitating condemnation of the methods adopted so long by the Railway Department towards (his district, and for their final opinion. Their finding is bravely conceived in the best interests of: the Manawatu West Coast.

The position of Commissioners cannot have been grateful to them, and they could well have shouldered off their responsibility. They did not do this. They accepted it and indeed the Minister of Railways, the Hon. W. H. Ilerries, cannot have been very pleased at the verdict of the Commission. W*e hold no brief for Mr Ilerries. What his predecessors in office knew to bo a scandal he continued —as a scandal. Lacking the strength of mind to right the wrong, possessing in full degree the want of initiative which so distinguishes politicians above their fellows, he did not see what a miserable pittance Foxton wharf was bringing in, worked as it was by him. Compared to the stagnation it was affecting, he. could, by giving it up gracefully, have gonedown in history as something of a man of mark. It offered an avenue for considerable increase in the railway revenue, given enough time to readjust itself to altered circumstances, and he could have offered the railway deviation backers practically a certainty for their line later.

We are afraid Mr Herries is not a man of large views. Not only can he not do business which he is paid by the State to do, but he must take the obvious, and most expensive, refuge, of the weak ruler, and let someone else decide and take responsibility which he has not the backbone to assume. And more — rather than let the matter of the possession of the Foxton wharf go before the arbitrators as a cleancut issue, the department which commands him thought to mix up issues which were dependent on the set ( lenient of the prinnu'y question, and which the Department must have known, settled again adversely, would alienate opinion in the district, antagonise and set at loggerheads the very parlies whose interests really lay in similar directions. Another railway is useless when there is no port, but once (here is a port another railway must come. The Hon. \l. H. Herries would apparently have nothing come and nothing grow near his departmental undertakings, for he says himself, "As to the proposed Levin-Greatford railway, he did not suppose (hat anyone expected that the Commission would recommend such an expenditure.” Yet he had no hesitation in plunging (lie country into the expense of a Commission to decide ‘‘what no one expected.” Let us get on to a more pleasant business. Before coming to a consideration of the proposed rating area, which the Commission tells us it had to bear in mind in reaching a decision. Some of the points, we should submit with great humility, are, for so high a legal authority, somewhat illogical. In point “H,” for example, the Commission carefully point out (hat "the Commission of 1880 did not have sufficient, prevision to see how the district would develop,” yet itself (the Commission of It)l(i), in points “JT’ and “G” assumes the deliberate prevision that “Wanganui, 40 miles distant, is a better harbour than Foxton harbour can ever be.”! We do not accept that statement of opinion for one moment; it is entirely untrue. Not only is it unproven at present, but it may, and in time will, be shown false. First of all, with great; respect, three hearty old gentlemen who have seen Palmerston North grow out ot a swamj) into a large city ought to know very much better than so to mortgage their opinion to posterity, and secondly, they had before them evidence which goes to prove the opposite. Air Howarth, the engineer to the Wanganui Harbour Board, himself stated in evidence as follows: "That the Wanganui and Alarm wain rivers had many points of similarity, hut that heavier seas came in at Wanganui. 1 hat the work of the dredging would not he difficult because the sand dredged could be put ashore with a length of pipe. He did not think, once a channel was dredged in the Manawatu, it would bo difficult to maintain, for it would he easier to keep a channel clear in the Manawatu than in the Wanganui, because of (he amount of silt in the latter river”! (Continued on page 4.)