WHAT DOES IT MEAN ? Railway Carriages to be Built in America.

Free Lance, Volume I, Issue 11, 15 September 1900, Page 6

WHAT DOES IT MEAN ? Railway Carriages to be Built in America.

WHAT is this story we hear about an order for £100,000 worth of railway carriages having been sent to America by the Government ? Why, we have been told again and again that this was a Labour Government, and that its policy was to keep the money in the country, and find employment for our own bone and sinew. Now, it comes as a shock to our feelings to find our illusion suddenly dispelled. The Government, in which we and the working men have had such profound confidence, is very human after all. When it has a large sum of money to spend, it believes in taking it to the cheapest market and buying the goods it requires there. # • • The order is a large one. Also, £100,000 is a considerable sum of money to send out of the country. But surely we could have built these carriages in our own workshops, seeing that we have no end of skilled workmen, and some of the best timber in the world. And how .£lOO,OOO, spent in labour and materials would have boomed things in the several manufacturing centres of the colony. But there is no such luck for our mechanics. The whole £100,000 goes to America to give employment to the Yankee artisan, and to pay for foreign timber and ironwork. # • # Apropos of the San Francisco mail service, the Government profess to be very angry at the action of the United States in shutting out our one solitary steamer from the Honolulu trade. But what is the loss of a few pounds in passenger fares and freights compared with this sacrifice of £100,000 of the colony's money, and the shutting out of our own mechanics from the employment which this money would give, and which is fairly their right ? Possibly the carriages could not have been as well or as cheaply built here as in America, but they could have been serviceably built, and the present Government has always argued that it was the duty of colonists to use colonial-made goods, even if they were of inferior quality and higher price, in order to encourage local industry. # # * There is another consideration in this matter that ought to be weighed. It is not good business to order £100,000 worth of manufactured goods without submitting the matter to tender and getting the advantage of public competition, which is especially keen in America. And yet, if we are correctly informed, there has been no tendering in the present instance. Who, then, are the fortunate contractors ? and what is the reason for the remarkable preference shown for them by the Government in this transaction ? But possibly we have not been correctly informed. Let us hope so, at all events.