THE SCHOOL OF EXPERIENCE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 16, 13 May 1871, Page 12

THE SCHOOL OF EXPERIENCE.

Though experience is a dear school, does it not at the same time teach most valuable lessons ? Is not the instruction given worth the cost ? Fortunate is the man who has the opportunity and good sense to profit by the experience of others, for he then receives the lessons without having to pay the fees. It is the same with a country as with an individual, though it frequently happens that national pride and prejudice in the one case, and youthful self-conceit in the other, prevent them from profiting as they might do from the lessons which experience imparts. With regard to railways, it would prove a most fortunate circumstance, if our legislators would consent to learn the lessons which the experience of other countries teaches, regarding the mode of construction, the proprietorship of the lines, and the inexpediency of granting land by way of bonus to railway contractors. It will be worth while to endeavor to discover what the experience of other countries establishes with regard to those three important points. A new country does not require expensive stations, a broad guage, heavy rails, and double lines. In point of fact, a railway in such a country can now be made for little more than the cost of a good macadamised road. The first railroad made in Victoria cost £32,000 per mile, and one is now being made there at less than one-sixth of that sum. A contract has just been entered into for making sixty miles of railway in that colony, exclusive of rolling stock and stations, for £5,250 per mile. It could be made for much less if lighter rails were used, and a narrower guage adopted. The “ Argus” recently pointed out that “on the cheap and narrow plan we can make two miles of railway for one that we could make on the other, while the working expenses and cost of maintenance would be very little more on the two miles than on the one.” Commercially, then, the cheap system must prove immensely more profitable. The railways first constructed in England cost £33,840 per mile; they can now be constructed there for a tenth of that amount.

In California, with wages as high or higher than they are in New Zealand, a contract for a narrow guage railway from San Francisco to one of the mining districts has just been entered into at a price, for construction and rolling stock, of little more than £2OOO per mile. It is true that these cheap railroads are only single li'nes, but single lines are all that we require in this country. In the United States, nearly two hundred million acres of the public domain have been granted to railway companies as bonuses. It is now found that these bonuses are unnecessary, as the legitimate profits of the railways themselves, when made where they are really required, are amply sufficient; the working of the trans-continental lines giving a profit of forty per cent on the gross receipts, and this chiefly from local traffic. These are astonishing facts, but they are not more astonishing than instructive. While they excite surprise that so profitable an undertaking as our Northern railway has yet to be corn-

menced, they still more forcibly indicate how fortunate is the circumstance that its commencement lias been delayed until its construction can be effected at a sixth of the cost that would have been incurred, had it been proceeded with before we had had the opportunity of acquiring the lessons taught by the experience of other countries on the subject. But this experience teaches still more important, still more valuable lessons from which, if we are wise, we shall profit. We have frequently pointed out that all works of national importance too great for private capital and enterprise to accomplish, must be undertaken by the State, if undertaken at all; and that all works which cannot, on the one hand, be executed without granting a monopoly and creating a dangerous corporation, or which, on the other, will occasion ruinous competition and a fearful waste of capital, ought to be undertaken by the Government. The growth of such corporations we observed is, in a free country, inimical to good Government and fatal to the liberties of a people. It will not be well, we said, to allow our ipain arteries of communication to become the private property of any body of citizens. It will be still more impolitic to grant to any exclusive body a virtual monopoly of all the goods and passenger traffic of the colony. The evils which may result to the State from the creation of such a body cannot be over estimated ; and they will prove none the less, but all the more, dangerous by not being at first felt, seen, and recognised. The truth and force of these remarks have been forcibly illustrated by what is now taking place in America. In our issue of April 29th we published an extract from the “ New York Herald,” pointing out the dangerous and overbearing power of the railway corporations in the United States. In the “ Westminster Review” for January there is an able article on the same subject. The writer says :—Already three of the States are as much controlled in their political, financial, and commercial interests by railways within their borders, as the people in feudal times were controlled by the baron in his castle.” The aggregate capital embarked in railways in the United States is estimated at four hundred million pounds, but the public have not deiived any of the advantages which were’ anticipated from the construction, at a fearful waste of money, of rival lines; for the rival companies very early saw that competition would be disastrous to their own interests, and they at once adopted measures to prevent it. In England railways at present are the property of private companies ; but this would never have happened, as her statesmen now admit, had they foreseen what magnitude they would attain, and what evils would arise from the chief thoroughfares of the kingdom becoming private property. In France arrangements have been made by which all the railways in that country will become, in a given time, and on easy terms, national property. Will New Zealand be wise if she refuse to profit by the lessons which the experience of those countries inculcates ?

But we not only see, after reading these lessons, the best and cheapest mode of constructing railways, and the danger which results from allowing them to become private property, but we discover also that the giving away the public lands to railway companies and contractors is an unnecessary and wasteful expedient which ought to be avoided. An elaborate report has just been issued by the United States Land Department which strongly recommends the discontinuance of land grants to railway companies, as being in the first place unnecessary, and in the second place as tending to encourage undue costliness in the price of railway construction, and to foster useless speculation. The land being given in the immediate vicinity of the railway, and the land at a distance laboring under great disadvantages in comparison, the railway company makes a large profit on its sale, in addition to the profits derived from the railway itself, while it has the effect of preventing the back country from being settled. The advantages of the railway, in fact, are by this arrangement chiefly conferred on railway companies in which the people and the State do not participate to the extent they otherwise would do. Whatever

arrangements may be made in this colony for the construction of railways, care should be taken to insure to the State every legitimate advantage it oan obtain by enhancing, at its own risk and cost, the value of private property through which they are made to run ; and to insure, at the same time, the profits to itself from the sale of the public lands which those railways will open up for settlement, It can mortgage both land and railway, if necessary, as security for the capital loaned and invested ; but it must grant neither to a corporation which may become more powerful than itself. If we adopt those precautions, which the experience of other countries shews to be necessary, the railway department, like the General Post Office at home, may prove a source of revenue to the State, while conferring untold advantages on the community.