OTHER PAPERS’ OPINIONS.

Putaruru Press, Volume VII, Issue 310, 17 October 1929, Page 4

OTHER PAPERS’ OPINIONS.

RAILWAYS AND FARMING. While the General Manager of the Railways is to be congratulated on the most interesting and comprehensive manner in which he has drawn up his first railway report, it is to be regretted that his references to farmers and farm products should be so worded as to be in the nature of a decided faux pas. The remarks are not only contradictory by inference, but they will not bear analysis from an impartial commercial stand-

point. In regard to our first .comment, the General Manager addresses a somewhat lengthy complaint, which he is careful to explain is not a threat, to the whole of the farming community, yet towards the end he naively admits: that the greater proportion of the same community appreciates the position and accords the railways loyal support. Irt detail, much is made in the report pf the fact that'the output from farms' is seasonal. The fat stock freight is quoted showing that 1321 waggons in the North Island require to be turned over three and a-half times per week to carry the peak loads of stock in the season, which lasts for about three months, and that it would not be a sound proposition for the Department to construct sufficient rolling stock to cope with

peak traffic when such rolling stock would remain idle for nine months in the year. Now all this has nothing whatever to do with the farmer. All the farmer is interested in is to get his fat stock to the works in the shortest possible time. It is impera-

tive in his own interests, and that of the country, too, that there should be no undue delay in transit, for stock rapidly deteriorates from prime condition, with consequent monetary loss as stated. If the Railway Department .cannot handle such seasonable classes of freight promptly, with no delay en route, then no one can blame the farmer for going elsewhere for transportation. To ask him to do otherwise is simply to ask him to fall into line with the lowcapacity business methods which have characterised the railways for many decades.

It is quite true that it is not a sound proposition for the Railway Department to build stock waggons which will remain idle for nine months in the year. But this difficulty is the concern of the Department, and instead of railing inferentially at farmers, it would seem the Department would be better employed in answering two questions, viz.: (1) Have all means been explored with the object of building a new kind of stock waggon which could be I adanted for the carriage of other I

goods during the nine months of the year they would otherwise be idle ? (2) Have suggestions been called for or means exploited for using the present stock waggons for bulk goods when not required for stock? We refuse to believe that either suggestion is beyond the capabilities of departmental engineers, or even beyond the capabilities of the ordinary staff, if promotion and adequate monetary rewards, untrammelled by

red tape, followed their adoption. Nor is the General Manager on any firmer ground when he refers to the advantages conferred on farmers by the low freights on agricultural lime and manures. This he calls a definite investment by the community at large in the ventures of the farming

industry. It would be equally as correct, and decidedly more fair, to describe it as a definite investment by the Railway Department to secure return freights. There is no question but that top-dressing has made farming in many large districts, and in every district where it is used, it undoubtedly produces lucrative back freights which would not otherwise

be secured. In regard to agricultural lime, only a fraction is used compared with artificial manures, and the General Manager must know that a large section of farmers desire the free carriage of lime to be abolished. Great though these objections to the General Manager’s remarks are, they are as nothing to the fact that the report omits to mention the speeial taxation placed upon the farmer by the imposition of a tariff on imported goods which makes the price of these goods to the farmer far in excess of the cost to the city dweller. Concessions granted to others who are not farmers far outweigh anything granted to the man on the land.—Matamata Record.