Ragitikei Advocate. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14, 1909. EDITORIAL NOTES.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIV, Issue 9418, 14 April 1909, Page 4

Ragitikei Advocate. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 14, 1909. EDITORIAL NOTES.

THERE are bitter lamentations in Otago at of work on the Lawrence-Roxburgh railway. Just before the 1905 election Mr Seddon turned the first sod of this branch line and promised that the work should be carried out expeditiously and that all the appropriations passed by Parliament should be expended. About £BO,OOO has been put on the estimates for the work, batnothing like this amount has been spent, and now the line has been stopped before one quarter of the distance has been covered. The Minister for Railways has discovered “after the most careful consideration and the fullest deliberation that in common honesty to the country he cannot continue the work, because there is no prospect of any return from the line except so small in amount as to make the whole line an absolutely unpayable one.” This is quite sufficient justification for the stoppage of the work, though it is amazing that the discovery that the line* cannot possibly pay should only now be made. We cannot doubt that of the seventeen or eighteen lines now in course of construction others must come under the same condemnation as the Roxburgh line, and it is to be hoped that Ministers will show themselves willing to take steps to treat them in the same manner. If, as is alleged by some supporters of the Ministry, the electors of Tuapeka are having work on their line stopped owing to the fact that they have elected an Opposition member, the only conclusion we can arrive at is that the more Opposition members elected the batter for the finances of the country. We balieve, however, that Mr Millar has acted honestly in the matter and that he will not be grateful to those who explain his action as merely a piece of political revenge.

THE report of the British Royal Commission on the Poor Law, from which we published some extracts on Saturday, is remarkable for the fact that in dealing with the question of unemployment no attempt is made to solve the problem by the offhand methods which are so popular with reformers in this country. There is no suggestion that the State should provide work for ail who are unemployed, and even the - attempts of munoipalities in Britain to "provide relief work are condemned as unsatisfactory. This conclusion is not to be wondered at when wo remember that the unemployed on the Bristol relief works complained because they were not given a halfholiday to attend football matches. The idea of the Commission seems to be rather to obt off the classes Which supply the unemployed at present than to discover some short and easy method of providing work for all. The chief source of the unemployed is the casual labourer who has been trained to no trade and is therefore dependent on unskilled work for which the demand is very varving and which is the first means of livelihood to fail in bad times. With the object of reducing the number of boys who drift into casual labour it is proposed by the Commission that boys should not be-allowed to leave school till fifteen except in oases where they have been apprenticed to trades and also that the school teaching should be made of a more practical description. This suggestioh is worth consideration in New Zealand and parents here should be impressed with the necessity of making their boys learn a trade instead of putting them to some temporary occupation simply because it brings in more money at once than coaid be gained by an apprentice to a trade.