South Canterbury Times, TUESDAY, JULY 13, 1880.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2284, 13 July 1880, Page 2

South Canterbury Times, TUESDAY, JULY 13, 1880.

Tiik.ee is likely- to be a serious fallingoil; in the receipts from the passenger traffic on the main trunk railway of the ■Middle Island. This can hardly surprise anyone. Bad times and dear passenger rates cannot be expected to harmonise. More than six months ago wc endeavored to influence the railway department in a direction that would prove beneficial to the travelling public and the general revenue. But Government branches are not to be driven, much less convinced in that way. The heads of departments usually display- a supercilious contempt for newspaper reminders, and it is only when public pressure assumes a tangible form, and an empty treasury begets serious complications that the red-tape juggernaut begins to move. The department lias lately been galvanised into life, and the fossils have betrayed sonic uneasiness. Hard times and many- taxes, have made the colony- discontented with the sweet little burden that nonpaying linos impose. The department, when challenged with the fact that the railway's arc not paying the interest on construction, has rarely been at a loss for a ready and ingenious answer. Wc have been told to wait till the lines were completed and properly connected, and the financial tables would be turned. Now that most of the lines have been finished in a sort of way' the position is by' no means improved. The country has grown tired of excuses; it demands a remedy'. We will give the present Minister of Public Works credit for dealing resolutely with the working expenses. He has shewn a disposition to break through the red-tapeism of the department. No other Minister has displayed the same capacity' for management. But Mr Oliver’s hobby is simply to reduce the expenditure. He forgets apparently' that a saving may' sometimes be injudicious. IE it is effected at the expense of the traffic, it is undoubtedly' bad economy-. We do not say that up to the present the Minister of Public Works has done anything injudicious. He has insisted on retrenchment—a reduction in the number of employees—and this has been accomplished, we -.believe, at the cost of a good deal of individual suffering and privation. As a matter of public policy, what he is doing might merit approbation, if there was a reasonable prospect of profitable results being developed ultimately. But what do we find ? Hand in hand with dismissals, and with the economy practised in other directions, there is a a serious falling oft'in the traffic receipts. This may be tbe consequence of the tidies, but wc fear there arc other

causes. While we must give the Minister every credit for the determination ho has displayed, iu dealing with railway mismanagement with a firin hand, we maintain that one of the chief cases of railway unproductiveness in New Zealand has not been touched. The exercise of a rigid economy in expenditure is not sufficient. What is wanted is the development of the traffic. There have been abuses in connection with the goods traffic, hut these are gradually being rectified. The chief abuse lies in the passenger traffic. The gross anomalies that prevail in eou-

nection with passenger fares has been 1 persistently ignored. IE the lines were leased and in the hands of a company of speculators, the requirements of the travelling public, would, wo believe, receive a very different share of atton- t tion from that which i hey now enjoy. ( They would be invited to travel about in comfortable carriages, instead ol being ( discouraged by high fares, and badly 1 lighted smoke boxes. But because the ' railways arc the property of the public, ( the public, forsooth, are carefully excluded. The few that travel, rarely or never travel for pleasure. They travel because business, or illness, or some emergency compels them. In New Zealand, so fur as the management of (he traffic is concerned,we are aqnarterof century behind the (hues. .Instead of improving, the passenger traffic is scliously falling off. For why? Because it is neglected. We arc unaware of any other part of the world whore the wants of railway- travellers are so studiously overlooked. The idea of the department seems to he that the people arc made for the railways, not the railways for the people. Lot it be clearly understood—-we find no fault with the railway servants. Station-masters, guards, and porters arc not responsible for high fares or uncomfortable second-class carriages which have been built apparently for a tropical climate, so as to enable the passengers to dispense with the use of fans. With all due deference to the enlightened and liberal Member for Wakatipu, we donut think that the porters should he put on short allowance or any other kind of penance. The reform wo contend for is a modification of the high fares that have all along been ruling. If a man jumps into a railwaycarriage at one station. and alights at the next, ho is charged for the two or three miles he has travelled at exactly tlic same rate as he would have to pay if he spent a day and a half travelling from Amborlcy to the Bluff. In (lie Australian colonies, and in every other part of the world that wc know of, the railway" tar 11: is modified to suit the distance. Here we have a cast-iron uniform mileage fee. The result is that for fifty passengers who would leave Timaru occasionally to enjoy themselves at one of the distant termini, such as Christchurch, Dunedin, or Invercargill if the fares were moderate, not more than one can afford (he expense. In addition to high fares the special facilities extended to visitors to remote localities in the shape of return tickets arc so managed as to almost entirely neutralise their usefulness. These tickets are issued on ISatnnlays and limy are available (ill the following Monday only. The result is that the passenger who reaches Christchurch or Dunedin at nine o'clock on Laturday night has to start again for his destination at daybreak on Monday, if he would avoid a double fare. The privilege of spending a Sunday abroad at the, cost ol a cold journey in an a-raled smoke-box is so imapprceiahlo that it cannot he expected to beguile pleasure seekers, and for people who have business to transact the Saturday return ticket system is perfectly worthless. Is it any wonder then that the railway passenger receipts on our main trunk line arc growing quite inconsiderable and becoming beautifully less? AVlicn will the happy thought dawn upon the head of the department that the brake, on the passenger traffic ought to be relaxed ; that a. reform like that inaugurated by the late Sir Rowland Hill in the British postage system is required iu order to popularise our railway's ? How much argument will he needed to convince the managers of our lines, that passengers arc about the easiest and most cheaply' managed class of goods going ; that unlike hales and boxes they need no manual labor, but do the tumbling and knocking about at their own cost and risk, and unlike sheep and cattle they' do not need tobc driven or wound up by the tail ? When it begins to dawn upon the morbid intelligences which regulate our railway' tarilf that there is a veritable gold mine in the passenger traffic if the unenterprising servants of the State would only dig for it, and that dear fares for long distances prohibit travelling and preclude revenue, tbcu and only' then wc may hope to sec the popular neck relieved of the y r okc of uurcproduclive railway's. There is uo accounting for tastes. To the lover of natural history', nothing is positively loathsome. The American skunk smells sweetly in depraved nostrils, and the Tasmanian devil is admired by some people as a curiosity. There is nothing very' revolting therefore in Europeans of a peculiar order falling deeply in love with John Chinaman, and embracing him as fondly and reverentially as he docs his Joss. There are a class of females in the colonies, of British descent, who even condescend so far as ; to get married to Chinamen. Tins of : course, is the consequence of a depraved appetite—a blunting of the moral faculties such as was pleaded in extenuation of juvenile crime, the other day at Ly-ttclton. It shows that there no accounting for tastes, because tastes, like morals, arc liable to become diseased and vitiated. But it is rather a novel tiling to have the Chinese paraded before a British community as objects of reverence, and exemplifications of public virtue and private piety. The parade that is made of Chinese thrift, sobriety, innocent ingenuity-, and general harmlcssness, by some people is something sickening. Are tiro arguments that arc being urged in favor of New Zealand continuing to be a receptacle for impecunious Chinese rogues and A'agabonds, really urged in earnest ? If they are, wo must confess ourselves astounded at the effrontery- and ignorance betrayed by John’s apologists, Wc are told that the Chinese population iu 1

California have no drunkards aud no paupers. How is it then that they arc so badly appreciated V What about the pictures of Chinese vice and misery in the midst of. California that appear from time to lime in the letters of correspondents to the New Zealand press ? There may ho ]lO drunkards, in the same sense as "Europeans arc drunkards, but what about the eaters and smokers of opium ? “ Cards and chess are both Chinese {fames,” and “an intellectual exercise.” Yes !we may add, and the Chinese who visit the colonies are often confirmed thieves and gamblers,steeped bribe worst of vices. “ Their language is unparalleled for richness and strength” We must presume, in all charity, that the lover of gibberish who could pen such transparent nonsense lias never studied it. “Their religion is a lofty code of philosophy, altogether void of grossness and antagonistic to superstition.” .Did the writer ever visit a Joss-house or witness a Chinese grave feast and resurrection ? If not we would command his attention to an article in our last week's supplement. ‘‘The meanest of them are skilled artisans,” — and excellent pilferers. “ Centuries after the last Maori has boon shilled for a museum, the Chinese will be the enlightened rulers of half the world.” “Ob my prophetic soul, my uncle!” Shades of Di' Slcae and Snnnyside, has the bright intelligence of (ho House of Representatives so degenerated Unit some of its particular ornaments are going stark staling mad over John Chinaman '{