MONOPOLIES CONDEMNED

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 131, 24 August 1927, Page 9

MONOPOLIES CONDEMNED

Sir.— •‘British Bom” is right when he protests against following bad examples set by foreign countries in dealing with transport problems. We have enough bad legislation of our own w r ithout ransacking States and local bodies of

America and elsewhere for more. The City Council should make its transport undertaking pay by just means. Failing to succeed justly, it should abandon the undertaking, as it did with its fish enterprise. It was not justified in seeking legislation to penalise private transport off the streets bv forcing an extortionate fare. Nor is it justified in now grasping after a monopoly which the law does not give, and did not intend. Monopolies are wrong and morally indefensible, "here would THE SUN and its workers be to-day if one local daily had secured a monopoly, and also secured authority to determine what was an adequate supply of newspapers for Auckland? Free competition is fair to all; and the competition of THE SUN is proving to be the very life of the newspaper business in this city. Now the City Council tries to pull the wool over our eyes by treating trams and buses as one transport system. Buses belong to a different category from rail vehicles. Their competition with rail vehicles is like that of telephones and telegraphs. Each has its own peculiar advantages. To require passengers to change from trams to buses and buses to trams is tyranny. Also to require boroughs, by law, to obtain their water from the city, as the city engineer's report proposes, is another form of tyranny to which some would suhje.t us. So long as citizens put up quietly with such things they deserve nothing better. DOWN WITH MONOPOLIES.