The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET. AUCKLAND FRIDAY, OCTOBER 11, 1929 RELIEF FOR LOCAL UNEMPLOYED

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 791, 11 October 1929, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET. AUCKLAND FRIDAY, OCTOBER 11, 1929 RELIEF FOR LOCAL UNEMPLOYED

TODAY, about half a hundred men from the gathering ranks of the unemployed began work on the delayed duplication of the main south railway line between Papatoetoe and Papalrara. Their employment is not only a boon to married men who have experienced much distress from lack of opportunity to earn wages, but will be appreciable news for the community. The section, when completed, will provide twin tracks tor nineteen miles from the new metropolitan railway station, which is well forward in construction, southward to a large area promising extensive suburban settlement. Since Papakura marks the present terminus of the concrete highway that intensifies motor competition with suburban trains, faster train services to and from the city by way of the Eastern Suburbs deviation should attract more business to the harassed Railway Department. In time, no doubt, electric trains will make Auckland’s suburbah railway lines as popular and profitable as similar transport facilities are in many centres of population in more progressive countries. The existing railway services out of Auckland to its expanding suburbs north and south are not without many blemishes, all due to the initial limitations and crudities of construction.

It has been announced officially that the duplication of the railway track between Papatoetoe and Papakura is expected to be finished within a year at an estimated cost of 5£60,000. A large proportion of the total expenditure will be spent on labour. Nothing has yet been disclosed as to the maximum number of men to be employed on the new work, but it is reasonable to assume that at the peak of constructive operations two or three hundred workers will be engaged for several months at least on the line. In addition to a considerable amount of soil and rock excavation, culverts and bridges will have to be reconstructed, while platforms and railway yards at five stations on the line will require alteration and extension. All this means that both skilled and unskilled workers will obtain employment. There will be no serious objection to the Government’s decision to give as much preference as is practicable to the employment of married men with dependants and homes to maintain in and about the City. In this sensible provision there is a double advantage: (1) It will not be necessary to establish a residential camp along the route of the duplication, and (2) young men can he given employment on relief works in the country. One of the greatest causes of discontent among workers on unemployment relief enterprises in the past has been the fact that married men, through their necessity of maintaining two homes, as it were, have been severely handicapped, and deprived to some extent of the belief that it is worth while at all to work, so long as charitable aid, however meagre, is forthcoming. The Minister of Railways explains that the duplication of the railway between Papatoetoe and Papakura is a work that may be regarded as one that will be immediately reproductive. This explanation means that the completion of the work will enable the Railway Department to carry on its operations much more expeditiously and conveniently, thus obviously making the services more economical and profitable. Since there is no reason for doubting the Minister’s statement, it may be suggested in perfect goodwill and without any suggestion or suspicion of Auckland greed that the Hon. W. B. Taverner should look northward from Papatoetoe to Newmarket and see there a system of railway departmental operations which are neither expeditious, convenient, satisfactory to the public, nor profitable. The outlet from Auckland City to the main north line from Newmarket -Junction is about the least economical railway system in the world. If the Government desires to concentrate unemployment relief works on immediately reproductive enterprises, an early start on the Morningside tunnel is indicated. And in view of the fact that the rush of applications for work, which is like the rush of recruits for war, has scared the Government into secrecy as to further details, the most profitably reproductive railway work in this district should be started soon as an alleviation of unemployment and political fear. THE HARBOUR BRIDGE COMMISSION UNTIL the Harbour Bridge Commission’s order of reference is announced, it is impossible to say whether its personnel is ideal. The three gentlemen appointed are men of eminence in the community, and of attainments in their own areas of professional activity. If the sole purpose of the commission is to examine the feasibility of the bridge from an engineering standpoint, and to say where it may best be constructed from the considerations of practical construction work allied with freedom for navigation, then the composition of the trinity appears ideal. But if the commission is to consider, as it unquestionably should, the broader relation of the bridge to the general community as well as to purely maritime interests, then at first glance the composition of the group reveals defects which can only be remedied by the appointment of a fourth member whose judgment is detached from maritime associations. The commission may decide that the Beaumont Street-Shoal Bay site, favoured by the Harbour Bridge Association, is impracticable. The possibility that any tribunal, no matter how constituted, would reach a similar conclusion is admitted. But in tin's case the preponderating representation of purely technical interests may induce the fear that too much weight has been given to one particular side of the argument. The constitution of such a commission is really not complete without the addition of a man who has had accountancy training. As it stands there are two men on the commission, Mr. Marchbanks, a servant of the Wellington Harbour Board, and Captain McDonald, a master mariner, whose judgments can hardly be uninfluenced by their professional associations. It is agreed that a master mariner’s services will be of the utmost value to the commission, but why that master mariner should be appointed on the direct nomination of a party so interested as the Auckland Harbour Board is altogether a different matter. If interested parties are to he so represented these public tribunals will soon become like courts of arbitration, with a presiding judge assisted by technical assessors; and there is really no reason in equity why, if the Harbour Board has a nominee, the Harbour Bridge Association should not have a nominee on the commission, too. Such a subject as the Harbour Bridge lias to be considered in broader scope than merely as it affects the harbour. The vital questions of traffic movement on both sides of the harbour have to be considered, and it is perhaps a matter for regret that Mr. J. S. Barton, the magistrate and trained accountant who gained such an insight into Auckland problems when conducting the Transport Commission eighteenmonths ago. was overlooked when this commission was being formed. is it too late to appoint him before the order of reference lias been finalised?