The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE TUESDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1918 ALIENATION OF RAILWAYS.

Taihape Daily Times, 3 December 1918, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times. AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 3, 1918 ALIENATION OF RAILWAYS.

(With which’ is mcorpi-rated The Taihape Pout Lad \’falazns2uo Newa)..

Tho Railway Statement of Accounts for the past year is a document of a bitter-sweet character,; regarded .from a public, service point of view it is extremely bitter, while its taste'from a private trading aspect, from the profiteering side, well, it is rather a sweetie and sweatie sort of a concoction. It is not to be expected that the imported Railway Manager would be conversant with the institution' >of this country's railway system, and |herefor.e that he cannot readily discriminate between it as a public service, established by the general taxpayers' money, and that of Britain, where ke gained his railway experience, instituted and constructed by corporations of capital who are out for the almighty dollar, only caring to furnish that convenience from a public point -of -view that will tend to increase the shekels eomisg into their respective corporate coffers. When railway statements have -been brought down from year to year since the importation of a manager by the Massey Government, and while the public nature of our railway system during the same period" was growingly of the quiek-cluange-and-bcgone quality, it became more and more discernible that the public railways were to be turned from the purpose for which they were constructed and prostituted to the purpose of mere profit-earning; in short, they were to be placed on precisely a similar footing as all other profiteering concerns; "they were to be conducted on English Railway Company lines, and with the annual statement now under consideration it is plain the transformation is just about complete. Parliamentarians arid public have been electrified or hypnotised by the word "profit" until they have ceased to be lablo to know or -understand whether our railways .are owned by the people, or by a company of capitalists who at present control them. To old colonists, who have watched the change from public service to profiteering, the new regime is depressing. In' the early days of the public railway service, if a profit of even two or three per cent, was made in the best of days, not in war time when cost of living rendered it impossible for half the owners to -make use of their railways, but when fares and freights were based upon opening up the land 'and increase of settlement, there was invariably the" cry going up that the railways were not built for profit. The masses of the people voted for the institution of state owned railways, because they had it impressed upon them that no Parliament of the future dare disturb their public character, dare seize the right of the poorest taxpayer in the land and prostitute it to the use of the rich, or, as they used to be called in those days, the "fat" ■man. They were told that no 'Member of the House of Representatives would risk his seat by attempting anything so foolish, but it was left to the Massey Administration to alienate this right of the people, as it has alienated many others; to find a way of taking the railways from the people and turning them into a profit-earning machine for a profligate ladministration, and railways owned by the masses were converted into a machine' for robbing them by unjust taxation. Freights have advanced under the imported non-poli-tical management until they have become a distinct hardship; until they are an important item in the vexed cost of living question that is bringing people to that state which LloydGeorge affirms and re-affirms shall not continue to exist. We suy that the lords of the Manors at Home were guilty of no more dastardly act of robbery when they fenced in the publie commons, seized the public land.

all over England and walled the people out whose right they were, than did the New Zealand Government that seized the public "railway system of the Dominion, took 'it from the public control, imported a man'from England and handed them over to be run as a private concern: to change their publie character, to convert them from being that public convenience and aid to settlement first, for which they were instituted and put them in control of a man who is not reachable through the constituencies at general elections, therefore entirely eliminating the voice of the masses, who found the money to build them. It is time a very definite and clear note was struck by the people, as it is plain the alternative is loss of control of those institutions they have for many decades been taxed for. There is no public property to-day that is sacred from the robbing and despoiling hands of a Government that would seize and alienate for money; get money by seffimg the people's birthright never .miind the public future. The public (Railways hlave" compMtdd a year in which the masses have been so hardpressed for means to live that strike ■after strike has threatened, and demand after demand has had to bo granted to enable families to live, and to avoid labour upheaval, and all the while these railways have been run for the rich. It must be realised that every shilling put upon fares tends to narrow down their use by poor people; every shilling put upon freights on merchandise adds to the weekly store bill of the masses who consume the merchandise. Government has gone far in alienating the public lands, and it has struck very hardly and deeply at alienating or prostituting the public services. A crisis must come to such diseased legislation; people will realise in time how everything has been filched from them, land then will follow the revolutionary day of reckoning. It is an era of force, of might is right, just as much in New Zealand as in Prussia; the comparison can only be judged by results, land the Prime Minister of Britain frankly tells the world that our boasted Empire has to hide its face in shame even in the company of Germany, Turkey, Bussia and Austria. The time has come when the public should demand a return of the right to exercise control of the railways and other services of which they have been despoiled. Eailways were not constructed as a tiaxing machine to extort huge profits out of the food and necessaries of life they carry to baekblock settlements:; they were not sanctioned by the people to tax and hamper settlement, but to be a relief and convenience, to be a guarantee of immunity from the taxing and profiteering proclivities of private capitalistic corporations.; to ensure reasonable fares and freights and particularly to render impossible such profit extraction as the Massey Administration introduced when it engaged a specialist in private owned railway profit-making.