Value of Railroads and Canals.

Te Aroha News, Volume V, Issue 211, 16 July 1887, Page 5 (Supplement)

Value of Railroads and Canals.

Oub railway system has played a most- important part in the development of the country ; in fact, it is not too much to say that it has rendered modern England possible. But its blessings have not been without their drawbacks. When the railway era began wo had a system of internal water-carriage, rude and inadequate indeed if measured by the wants of to-day, but not discreditable to the period at which it was constructed. In the ordinary course of things that canal system would have developed with the cxnansion of industry. Canals would have boon widened, deepened, straightened and made fit for steam transit, thus supplying communications not equal in speed to thoso o tiered by the railway, but falling far .short of them in costliness. The rapid growth of the railways, combined with the industiial stait which enabled English manufacturers practically to demand their O\vn piice-* in the foreign market, ihrew canals entirely out of the general movement. Generally speaking, they are to-day what they were fifty years ago, and as a consequence aic inadequate to cope with modern demands. It is, howover, a remarkable testimony to their vitality that, in spite of neglect and of the deliberate hostility of the railway companies, they hoy/ carry 50 per cent, more goods than they did when the lailway movement began. Just as men turned to the railway as a means of breaking down a monopoly which the canal companies were charged with using in the spirit of monopolists so docs the industrial world now turn again to canals as an escape from the too powerful railway interest. Our railway svatotn is nu':uih<vnt", but it is very costly. The ovpeiuhtme per mile was usually huge to begin with, and it has gone on increasing year by yeai. The leturn upon lailway stock could not bj considered high had the capital always boon judiciously expended, but it is cortain that a very large proportion of the capital of the railway companies lepresent* wasteful or ineffective expenditure. At all events, be the history of the matter what it nny, the cost of internal carriage, although not producing an excessive remuneration for shareholder, press,?* v,ith stifling weight upon industry. Our application of science and capi'al has yielded the grotesque result that foioigners at a great distance can beat our o\\ n produceis out of the homo maikct meiely because they send their goods- by sea w hile the homo producer has to send his by rail. The great interest and the lively hopja excited by the Railway ■Regulation!)" ill now before the House of Lords are due to the widespread feeling that industiy i-, most seiiously ha idic.ipped by cost of transit. Whatever may bo said on behalf of shaieholders, the fact remains that this country, with high rates of internal transport, is at a great disadvantage m competing w ith other countries Avhere the rates aie low. The regulation of 1 ailway rates may do something to iemo\c grievous anomalies, but the only real remedy for the general costliness of a service carLievl out with very expensive apparatus is to develop and extend the less evpensho modes of communication which railways have thrown into the background. Under stress of competition the railways may find means to 1 educe their charges without injuring their dividends, but without competition they aie likely to go on making, the public pay for their blunder* or then- cxti avaga-ice. The public simply cannot allbrcl to do this any longer. — " London Times.*'