CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 205, 8 December 1910, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

THE TRANSPORT COMPANY. The failure of the Transport Company, after barely twelve months' operations, is a matter for sincere regret. This time last year evefyone was looking forward with interest and confidence to the inauguration of the service, which gave every promise of marking an important period in the development of the country between here and Opunake. The company started under favorable auspices, but it -was soon realised that the condition, of the road and its unusually billy nature were factors that were going to seriously affect operations. The effect of the strain upon the cars quickly became apparent, and break-downs of a most disheartening character occurred. Nothing daunted, however, the company resolved to obtain a stronger type of car for the passenger traffic, and bad one built specially to their order. The fate of this vehicle, wdth its tragic associations, is recent history. The car dashed over the side of a hill, killing the driver-expert and injuring his brother, the few passengers miraculously escaping serious, hurt. This was the last straw, and the management, facing the inevitable, called the shareholders together, and it was decided to go into voluntary liquidation. It is, of course, very easy to be wise after the event, and blame the promoters and management for the failure of the service. But the difficulties could hardly have been foreseen or provided against. Mistakes were made, but they-pwere honest, mistakes, made mostly through lacks** knowledge and inexperience. The same cars are doing splendid work 'in" England, but the roads there; are different to the" Opunake road, which is admitted by motorists generally to be the most destructive on cars of any road' in the Dominion. Were • the road in a better state and the gradients lowered, a motor service probably could, with the experience gained during the past year, be run successfully. We sympathise with the shareholders and the men who have stood behind the project from the start, and hope that their loss—which no doubt will some day be the gain of the district—will prove less than anticipated.

THE PRESS GALLERY. Tlie mem-oers of the Parliamentary press gallery met the Premier at the conclusion, of the just ended session, and thanked him for many courtesies. This reminds us that the function of the men in the gallery is infinitely more important than the work of the majority'.of the men they report. The function of. a Parliamentary reporter is not to report all he hears, but to report all that is worth hearing. By doing so he becomes the particular anathema of the politician of the parish pump order, and the beloved of the man * who 'has anything to say worth hearing. The Parliamentary reporter (we are not speaking about the mechanical sinecurists of "Hansard") represents the nearest approach to perpetual motion. If the average laborer was upon to put in the same number of hours, and to achieve the same quantity of work, !he would be pathetically quoted by ipvery Labor member in Parliament. The average member of any Parliament, by word of mouth, talks to at most two or three hundred people. If he has anything to .say worth repetition, the Parliamentary reporter gives it in a much finer form to many thousands of people. The reputations of the greatest politicians of history have been actually made by the Parliamentary reporter. That politicians have never recognised the point is certain. The politician only recognises that his fate is in the hands of the newspaper hack when the hack ceases to work his pencil. The historic incident of the strike of the men of the Westralian gallery is worth repetition. For years the men who worked infinitely harder than any politician who ever drew breath or salary had asked without result for decent accommodation. They did not get it; and .so they struck. Parliament prorogued next day. It was useless for politicians to talk if there were no reporters to embalm it. The Parliamentary reporter, 'or any other kind of reporter, is not an overpaid person as a rule. Not one politician in a hundred recognises that he owes what eminence he possesses to the industry of the reporter, and the fact that the reporter is nearly always a more discriminating person than himself. As for the public, when it reads the glowing speech of the member for Waipironui, it doesn't see the faithful slave of the pen in the Press gallery, and as for the press gallery man, he is generally too absorbed in the business of his offi.ee to trouble what the public or the politicians think. The one fact remains: The reporter is absolutely essential to the politician, and the politician as a general rule doesn't know it.