The Daily News. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1912. RAILWAY MANAGEMENT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 164, 28 November 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 28, 1912. RAILWAY MANAGEMENT.

There are always two sides to every question, and if the writer of an article in the Review of Reviews is to he believed, Great Britain is not exactly the place to which New Zealand should he looking for <i general manager to reorganise her railway service. The article is in many respects an extraordinary one, for it has not a good word to say either for the directorate or the management of any of the Home railways. The -special qualifications of the directors, its says, seem to he respectability and extreme old age. On the board of one company there are six gentlemen whose average age is over sixty-seven. Then there are 250 general managers of 250 railway companies all in receipt of handsome salaries, and yet, to quote the ■unsparing critic, "many of them are indisputably uneconomic factors of little commercial value to the railway business." "It is astounding," he continues, "to find so immense an organisation being run by those possessing so Jittle real training and scientific preparation for the work." The article deals mainly with the goods traffic of the lines, which is admittedly the weak 'spot in the management, and shows by some striking figures that the def< -;ive methods produce the inevitable results of high rates and diminishing dividends. In the United Kingdom the average freight is 1.123 d per ton mile, in I'-mcc 0.726, in Germany 0.637, and in Holland 0.590.. Tt is said that there are some 1,400,000 goods waggons in the er mtry costing £7O to £BO apiece, and that on an average each waggon is used for not more than six months during its seventeen years of life. Tons of merchandise are not moved, we are told, owing to the prohibitive freight rates. The article is illustrated by photographs showing hundreds of unprotected waggons lying idle and each costing the companies £3 or £4 a year for repairs, made necessary by exposure to the weather and violence in shunting. The standing room of a waggon sometimes costs as much- as £4 per square foot, so that a single waggon -may require £BOO worth of land to accommodate' it. If one tithe of this indictment is true it is just as well that the Cabinet has decided to enlarge the field of its opera-

tions in the search for a manager for the New Zealand railways. But we can scarcely believe that things are quite so bad as depicted, otherwise the railway dividends would soon shrink to vanishing point. Still, the story is not a reassuring one.