RAILWAY EXPENDITURE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9545, 17 July 1909, Page 4

RAILWAY EXPENDITURE.

The expenditures open lines in the South Island has been very little more than the expenditure on open lines in the. North, and the South Island, of course, constructed by far the greater portion of its line.q at a time when there was no thought of developing the interior of the North Island, remarks the "Lytieltbn Times." Taking the last forty years the bulk of th? expenditure in the South was j incurred in the first half of the period, and the bulk of the Northern expenditure in the second half. It has to be remembered too, that the people of the South Island mapped out their own railway systems, and were prepared to construct the lines entirely at their own expense . When the railways were taken over by the Central Government the valuation of the railway works which had been constructed by the Provincial Goivernments in the South Island was £1,1'04,231. The valuation of railways constructed by Provincial Governments in the North Island was nil. This is a little fact that we may commend to the earnest attention of the Opposition journals that have been discussing the question of railway expenditure in Auckland and Wellington.