TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9715, 10 February 1910, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

EXCESSIVE PENALTIES. The Railway Department, we notice, is still engaged, after its own fashion, in popularising the railways with the farmers. As reported by the "North Otago Times," it has just fined one man £35 for sending by rail from Oamaru to Invercargill 210 sacks of grain that averaged a pound and a-half over the 2001bs allowed by law, and another,—at least, we trust it was not the same unfortunate has been mulcted in £47 beause his consignment of 255 sacks averaged 31bs over the weight limit. The by-law restricting the weight of sacks of grain and other agricultural produce to 2001bs, was drawn up in the interests of the men who have to handle them, and it was of course necessary to provide some penalty for breach of the regulation. But the penalties imposed in the cases mentioned are out of all proportion to the offences, which might quite at easily have been caused, a sug3csted, through inefficient scales as hy want of proper caret Some margin of error should be allowed ti farmers, or those who rail their grain from flag "stations and sidin s will, with the best intentions of obeying the bylaw, constantly run the risk of losing 1 half their expected profits through | putting a pou- <\ to much of wheat or oats in their i acks. But after all, delinquent fa- "»rs have something to be grateful f n—they are let off with heavy fires, even though these do carry with them- a suggestion of compulsory bankruptcy; in the present spirit of the Railway Department it might have been satisfied with nothing short of a term of penal servitude.