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also that in Great Britain the railways do not touch every centre of population. If you stretch out the map you will find that in Scotland, in Ireland, and even in England, there are very considerable stretches of country where the people never use the railway. Then you have to take another large item into account: 5 per cent, of the population are in receipt of parish relief; we must take it for granted that they do not use the railway. There are also the number of people in the gaols; and, besides these, the large class of utterly destitute persons who never dream of travelling by rail. It would amount to far more than the 11 per cent, which we have in New Zealand of people who cannot use the railways. 43. How do you arrive at your 11 per cent. ?—Taking the census tables of last year, and picking out all counties —twenty-four in all—where there are no railways, and portions of counties which the railways cannot be said to influence, and including the Counties of Bay of Islands, Whangarei, Thames, and Westland, in which railways are working—taking all these in, you can only make 11 per cent, of the total population. There is very little of our population that does not lie alongside the railway-lines. 44. Mr. Hatch.} Does that not show that you get almost as many passengers as you can now ? —No. You must bear in mind that this shifting of the population in England is done at fares not very much below ours. If you adopt fares like those I propose in Great Britain ycu would find the population shift in a much greater degree. 45. Do you not think that the number of times the inhabitants have been shifted in Great Britain is due to the influx of foreign travellers ?—But that population is always calculated as the population of Great Britain —there is always a floating population taken in in the census returns. 46. Hon. Mr. Richardson.} Are you aware how many travellers there are on the London Metropolitan Eailway alone per annum ? —No, I am not aware of the number. 47. There are nearly 120,000,000? —Very likely; lam not arguing from any one particular line of railway. Hon. Major Atkinson : That moves the whole population about four times. Mr. Vaile : There are between four and five millions influenced by that railway. I cannot see how it is possible under the system I propose that we should not secure two or three fares for one we take now. The question of the average fare not sinking below Is., I admit, is more difficult of determination. Still, it may help us to a conclusion if we bear this in mind : that the average distance now travelled is thirteen miles. Now, will the inducements offered be sufficient to extend that distance another three or four miles ? If you cross the third stage you get into three fares, and then we have an average fare of Is. 3d. I should also have stated, the relative proportions of second-class fares to first-class is as three and a half to one. Under the proposed system I should expect to alter that, the difference between the two prices being comparatively small. Most people, in taking a long journey at any rate, when the difference in the fares is only as between two and three shillings, would pay the extra fare for the extra comfort. I expect to get fully as many firstclass fares as second-class, and probably a good many more. That would have a very material bearing on what the average fare would be. 48. Mr. Hatch.} To produce this result —the number of people travelling—do you propose also to increase the speed of the trains with the view of saving time? —I take it that if we increase the number of passengers we must also increase the speed, The one thing follows the other. 49. Mr. Whyte.} I should like to see how you intend to make up your average fare of Is. As it takes seven fares for oneover a long distance, it would take more than two for one on the short distances. The question is, can you make up an average of two Is. fares all the way through ? I think it is the increased traffic in the right place that you want ? —I will give you an illustration that I used at the Christchurch Chamber of Commerce : Suppose I lease your theatre. You have a dress-circle, stalls, boxes, pit, and gallery—so many different classes. I put my money-takers at the door to sell tickets for which they get so much money. Is it not possible to spread out these tickets and say how much the average is for each ticket. The whole question is only one of general average. Now, coming to the question of extra cost of running trains. Just take the fact of our running so many train-miles last year of mixed passengers and goods. The fares carried by these train-miles averaged 126 fares per hundred miles. In other words, we ran a whole train four miles to carry five passengers. It appears to mo there can be no question about the extra cost. If we had sufficient passengers to be able to divide our passenger traffic from our goods traffic, we could carry passengers at a much less cost than we carry them now. The wear and tear of working a railway increase in proportion to the velocity with which you carry weights. We carry nearly all our goods at high velocities, because we carry them chiefly in mixed goods- and passenger-trains; consequently taking the wear and tear out of our railways. Now, if we had a sufficient number of passengers to separate them from the goods-traffic we could carry them at a high velocity during the day, and carry the heavy weights at low velocities during the night, and so work our railways more cheaply than we do now.

Thursday, 17th June, 1886. Present: The Chairman, Hon. Major Atkinson, Messrs. Gore, Hatch, Macandrew, O'Conor, Ormond, Walker, Whyte, and Hon. Mr. Eichardson. 50. The Chairman.} Will you please commence, Mr. Vaile, where you left off yesterday? —We were speaking yesterday of the number of fares to be taken under the new system, and also of what the average fare would be. The two things seem to me to hang very much together, and undoubtedly they are very important. While I was arguing yesterday on the basis of receiving two fares for one, I should like the Committee to bear in mind that I have never made such a calculation myself—that we should only receive two for one that we receive now. From the time of

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