OUR HOME LETTER.

Auckland Star, Volume XXII, Issue 239, 8 October 1891, Page 5

OUR HOME LETTER.

Auckland, October 8, 1391. The second session of the first Parliament elected under the "one-man-one-vote " franchise, and with a reduced membership, came to an end on Sept. 24th. It has been a remarkable sessional many ways, andinnothing perhaps more remarkable than the manner in which it has falsified many confidentpredictions. It was eariy generally supposed that the smaller membership of the House of Representatives would result in decreased loquacity, and a speedier despatch of business. Neither expectation has been realised. The session was fully up to the average in length, and without precedent in volubility. Three volumes of Mansard for one session represent the bigh-water mark of the flood of eloquence recorded in previous Parliaments, but seventy-four members of the present Parliament have produced four bulky- volumes. It is a curious fact that members who were almost silent in former sessions have developed a _icnchant for speech-making that has astonished their friends. Many members undoubtedly refrained from expressing their views in tbe House formerly because they were reluctant to protract the business of Parliament, but some of these gentlemen have displayed considerable aptitude as obstructionists -when the roll was called to stonewall an obnoxious measure.

The exceptional bulkiness of Hansard, however, is not due to organised word-spinning, from which, indeed, the present session has been comparatively free, nor is it attributable altogether to the presence in the House of a small minority of members Who are afflicted with a diarrhoea of taikj and who have established themselves as the bor.es of the House. There will be found in the pages 1 of the Mansard of 1891 several very able debates upon questions of the highest importance to the future prosperity of the colony. The discussions on the Land and Income Tax proposals and the Land Bill of the Government are of this character, and it must be confessed that the debates on these questions in both branches of the Legislature were distinguished, by a thoroughly practical grasp of the momentous issues involved, and evinced upon the whole a studious desire to avoid revolutionary changes destructive to existing interests. It is desirable that this fact should be clearly apprehended, because an impression has got abroad that the Ministerial majority ;in the House is animated by a spirit of reckless disregard for the rights of property and a craze for experimental legislation. Neither the measures which passed the House of Representatives nor the tone of the debates lends support to such a conclusion. The Bills introduced by the Government and private members were discussed with intelligence and moderation, and the session has been quite as fruitful in useful legislation as the average of its predecessors, although the destruction of the Land Bill by the .Legislative Council apparently brought to naught the work of many days and nights. In both Houses, the debate on : that subject resulted in a practical advance towards a solution of this problem for New Zealand, and its final settlement upon a basis that will ensure the bona fide settlement of the lands which remain ia possession of the Crown cannot be doubted by those who fairly gauge the strength of the predominant feeling in Parliament on the subject.

A good deal of interest has centred this session in the section known as the "Labour members." It may comfort those people who were apprehensive of incendiary action from this quarter that their fears are groundless. The members who were returned directly upon the Labour ticket compare very well indeed in intelligence and in their sense of responsibility to the whole community, employer as well as employed, with other members of the House. As a matter of fact, there are very few men in the New Zealand Parliament who 'have not within the span of their own lives been numbered among the ranks of Labour. The great bulk of the successful men of New Zealand owe their fortunes to personal industry, and shrewdness, and the exclusive application of the term " Labour members " to the seven members in the present Parliament is misleading. Under the system of "one man one vote" every member of the House who is the representative of a majority is a Labour member, and while it is well that persons not now actually in the ranks of the employed should bear this fact in mind, it is equally necessary that the man who is taken from his anvil or his bench to fill a seat in Parliament should remember that -he owes a duty to every class and every individual in the community. The country at large will gain by having all classes represented directly in its Parliament, so long as a standard of intelligence, capacity for the duties, and personal probity is maintained, and we can safely say that the members who have become specially identified mih thei;i;o|li.made:by Labour during

the last election to make its voice directly heard in the national Government reflects credit upon the constituencies which chose them. We hope that the electors of New Zealand will always remember that in selecting a representative, the chief question they have to consider is not the occupation which a man follows, but his fitness to make wise laws for the government of the country.

Of the Statutes which the present Parliament has added to our voluminous code, it is scarcely necessary to speak at any length here. The substitution of a Land and Income Tax for the Property Tax, the reform of the Legislative Council by limiting future nominations to seven years, the reduction of the inland rate of postage to one penny, the extension of the San Francisco mail contract for three years and the reduction of the Brindisi rate to 2'_ d, are all measures which will be appreciated by the country as relieving the session irom the charge of barrenness; but other useful measures have also been enacted. The Factory Act, which has so long waited the consideration 01 Parliament, has been put in workable shape, while the other local and general Acts passed include several measures over which previous Parliaments had wrangled uselessly. At. the same time the list of Bills slaughtered in the final massacre of the innocents is almost of unprecedented length, and includes several measures of very great importance, some of which, like the Libel Bill, have in this, as in previous sessions, made considerable progress, with the result that the whole of the time spent upon them is thrown away. Surely seme alteration could be made in the Standing Orders by which Bills that are discharged from the paper simply through want of time to deal with them may be taken up in the following session at the point where they were left off, and carried forward to completion or final rejection.

The Land Bill and Electoral Bill, two of the most important Government policy measures introduced this session, had to be dropped owing to the impossibility of any arrangement being arrived at between the House of Representatives and the Legislative Council. In the Land Bill the Council objected to the abolition of the purchasing clause under perpetual lease tenure, and to the insertion of what was known as the " one-man-ohe-rua " clause. Upon these points the Premier declined to give way, and the. result was disastrous to the Bill. In the Electoral Bill the Council insisted on the insertion of both freehold and leasehold qualifications to VCte, and this, with other amendments rejected by the Lower House, also sealed the fate of this measure. The Female Suffrage Bill passed the House of Representatives, .but was rejected by the Council by a bare majority, and the Payment of Members Bill, providing increased honoraria of and per annum for the House and Council respectively, met with a similar fate. These and other important measures, dropped or shelved during the session, are to be reintroduced in their original form when Parliament again meets.

The Midland Pvailway Company, which undertook the construction ol a railway uniting Christchurch with the West Coast of the South Island upon the land grant principle, has proceeded with the work at a very leisurely pace. In terms of the contract, the whole line should be completed on the 17th of January, 1895 3 but, as the Minister of Public Works pointed out in his Public Works Statement to Parliament only about has been spent, representing about one-seventh of the estimated cost of the work, so that a good deal more energy will have to be infused into the undertaking if the Company intend to comply with the conditions upon the faith of which Parliament sanctioned the agreement. As this

would involve an expenditure of 150,000 sterling within a period of] less than three and a-half years, the golden era dreamed of by the good people of Christchurch when they sent up their solid phalanx under Sir Julius Vogel, pledged to secure the construction of this railway, would indeed have come at last; but apparently neither in Canterbury nor at the headquarters of the Works Department in Wellington is much reliance placed upon this work now as a factor in stimulating the labour market, stopping the exodus of population, and giving a fillip to commerce. The Minister of Public Works, indeed, informed Parliament that he was induced to start his system of co-operative contracting in the vicinity of Westport owing to the large number of working men who had congregated there and were without employment. The Company has already received so many concessions from Parliament that it is perhaps justified in believing that almost anything else it may choose to ask will be granted, and probably the colony is no great loser by the delay so far as the actual working of the line is concerned; but the Company holds rights of preemption over enormous areas of land which are at present withdrawn from the operation of the general laws affecting Crown lands. It can hardly be supposed that a Parliament which has enacted such drastic legislation for the bursting up of great estates will tolerate the locking up of the Midland Railway endowment- for an indefinite period. The Government have already done something towards opening up this territory for mining operations by proclaiming _50 4 000 acres of the 750,000 acres which the contract allows them to reserve; but it would, we tnink, be expedient for them to give the Company a pretty plain hint that a reasonable effort must be made to fulfil the con-

ditions of contract, and to warn them that they must not count too confidently upon any extension of time, unless very much greater energy is shown in the prosecution of the work during the next three and a-half years than has been exhibited hitherto.

j The rupture in the arrangements bet I tween the Government and the direcsteamship companies for the conveyance of our English mails, and the practical reversion of the colony to the division of mail matter between the San Francisco and Brindisi services, is another triumph for the principle of the survival of the fittest. With the growth of population and improved commercial facilities, the subsidy system languishes and ultimately comes to a natural death. When the ordinary channels of trade afford several alternative routes, it becomes practicable to place the carriage of mails upon a purely commercial footing, paying on the basis of services rendered, and when this point is reached the service that gives the best value for the money and commands the largest amount of popular favour inevitably triumphs over its rivals. This is precisely what has happened with the contending mail services in New Zealand. No intelligent man will underrate the enormous benefits that have been conferred upon this colony by the direct steamship companies. They have created the frozen meat industry, which now figures upon our export returns to the amount of a million sterling per year, and have given a great impetus to other branches of our commerce, completely revolutionising our trade, and cheapening merchandise by enabling merchants to carry on their operations with smaller stocks and transact business upon shorter terms. The diiect steam companies have well earned the subsidies that were paid to them, but when they attempted to compete in mail delivery over their long sea routes against the transcontinental railroad transit and the greyhounds of the Atlantic, they undertook a task impossible of achievement. The measure of success attained has indeed been marvellous, a striking testimony to the first-class character of their equipments and the capabilities of modern steamships. Taking the average of the passages made by their steamers, there was until recently nothing to beat them among the long ocean voyages of the world ; but the maintenance ot regular momhly services at a rate of

speed has entailed a very heavy expense, and when the whole cost of maintaining a fast mail delivery was cast upon the comparatively small receipts which the steamers could earn at a fixed sum per pound weight of mail matter carried in competition with much faster services, it became a question whether the game was worth the candle. Up to the present, the chief representatives o! both companies have declared that it is not, and they decline to bind themselves to time-tables which involve considerable loss at both ends of the service, frequently necessitating a week's needless delay at this end of the line, and a premature departure from London. This decision may possibly yet be modified, but that is hardly to be expected in view of the reduction to 2*_d for correspondence via Brindisi after the end of the present month.

The accelerated speed of the San Francisco service has, indeed, rendered the intermediate delivery all but valueless. The last direct mail per Ruapehu arrived in the colony only about thirty-six hours ahead ot the San Francisco mail steamer, which brought a fortnight's later dates, while the Ruapehu's dates were anticipated by letters coming via Brindisi and Suez. It is self-evident that no service via the Cape can hold its own with the same rate of postage against a delivery overland toßrindisiand thence through the Suez Canal, and no doubt the direct steamship companies are wise in determining to consider their convenience rather than tie themselves down to hard-and-fast dates for a period of twelve months in consideration of the small remuneration which would fall to their share under the amended ocean mail arrangements. The iSan Francisco mail steamers can only hold their own under such conditions because they are able to compete successfully in point of speed. The competition of the Brindisi service at reduced postage may affect the volume of mail matter forwarded via San Francisco, but, feeling that New Zealand ought to maintain its own service, the Government will forward by the American route all correspondence not otherwise directed, and make express superscription an indispensable condition to the despatch of any letter or packet via Brindisi. Under the Post Offices Act, the Government have power to compel any vessel leaving the colony to carry the mails at any rale Ministers may stipulate, and no doubt even in the absence of a special contract mails will be despatched by each of the direct steamers at a reduced rate of postage. In any case, the colony under the new postal arrangements will be more cheaply and efficiently served with respect to its ocean mail than at any past period of its history, the public will reap the benefit of reform in the 2}_d rate for a fast delivery, while the favourable terms unon which the renewal of the existing service has been secured for a further period of three years render even the reduced rate a remunerative one to the Government.

The news that the bootmakers' strike has been brought to a close will be hailed with genuine satisfaction by everyone. For more than five months it has dragged wearily along till the general public have ceaged to experience any active interest in it. The origin of the dispute was simple enough. The Auckland Manufacturers' Association declined to adopt

a statement accepted by the Southern manufacturers, as they considered the prices unfair to themselves and directed against the Auckland trade. A local statement was then prepared anq>, the Auckland Bootmakers' Union asked to accept it. The men refused the terms offered, on the ground that the Federal Council would not allow Unionists to accept local statement. As each side was stubborn, the inevitable strike occurred. Overtures have been made from time to time to induce a compromise, but without any satisfactory result. Each party, therefore, has pursued its own way without respect to the other. The Employers' Association drew up an amended statement subsequently, which their employees have since worked to. Some inconvenience has been experienced at the factories from shortness of hands, but this has to a great extent been remedied by free labour and by largely augmenting the staff of apprentices. For some time past it has been evident that the employers had announced their ultimatum, while many of the men were of opinion that the wages to be earned under the local statement were fair and reasonable. Since the commencement of the strike, it is estimated that the sum of nearly ,-£6,000 has been disbursed m strike pay. The Auckland strikers naturally complain that their numbers have been augmented by hangers-on who have flocked to the city. A determination was ultimately come to, we think very wisely, to accept the local statement and to resume work. Six months ago, when the strike was threatened, we earnestly advised a resort to arbitration. This was unheeded, and the inevitable result has followed. Numbers of men have left Auckland for the South and for adjacent colonies; others will be unable to obtain employment because their places have been already filled. We may hope the boot trade of the city has received no permanent injury, but individual employers and employees have necessarilysuffered considerable loss. It is time that we had all learned the lesson that of all modes of settling a dispute between employers and employed, a strike is the most disastrous that can be resorted to.

The general and well-grounded dissatisfac. tion which prevails in Auckland with rogard to the treatment of this part of the colony with respect to railway works, culminated in the public meeting held on 30th September, at which it was decided to form a Northern Railway League to look after Auckland's interest. Upon those misrepresentations tho million special loan raised for this line was diverted, and under similar -nfluencea it is now being literally frittered away without accomplishing the purpose for which tiro moDcy was raised. Only £3!M,9-I2 baa beon spent on the construction of tho railway, and yot only£3su',lo7 remained unexpended on tho .list of March last out of tho £1,000,000 specially raised for this work. Tho balance has gono in the purchase of native lands and in the constructionof roads, bridges and similar works, chiefly in the provincial district of Wellington. Tho figures in the Public Works Statement show an expenditure of £38,_05 upon roads in Wellington up to the 31st of March last, and only £3,886 at the north end of the railway. In addition to this tho expenditure and liabilities on tho Huntcr-vtlle-Taurangarero road, on tho 31st of March amounted to £10,563, besides £2,337 on the road from Taurangarero toTokannu. Large additional votes were takon from tho loan during the date session for the completion of this road, which is intended to turn the stream of tourists away from Napier into Wellington, and to givo a direct tourists' line from Hnntervillo to Taupo. A coach is to be placed upon this road whenever it is completed.

The following aro tho objocts of tho Northern Railway League, recently formed in Auckland to secure railway communication with Taranaki:—"(l) To stop tho pillage of the ISlorth Trunk Railway Loan before tho balance is finally misappropriated and dissipated. (21 To insist on immediate expenditure of £65,000 voted for extension to tunnel, and further to whore Marton line diverges from Stratford. (3) Early next session, through connection with Taranaki, via Stratford, tho completion of the Rotorua Railway at an expenditure of £20,000, and tho other urgent needs ot Auckland and Taranaki districts. (4) To demand justice to thecountry districts in the matter of roads where railways do nob exist. Tho methods proposed aro organisation and union of our members and of all votors on this question towards these practical ends, by which it ia hoped to avert the causes creating thedissensions which weaken us, and it is believed the accomplishment of our objects will re-invigorato by prosperity all portions of the northern community, and benefit the whole colony by removing the artificial depression of this part."