THE GOODS TRAFFIC.

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 169, 17 July 1919, Page 5

THE GOODS TRAFFIC.

PROTEST AGALNST SUSPENSION. Last night the One-tree Hill Road Board added its protest against the railway curtailment to those that have already been made. Mr. H. Dobbie, the chairman, moved that the board protest against the suspension of the goods traffic, whereby the building trade and road repairs are delayed and manufactures curtailed throughout the district; also against the further reduction of the passenger trains, which have always been inadequate for the service required. The resolution added:—"Apparently no provision was made to meet the approaching shortage of coal for the railways, nor have any steps been taken to ease the situation now that the shortage is upon us." Mr. Dobbie said the board could not get bricks or metal for the road, and the whole of the building operations in the district were at a standstill. In moving the resolution Mr. Dobbie expressed the opinion that the shortage of coal on the railways was due to the Department depending almost entirely on Australian coal. Tn proof of this ho pointed to the Whangarei railway, the only line in New Zealand where the time-table had not been cut. On this line, he said, New Zealand coal was used exclusively. The resolution was carried unanimously. ANOTHER RESOLUTION. A meeting of the Auckland Carpenters' Union last night resolved respecting the railway cut as follows:—"That the Amalgamated Society of Carpenters and Joiners supports the resolution passed to-day by the Farmers' Union Executive, protesting against the indiscriminate blockage of such absolutely necessary commodities as building material from transit by rail; further, we record our opinion that had the Government called together the industrial conference suggested by the Federation of Labour early in May, and placed before the conference its fears respecting a coal shortage, the possibility of which, if it exists now, must have been known to the Government at that time, such a conference would have been able to suggest methods of conserving or increasing the available supply of coal, and would have been able also to suggest better methods of overcoming the. difficulties than the adoption of the disastrous 'go-slow' policy of the Government railways."