LETHARGIC NEW ZEALAND.

Auckland Star, Volume L, Issue 196, 19 August 1919, Page 8

LETHARGIC NEW ZEALAND.

(To the Editor.) i Sir.— 1 was amazed to read in the •■ Star " that, it took eighteen years to complete two miles of railroad track. 1 j would like to know the amount of money i lost to both State and settler during , those eighteen years of waiting for trail- I sii facilities. 1 worked on the Grand ! Trunk Pacific in Canada, and we laid: tracks from one to two miles per day. | The grading gang was followed -by the | steel gang, and the trains brought material right up to the steel gang over rails just laid. Even in the Rocky Mountains, where the engineering difficulties arc immense, they averaged a mile under three months. If you quit your job you had to walk hack 400 miles over new laid track before you reached a town. and that would he" only a collection ot tents and shack.-. Today there arc I dozens of towns rivalling Napier lor size- and importance, all built within | the last ten years over that same bare j land. New Zealand is one of the tvest j countries in the world for the developI nient of hydro-electric power, and it is ! proof of the backward state of the conn- ! jtry that all trains, both local ami main , line, arc not driven by electricity. Our methods seem entirely out of date. As an example, tuke the gasworks; instead of being built on its own wharf, it is placed iv a position where the cost of cartage is very great. Especially is this so at Devonport. l"p-to-date plants have their own wharves, and the coal is worked from ship to retort by machinery. Again, watch a collier discharging coal nt the wharves. A man shovels a basketful of coal, nnd then sits down until it is his turn to hook on. Exactly the same way tbev worked coal on the London River _00 years ago. with the exception that a steam winch heaves out the basket now. and a dolly winch did it then. In Montreal a collier will dock this morning with 12,000 tons of coal, anj to-morrow she will lie returning empty to Cape Breton for another load. And it is notable that machinery did not stop Canada's population increasing from five million to nine million in the lust fifteen years. If a tram or light railway system was constructed between Devonport and Silverdale, the population' over there would treble in four years. Within live minutes' tram ride from .Devonport wharf there are hundreds of cheap building sections, but no means of reaching town, so they are simply waste ground growing blackberry and gorse. Develop your electric power, and it will not matter if the minor wants .CI or £100 a day. or if the coal owner wants a .'lO-room house and a racing stud, or only a .'I,OOO-ton sleam yacht.—l am. etc., j A.B.C. I