SPEEDING UP EMPLOYMENT

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 203, 28 August 1935, Page 19

SPEEDING UP EMPLOYMENT

The whole community will have been heartened by the statement of the Minister of Employment in Saturday's "Star," that works will soon bo found which will absorb thousands of men at present unemployed. The next thing to know is the nature of the works, and, as you point out in your very opportune sub-leader, we want no more of the bad old works which had no justification except political influence. There will be plenty of works suggested, but it is doubtful if there are any which are immediately more justifiable, speaking generally, than railways. Not the political railways, which anyone could see would never pick up the traffic to prove that they were wanted, such a.s Paerata to Waiuku and To Roti to Opunake, in the North Island, and half a dozen equally unpayable dead-ends in the South Island, but first of all the railways that will fill up the gaps which prevent long sections from paying their way. The recommendation of the Railways Board to complete the gap between the Main Trunk and Stratford has justified itself beyond all expectations, and at present the worst gap in (he North Island is from Kirikopuni to Dargaville, preventing two sections from being used to their fullest capacity, while there are three gaps near Gisborne which could then be considered. In the South Island the most pressing seems to bo Inangahua to Westport, to join up the "coal that saved the Calliope" with the great South Island Main Trunk, but it is hard to believe that the 50 miles from Picton to Wharanui and the 85 miles from Parnassus to Christchurch will ever be used to capacity until the gap is filled. Of course nobody can expect any of these sections to pay, even when the gaps are filled, so long as the taxpayers and ratepayers subsidise motor transport in competition with the railways to the extent of millions per annum, but if the two services are put on the same basis there are no estimates to prove that these national works would not pay, and pay handsomely, quite apart from their present value in relieving unemployment. VIATOR.