THE PETROL TAX

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXVII, Issue 12820, 15 August 1939, Page 6

THE PETROL TAX

No Mercy for the Motorist

That the motorist is now a well recognised medium for “raising the wind” is re-affirmed by the Government’s action in imposing a further tax of 4d per gallon on petrol, already an over-taxed commodity. Why motorists, as a class, should be singled out for such a savage onslaught as the taxation to which they are now subjected is something which is hard to explain. In the very early days of motoring it is true of course that motorists were, generally dpeaking, wealthy people. It is also true that they were not at all popular with the general public. It is on record that in Belgium cars were actually fired upon. On a road near Minck an unfortunate lady passenger was hit by a bullet, which passed right through both cheeks. In Switzerland “motorphobia’’ ran rampant. Queen Margherita’s cur was stoned; Mr Rockefeller junior was arrested and fined; Mrs Jay Gould, wife of an American railway magnate, was lashed across the face with a whip near Lucerne; and hundreds of motorists were arrested for exceeding the four-mile limits in the towns. A wealthy Parisian was driving one Sunday near Lachen when his car skidded into a ditch. Half-a-dozen peasants came to his rescue, got the car out and were paid handsomely for their trouble. Suddenly a gendarme appeared on the scene and arrested the owner of the car for making peasants work ,on a Sunday. The owner was fined eight pounds and costs, and on appealing lost, his case and had to pay a further seven pounds in costs. To knock down a foot-passenger anywhere on the Continent was almost equivalent to signing one’s own death warrant. Two Americans,

Messrs Miller and Sulzer, were motoring with their wives from Vienna to Dresden when, near a village in Bohemia, they had the ill-luck to knock down a boy. They stopped at once, picked up the child, and were dressing a wound on his leg when they were set on by a crowd of villagers armed with stones. Mrs Sulzer was stunned by a stone which hit her on the head, and the two men were forced to draw their revolvers and fire over the heads of the mob. At last police came to their rescue but to their surprise they, and not their assailants, were arrested, and were forced to deposit £SO before they could proceed. Near Paris a driver who knocked down a pedestrian was mobbed by a crowd, who smashed and burned his car, and would have lynched the driver if the police had not arrived. From the foregoing it will be observed that motoring in its infancy was far from popular with the masses. It is therefore probable that the many taxes heaped- upon the motorist to-day represent an unconscious survival of the antipathy which has existed against motorists as a class from the earliest days of motoring almost up to the present time. Now the position is reversed and the masses, who formerly cried out against the motorist, are all motorists themselves and the majority of them can ill afford such persistent attentions from the tax gatherer. Many of them are on the margin as it is. They can just afford to run their car under existing conditions. Any increase'in costs will force them off the road. These are the people who are most affected and to them the announcement of a rise in price of 4d per gallon must have been sad news.