AN AMUSING RAILWAYS CRITIC.

Dominion, Volume 2, Issue 341, 30 October 1908, Page 6

AN AMUSING RAILWAYS CRITIC.

In the course of his speech last night, Me. Izard made some observations upon railway finance which, coming from anyone else, we should describe in harsh language. Mr. Izard, however, clearly knows nothing whatever about railways finance, and it is a pleasure to supply him with some information that he may add to what he has gleaned from Sir Joseph Ward's speeches. He undertook to show that "there was no loss at all" on the railways—a rash design, since even the Prime Minister himself allows that there is a loss. Mr. Izard's "proof" of his humorous proposition consisted of a repetition of a fallacy that we have so frequently expressed, that no sensible person can be deceived by it any longer. This fallacy is the reference to the trifling miscalculation in Professor Le Kossignol's exposure of the ruinous character of our railway finance. It >s true, as Mr. Izard said, that the Professor admitted having made "a mistake of two millons of money." But it was a.mistake in the capital cost of the railways, and not in the revenue. Professor Le Rossignoii should have taken the capital as £21,969,607 instead of £24,092,085, and he should have stated that the net revenue was 1.79, por cent., instead of 1.56 per cent. In other words, he stated that the annual loss on the railways was 2.19 per cent., whereas he should have stated as he himself admitted, that it was just under 2 por coht. The error of "two millions of mo'noy" sounds very formidabh as used by Mr. Izard and the Prime Minister, but in its actual bearing on the argument is comparatively insignificant. It is a pity that Mr. Izard did not read something about the New South Wales railways before criticising them. He may read with profit the account which wa give to-day of the vasi expansion of the New South Wales system, and its growth from bankruptcy to' solvency, under nonpolitical contiol. It is only natural that a gentleman who says that in New Zealand we mflce large renewals and charge them to revenue,, when the very 1 footwarmers are charged to loans, should believe that "in New South Wales .they charged nearly all- expenditure 'to capital." A moment's trouble would have enabled Mr. Izard to discover that the exact reverse is tho case. For the year 1907-8 no less a sum than £1,134,754 was expended out of revenue on upkeep. For the just ended September quarter the gross revenue of the New South Wales railways was £1,236,006 and the working expenses £789,877, the percentage of expenditure to earnings being 63.91 per cent., as against 70.59 per cent, in New Zealand. And this although, as the Sydney Herald points out, the expenditure was increased by a much larger amount than usual of relaying and heavier repairs and renewals of rolling stock. Mr. Izard has good qualities, but his talents do not lie in the direction of financial criticism.