TIMBER FREIGHTS.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 869, 16 July 1910, Page 3

TIMBER FREIGHTS.

of the most disgraceful anoniolies in our differential freight systom 'is the ridiculously high freightcharged on tho carriage" of timber. The peoplo of Hawko's Kay get most of their timber from tho Main Trunk. Tho freight from Ohakuno to Hastings is 4s. 3d., or fully one-third of tho total value of ordinary building timber: that is to say, for every threo tracks we got, one goes in freight. If such measures as the Government Advances to Workers and Settlors wore enacted with tho object of assisting' the workers, why help thorn with one band and 'injure them with tho other, by increasing the cost of tho material in their homes. White pino is tho only timber carried at a reasonable rate; on all building, timbers the freight is about double what it is on practically anything else. Why should this penalty bo inflicted on tho building and sawmilling industries. If tho timber is for export, 1 understand that thoro is a big reduction in tho freight. Could anything bo. more ridiculous? In tho ordinary house,, about onethird of its tost goes in timber. Of this oiui'third, the, Govcnuueut gcts.omsr

third; then thero are royalties _ and I carting to pay, leaving the unfortunate miller about 15 per cent, of the whole, tho other 85 per cent, going into other channels.' Those figures, though as- j tonishing to many, are' correct, and the Government is largely to blame. It is painfully true that we penaliso legitimate industry with excessive freights on the oue hand/ and on tho other issue freo passes to lazy politicians, tho' bulk of whom are useless, and to a Governor who the country could got on just as well without. To make up for this Tory extravaganco something must suffer. The country is being ridden to death by over-govern-ment and excessive restrictions. All ono can say is that it must be a fertilo country, and a hard-working people! to stand it. -Now and again, however, there is a slump, and the heavy-laden workers totter and heave under the' crushing weight of criminal extrava'gance and over-government.—l am, etc., E. STEVENSON. Hastings.