Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 1, 1891. RAILWAYS AND HARBOUR BOARDS.

Evening Post, Volume XLI, Issue 76, 1 April 1891, Page 2

Evening Post. WEDNESDAY, APRIL 1, 1891. RAILWAYS AND HARBOUR BOARDS.

Next to the Editorship of a leading newspaper we should think that a Railway Commissionership must be the easiest and most enviable billet possible. The Commissioners have only to please the public. This is a simple and delightful task, as everjone who has essayed it in any form well knows. So it is to nurse a baby; but sometimes the .child will persist in soreaming, whether it is .bribed with lollypops or slapped and shaken. The publio is at times quite as fraotious and perverse as any child. Nothing will please ,it. Even lollypops will not stop its' soreams. The latest grievance against the Railway Commissioners affords propf of this. They are aconssd of carrying jcoods at too cheap a rate, and, marvellous to relate, the acousation is preferred by the very people' yho benefit by the rednood charges. If the Commissioners permit the snocessful rivalry along a speoial piece of road, of carrier!, whether of wool, grain, or paroels, they are of course howled at. Their failure to Bfionre a monopoly of the traffic is quoted as proof positive of bad management, and they are reproaohfully asked how they can expect to make the railways pay when the settler finds it more profitable to use the road than the railway. Aocusations of this kind are of periodical occurrence, and hava more than onco emanated from South CanUrbnry, whence now comes the Btrange oomplaint that the railways are nnfarly oompeting with water carnage, and by low rates trying to secure to themselves a goods traffic whioh should go by sea and pay harbour dues. The Railway Commissioners have reduced their through freights between Lyttelton and Timaru to a figure with which it is asserted the coastal steamers cannot compete and still pay harbour rates anddues. The Harbour Board finding their revenue Buffering are loudly indignant with the Commissioners, and protest that .they have no right to thus enter into competition with them. They consider that the Commissioners should run their trains empty so as to allow the goods which should fill them to be oarried by sea and pay toll to the Harbour Board. The Commissioners do not tak.e this view of the case. They very properly deoline to recognise that they, owe any duty whatever to the Harbour

Board. That is a pu'ely looal in6titution, and the Commissioners have no more right to consider its interests or to regulate their own actions in deference to those interests than they would have to ooneidor and bow to the interests of any carrying firm or bullock punchers who might start as rivals in the busineßß of conveyance of goods. 'I ho duty of (he Commishioners is (o the colony as a whole, and if they find that they can make a p-ofit at a rate of freight which will ensure them a monopoly of the whole traffic, it is not for them to consider what tho effect may be on either Shipping Companies or Harbour Boards We have often commented on tho folly of allowing money to be borrowed for expenditure in making, or attimpting to make, artificial harbours to compote with the Stato railways, 'this latest phase of the Bubj°ct tbro>vß a lnrid light on the proceeding. Tho idea that the Colonial Railwa3B aro to be tubordiualed to the interests of the Harbour Boards, is simply preposterous Districts like Timaru and Oamaru should havo been compelled to choose between water carriage and land carriage, between Harbour works and railways. When the State undertook to provide them with land oarriage by rail, it should have prevented any publio body endeavouring to enter into competition for the carrying trade of the district opened up by tbe railway. Although the mistake made in so many instanoos cannot now be reo'ified, the utmost oare should be taken to prevent any more errors of the kind being m&do. In the meantime, where th?re are artificiallymade harbours competing with tho railway, tho Commissioners should act on strictly business principles, and endeavour to secure all the traffio they can, by reduoing their ohargea to the very lowest price whioh will leave a margin of profit, however small, on the haulage. Persistence in thia polioy may prove injurious to Harbour Board interests, but the Commissioners have no right to concern themselves on that point. When the interests of the oolony as a whole oome in confliot with those of a local body, the latter must give way. The colony oannot afford to ran its trains empty in order that the Timaru or Oatnarn Harbour Boards may obtain revenue to meet the charges on tho enormous debts they have bo unwisely been permitted to incur. It is not often that we can find much to praise or admire in the administration cf railway affairs in this oolony, but the Commissioners undoubtedly deserve support in the polioy of running tho Harbour Boards to Becure, if possible, a monopoly of the legitimate traffio.