A SANE PROPOSAL

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVI, Issue 98, 22 October 1913, Page 6

A SANE PROPOSAL

When political parties are competing in humanitarianißm they keep the press reporters busy. Liberals and Conservatives, who are all preparing for the next election, are almost in a frenzy of impatience for a rapid " Daveyising " of tramway cars. Nobody disputes the need of all reasonable expedition in the conversion of dangerous vehicles into safe ones, but it is unreasonable to order the alterations to be complete by Ist March, 1914. It is true that the local bodieß have themselves to blame for inciting Parliament to act the part of dictator, and they deserve punishment for their dilatoriness, but the difficulty — practically an impossibility — is to inflict any real suffering on those actually responsible for the present state of affairs. From some viewpoints the Representatives' sudden concern for the safety of tramway conductors seems to be overdone. It is a solicitude for which there is warrant, as The Post has shown on many occasions during tho past four or five years, but it is fair to remind the politicians tliat their zeaJ appears to be peculiarly proportionate to the public interest in any particular matter, though this may not be nearly so important as another subject on which the people are either stupidly or carelessly indifferent. It is necessary to have end-to-end interior passages in tramway cars tot the convenience and comfort of employees and passengers, but it is much more important to improve the quality of the milk supply in various parts of New Zealand, including Wellington. Surely the condition of soroo of the milk, which threatens far more persons than the " palace" sideboard does, should stir the humanitarians, but it is deplorably true that they mostly turn a blind eye to the microbes, Their attitude is one of "leave ill alone." They seent 1 definite hostility from certain interests by any radical campaign for an improvement of the milk supply — a crusade to begin, at the cow — aW doubtful thanks from a listless public, which seems to prefer the very false economy of "cheap" nastiness to a healthy food at a slightly higher price. But in the other case of humanitarianism the politicians see the obvious, and labour it. Some of them — chiefly Oppositionists — are very emphatic for a rigorous insistence on the limit of four months for tHo " Daveyising," and they deny the right of local bodies to submit evidence to a Committee. Last night's debate showed that some of the impetuous humanitarians were woefully ignorant of the factors involved, but happily this group did not include the Hon. W. Fraser (Minister of Public Works). He repeated his words of last week that tho logical course would be to send the Bill to a Committee for two or three days, and the Leader of the Opposition expressed a similar opinion, but in other parts of his speech Sir Joseph Ward vjas not so wise, and deserved the rebukes administered by Mr. Fraser. Evidently Sir Joseph had not closely studied this tramway problem, and his hurried reading of the figures furnished by the Mayor, Mr. Luke, on Monday led him into a remarkable error. Sir Joseph imagined that the sum of £90,000 mentioned by Mr. Luke applied only to the manufacture and alteration of cars, and the critic deduced that the expenditure was to average £1500 a car for sixty cars, which he scouted as grotesque, but the grotesqueness is solely of Sir Joseph's creation, as he had misread the statement amazingly. Commonsense (rare last night) demands that representatives of local bodies and the tramway unions j should have an equal opportunity to be heard by a Committee, so that plain facts and estimates can be placed before Parliament and the public. A refusal to listen to reason is palpably a reduction to a gross absurdity.