FIFTY YEARS AGO

Evening Post, Volume CXXVII, Issue 71, 25 March 1939, Page 17

FIFTY YEARS AGO

ITEMS FROM THE "POST"

"OVERWROUGHT" MINISTERS

Under the heading of "Poor Fellows," "The Post" wrote editorially fifty years ago: "Nobody would imagine that Ministers were overworked, considering how much time they Have to roam about the colony on one pretence or another, but we have it on the authority of the Colonial Secretary that their minds are so overwrought that they are really incapable of avoiding the most stupid blunders. We are aware that their minds w.ere never very strong, but we scarcely thought that a few hours 1 work would reduce them to a state of absolute mental incapacity. Yet so it is. The facts are instructive, and might be amusing if they iiad not involved a serious sacrifice of the public interest. The leases of a number of valuable runs in the * Waitaki district recently fell in, and the renewals were announced to be sold^ by auction. The settlers in the vicinity asked that two' runs should be cut up, and opened for settlement. A memorial to this effect was sent to the Minister of Lands, and some correspondence ensued. The'sale day "arrived, and there was no withdrawal of the runs in question. The auctioneer mounted the rostrum, and the first lots to be disposed of were the leases of the identical runs which the settlers wanted withdrawn and opened for settlement. The auctioneer quickly knocked them down at a "very ' nioderete sum to the former lessees, Messrs. R. Campbell and Co., but his hammer had scarcely fallen. when a breathless telegraph boy placed in his hand a 1 telegram. * He opened it and. looked puzzled. He consulted the list and could make nothing out of it. The runs in question were named 4he Otekaike runs, and their numbers were, . if we remember right, 20 and 20a. At any rate, these numbers will do as well as any others.' Further down the . list were two other runs numbered 120 and 120 a, their name being something not altogether unlike Otekaike. The telegram ordered the withdrawal of runs 120 and 120 a. The Commissioner of Crown Lands was nonplussed. The Otekaike runs which he knew were wanted for settlement had just been sold;; the other runs—those ■ named in the .telegram—were quite unfit for settlement. He, however, obeyed literally, '. arid afterwards it came out that through some extraordinary . error the wrong runs were named in the Ministerial ; telegram, while x a malign fate had, in an equally extraordinary manner, delayed the delivery of the telegram for some 14 or 15 J hours; until the right runs were sold to the right lessee, and any chance of the Commissioner assuming that a mistake had been made in the description of the runs and delaying the sale until inquiry could be made had been, effectually avoided. Writing to Mr. Duncan, the Colonial Secretary thus, explains how the error in the telegram occurred: —'After -getting inforjma.tion from various sources, and .consulting Mr. Clarke, who was here on the 27th, the Ministers (the reservation of runs for small grazing runs, being a matter which, must-be done by Government) met, but owing to pressure of work did not arrive at a conclusion till half-past 8 on the day before ,the sale. We could not meet, until' half-past 4.. ' TheIdetermination come to was communicated to you, that the runs should be cut up. Unfortunately a mistake was made in communicating the decision. The Ministers 'had had a very busy time for days before, and.the mistake,is just of that kind which is made when men's minds are overwrought. We had been discussing both» pairs of runs.' And then Mr. Hislop indignantly deprecates any insinuation reflecting discredit on Ministers. We,would not for a moment make any such insinuations. 9 n tne - contrary, we sincerely pity their state: of extreme mental tension, and our fear is that this may: produce serious results. We should be sorry to see them break down utterly from overwrought brains, sink into a state of absolute intellectual aberration, and have to exchange the Ministerial residences for the accommodation of y tha Mount View Asylum. 5We would, therefore,- strongly' counsel' them to ease their overwrought brains by retiring from the. performance of their overpowering duties, and letting men with less clouded brains and stronger heads assume the direction of public affairs. There is no knowing what they may not do, in the condition of mental prostration to which they seem unhappily reduced." . DEVELOPMENT IN MANAWATU. "The annual report of the Wellington and Manawatu Railway Company, Limited, is an exceedingly satisfactory one. It discloses a large development of traffic arising from the best possible source—the spread of settlement in the country tapped by the railway, and especially on the lands sold by the company itself. During the year no less th^n 7571 acres of the company's land have been sold at a satisfactory price, and the progress of settlement upon these and previously-sold lands has been very rapid. As it progresses, so will the traffic on the iine, and it must not be forgotten that the railway supplies the requirements of a vast area of land outside its own endowment, on which settlement is also progressing rapidly. There will be a still further., large development of traffic when tha line is connected with the Government East Coast system of railway. One marked and pleasing feature of the balance-sheet is the extraordinary low percentage of earnings absorbed in. working expenses. Few' railways can show a record in this respect so creditable to all concerned, and especially to the traffic manager and engineer, Mr. A. W. Fulton, and the general manager, Mr. James Wallace, who have between them managed to administer their departments so as to secure in the working of the railway a . maximum of efficiency at a minimum of expense. The company is one of which Wellington has just reason to be proud, both as regards its inception and subsequent working, and we are confident that it has a brilliant.future open to it. We cordially congratulate the shareholders. I and directors ori l the results of tha j year's work."