The Evening Star SATURDAY, JULY 1, 1911.

Evening Star, Issue 14607, 1 July 1911, Page 6

The Evening Star SATURDAY, JULY 1, 1911.

“ Josh Billings,” a one-time favorite American humorist, has In Defence of loft it on record that Waiporl. “k is better to know a “little than to know so “much that ain’t so.” We were reminded of this homely maxim after a perusal of Cr Marlow’s criticism of our article of the 14th inst. at’ the meeting of th© City Council on Wednesday wooing. It has been our lot -to xead~a> jaisfoliy

inept an answer on on which the great majority of intelligent citizens are quit© competent to form an opinion. Regarding the Waijtori light and power investment, its promise audits fulfilment, the ratepayers have long since pronounced judgment. Tho investment was a blunder to begin with, and it has been a costly blunder from that day to the present. There is absolutely no other defence for it than this; The City, beguiled and befooled, has committed itself, and it must see it through. It is quite obvious that Cr Marlow was primed, for tho occasion, and he has fallen in badly. In the first place, it is a mistake in manners, as well as tactics, to accuse anyone of resorting to “ half truths” and of making “misstatements” unless the accuser is confident of tho accuracy of his charges. Even then, if the assertions to which they profess to be an answer have been stated courteously and with due reserve, no public man is war-

ranted in speaking as Cr Marlow is reported to have done. As a mutter of history our main statements are capable of proof, and Cr Marlow's inspired ipse dixit is as inaccurate as it is impolite. Cr Marlow said :

Ho took it that if mis&tateintntfi wore mado it was their place to answer them. The first statement made was that financially the department had run a long way beyond tho estimates, and did not know where it was. As instance of that they wore told that £106,000 had been estimated to land 6,000 horse-power in Dunedin. iii place of which £330,000 had boon spent, and only 4,000 horse-powor was installed. This was a meet dangerous misstatement, because it was only a half truth. The evidence before Parliament was that tho £106,000 would land 4,000 horse-power not in the vicinity of Dunedin, but in tho vicinity of Halfway Bush.

Wo shall not labor our reply to this charge, but content ourselves with referring our readers to the Parliamentary Beport of the Wuipori Falls Electrical Power Bill Committee, 3904. On pages 3. 4, and 5 the following questions and answers will be found. Mr P. Duncan, shareholder in, promoter of, and solicitor for the old Waipoii Company, was asked, under examination by Mr W. C. MacGregor, who represented the City Council;

And the total installation is £106,000? —Yes, which it: very cheap. That is where tiro advantage will come in to the City—tiiat it will be cheap power. These figures, I presume, you have obtained from your engineers?— Yes. You do not state that of your own knowledge?— That is so. Six thousand horse-power is what you based your calculation upon?— Yes. You say that to bring 0,000 horse-

power to Dunedin will cost yon £loo,ooo?— That is eo. And yet. with this published evidence available, to him, C'r Marlow had the audacity to toll the Council that what that evidence shows is that an expenditure of £106.0C0 would laud 4.000 horse-power only in the vicinity ,of Dunedin, and not within the City itself. In the same loose, inexact, and unconvincing manner Cr . Mallow seeks to show how it is that a scheme which was to cost £106,000 has grown to | £390,000, with more to come! It does not matter ono iota, for our immediate purpose, where or how this huge- sum has been spent. What we have asserted again and again is that a scheme which was to produce a given result for £106,000 has not achieved it beyond nil dispute for £390,000. And what Cr Marlow has to do is not to busy himself with levelling accusations of half-truths, but to acquaint himself with the history of this most unhappy and unfortunate undertaking. Wo do not need to lie advised “'that any business man must see that there is no shortage,'’ particularly as this is largely beyond Cr Alarlow's or anyone vise's control, so far as the AVaipori is concerned. Nor is there the least call to indulge in dilhyrambics over the great and glorious futiue, “when not “ 6.000, but 8.000 or 10.000 and more will ‘■be requited " What lias to bo explained is: Why. with an expenditure of £329,000, the City has, fur all practical purposes, an installation of only 4,000 h.p., with no stand-by. Wo now learn that the expenditure of other £60,000 may give it ono additional thousand h.p., with an extra thousand h.p. for a stand-by, though to make this reasonably certain there must bo a further expenditure for a dam, while an auxiliary ‘team or gas plant, to obviate the stoppages that may occur in spite of these huge outlays, is—with a complete unconsciousness of the irony of the situation—boldly advocated. Touching Or Marlow's had history, the point is this—and wo have stated it in ono form and another ad nauseam: that the City Council in 1904 believed they were buying the plant and goodwill of a. going concern, which, for something in the neighborhood of £IOO,OOO, was to give them 6,000 h.p. possibly, but cketai.vi.y 4,000 h.p. ; and what we assert is that after a civic expenditure, actual and proposed, of £390,000 the City has not got 6,000 h.p., and has no guarantee that it will get it. To talk of droughts, converter stations, reticulations, and powerhouses is quite beside the mark. Wo affirm positively that had either the then Mayor (Mr T. Christie) or the then Chairman of the Tramways Committee (Air J. Braithwaite) stood up in the council on October 8, 1904, and said: “ Gentlemen, “ we have reason to think that we shall “ have to spend nearly £400,000 before we "can count on 6,000 h.p.,’’ the proposal would have been kicked out of the chamber with scorn and contempt. But there is not a suggestion in the printed-reports of that meeting that the project was to cost anything of the sort. What was said on the score of cost was uttered by Cr Braithwaite: “The capital cost for 2,000 h.p. “by the Waipori scheme was £54, and “for bringing in 4,000 h.p. from the Wai- “ pori it would be £2s”—that is £92,000. There is an element of humor even in the moat tragic of dramas, and that element is not lacking hem. Ills Worship the Mayor, who, in common with other shareholders in the old company, had passed many a bad quarter of an hour before the City Council in their wisdom decided to make the fatal plunge, at the conclusion of Cr Marlow’s "explanation” congratulated him on ‘‘his very able speech, and “ s:iid it was one o) the cleverest state- “ incuts he had had the pleasure of listen- “ ing to in the council.” Clover it was, certainly, but disingenuous at the same time. Inquiry has convinced us that His Worship, when he spoko thus, was really serious.