State Enterprise.

Feilding Star, Volume I, Issue 265, 14 May 1907, Page 2

State Enterprise.

One of tho most enjoyable features of expensive experiments and extensive speculation is to carry them out with funds provided by some one else, for if they prove a failure no one is to blame, and if they succeed the populace acclaim you as a marvel. It is, therefore, easy to be seen why so many experiments in State socialism are tried by the Government, and why so little is said of their lamentable failures. Unless the tax-payer has to pay directly for these disastrous speculations he does not feel the pinch, or, at least, if he does feel it he seldom ascribes the reason to the right cause. The State farm at Levin, where £o0 an acre was spent in clearing land for an orchard, the trees in which Avere, after several .years, grubbed up and thrown away, is one case in point; the Seddonville coal mine is another; the construction of the North Island Main Trunk Line is, perhaps, the worst case; while the latest is the manufacture of briquettes from coal dust. An expensive plant was procured and, with an utter lack of business knowledge, it was erected in the most unsuitable place it was possible to find. The plant has a capacity of 400 tons a day, and thirty men will be employed when the four machines are in full working order. The trouble is that owing to the machines not having been placed at the mouth of the mine or in one of the large centres, there is a danger of the cost of manufacture and transit exceeding the value of the article produced. To a man of business capacity the first consideration would be whether the article could be placed on sale at a price which would ensure a steady demand and still leave sufficient margin to pay for the cost of production; but these conditions seem to have been the very last thought about, and if the result is disaster to the industry the tax-payer will merely smile and foot the bill some more.