THE NEW MAIL SERVICE.

Grey River Argus, Volume XXI, Issue 2307, 31 December 1875, Page 4

THE NEW MAIL SERVICE.

. • , I Under the headings of " Still Bound on that Voyage to Burn," and," The. New Australian Line and its Arrangements, the San Francisco News Letter, of Nov. 6, has the following article :— • „ # . It seems at first sight an ungracious act to criticise.the doiogs of our only national steamship line. Yet it is quite as much an idiosyncrasy of the ;News Letter to expose a national humbug as an.indiyidual one. Our successful raid upon the quack doctors has gained us world-wide fame. Ugly facts have recently so accumulated that the dutyris npw upon us. of giving.an equally gobdaccount of our quack navigators. The Pacific Mail Company's New York Directors. are a . Bet of. land lubbers, who have crept in at the cabin windows of what ought to have been, but is not, a fine fleet, and have, done so by the aid of jobbing bigger than is known anywhere outside of the United States. There have from first to last, been millions in it. Our statements are certainly sweeping, but not one whit more so than is justified by facts read and known of all men. . Everybody knows that from the times of Stockwell, the thieving President, down to the presentreign of Jay Gould, the Wall street gambler, the Pacific Mail Campany's usefulness as a common carrier has been little or nothing, : whilst to the bulb and bears of the stock market the Company has been a mine of great wealth. Innocent shareholders have been sucked into the Pacific Maelstrom, and have passed out of sight to make room for fresh victims of the Stock wells, Webbs, and Jay. Goulds of unhappy memory. The cry of the sinking ones reached the ears of Congress, and investigation became the order of the day. Stockwell; wise in his generation, flew to lands where the -cry of sinking shareholders could -not be heard. Webb escaped the refunding of his share of the big steal he and ' Stockwell effected, by finding another and safer but less real owner for his gains. Then Jay Gould Btepped in and promised economy, honesty, and due attention to the legitimate carrying business ; of the. line; Hew iron ships were being built on the Delaware that were to supersede the old-fashioned, slow, and ineffectual side-wheelers. For a time things looked better. The new iron propellers, 'W were led to J believe,' excelled any steamers built in England in point of strength, - I model, ventilation, speed, passenger comforts, and every essential to voyages in the mild and tropical regions of the Pacific. For a time these promises looked so fair that even we belived them, and commended the line as worthy of renewed confidence. How far we and the general public have been disappointed is well known. The new steamers are a fraud — the result of a swindling contract entered into between the Directors and a plaupible, talkative Irishman named John Roach, who until lately was hailed by almost every paper in. America as the father of American iron-ship building > and . the coming Messiah who was to redeem ..our commerce throughout the world. Re- ■; cently the two largest and what were de- • clared to be the finest ships of the line, ■ were sent round the Horn to San Francisco. That they reached here intact was a ; mercy, for they were almost in pieces when they arrived, and since then, they have been utterly condemned by- the port ,surv,eypra and underwriters as . unseawgrthy. '"One has just left for China nevertheless, but without, gold or passengers, our citizens believing with all our ? i daily papers that she .ought not to be sent to sea. These were the vessels promised for the Autralian line, but certainly a winterly storm off the cpast of New Zealand ; : would finish their career. When shipbuilders and Directors divide profits - -Tvith contractors, what better is to be ex- . pected. Indeed we ought to have known "matters: would turn out just as they have. Can any good come out, of Nazareth ? Can - ■"■' honesty be expected of the notorious Jim Fisk ? Jay Gould, after he was made to disgorge the nine millions he absolutely stole from the English shareholders of the Erie railroad,. ought to have been heard from no more for ever. Cradled in smart practices, raised in jobbery, he i 3 now in middle age rich through barefaced swindles that have never been equalled in • this; or any other age. This mau, who bought certain judges of. New York and used them until they were found out •"'''and 'expelled the bench with ignominy, 'prates about. the merchants of Sydney, and taking his cue from his friend HaU, 'declares he will not leave his property to be managed by the descendants' of convicts, finds a fit employe in the man Hall, who has all the will, but lacks the ability, to render him a true prototype of his New • York master. With their coast line run off and sold out, their China line nearly disposed of by the new line of English steamers owned by the Pacific Railroads, their Panama line about to meet with : powerful opposition from vessels owned by the Panama Railroad , their Australian line begun in bad faith, and even the forlorn, hope of obtaining an impossible subJ : sidy; from Congress, with such an astounding manager sent offensively to the othei end, arid; with the inevitable punishment awaiting them at the hands of Congress, end is nigh ; but when that early day arrives it will be found that Jaj Gould has dispossessed himself of everj share, and that an easily-gulled public if once more the victim. . It is our duty in this 'place to poini out to o.nr many readers; along the Aus tralian route, beginning in London anc ending at the Antipodes, what we knovi of the arrangements that are going on it this' country. The new time-table has j us been issued. It is laughed at by all practical ' tical men. To work by it is an impossi bility. . It purports to provide for a mosi complicated Service, and to run it alonj the various ports to an exact second o time. Take one instance as an example The port of Wellington, New Zealand, ii to be reached on each voyage out at ex actly ten. minutes past 4 p.m., and all th< other arrangements are made dependen upon this, being done.. No well-informec man needs to be told that this is a tota impossiblity, Wellington is a safe enougl harbor," butitis as difficult as' heaven t( • reach. It is situated at the month of i strait, through' which the wind (especially ; , ,in winter). blows a gale, the like of . which we happily know nothing of in these parts To reach that port to a minute of timt after a voyage of 7200 miles is an absur dity too apparent to be dwelt upon. If £ ■ of three days were allowed, ii \ " would nevertheiess be' found an insuffi : 'c'ierit ; allowance during many months oj the year. Navigating the whole rounid of the coast of New Zealand is a very dif . ferent. , thing from paddling across the smooth pond between here and China, ai the Company will soon learn. The illus

tration we have given is but a fair example of the unworkmanlike character of the whole time-table. Then we do not believe that the Company has more than one steamer of its own— the Colima — that is safe to round New Zealand in winter. It has two English built vessels under charter for about nine months to come that have great speed, and are admirably adapted to the Australian and New Zealand Service. We refer to the Vasco di Gama and the Vancouver, but we understand these vessels are to be employed elsewhere. It would be well to insist upon having the services of the three vessels named. We tell our readers both in New Zealand and New South Wales that they must hold this Company to a strict accountability in regard to each and all of its engagements. Every penalty must be rigidly enforced. In no other way will they obtain anything like the results they have bargained for. Give this Company an inch, and it will take an ell. It is under bad auspices now, and ' does nob mean to act in good faith. We know it means to so run the New Zealand Coast Service as to disgust the Government and people, with the expectation of being allowed to reach Sydney via Auckland, and without touching at Kandavau. We know that is the programme. By it both Sydney and New Zealand will have an inferior Service. But if from the start all penalties are enforced, it may teach the, Company that neither Government will be played with. Then the Company is going in for a subsidy of 500,000 dols per annum from Congress, for this line, which it can never by any possibility obtain. The subsidies to the Pacific Mail Company, connected as it i 3 with proved corruption, stink in the nostrils of tha whole people. Having recommended this Company a year ago, when we believed its new steamers were being honestly built, and when we believed it was faithfully striving to work its way out of its difficulties, the duty, now that we know the contrary, is strong upon us to say that the Australian Service has been commenced in bad faith, and will be abandoned, if not closely watched, as suddenly as was Webb's line, and for much the same reasons. A different route under any circumstance, is intended, and even that will not be followed unless a subsidy, can be purchased from Congress.