COST OF THE STRIKE.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 16508, 25 March 1914, Page 8

COST OF THE STRIKE.

It is a little surprising that it should have been left to the Hon F. M. B. Fisher, the least responsible of all the responsible Ministers that ever havo been known, to tell a curious public exactly what the strike cost the country. But probably none of Mr Fishe-'s colleagues was particularly anxious to mako the announcement. " Four hundred and fifty thousand pounds in hard cash,", say it as quickly as you will, is a large sum and a sum the Treasury can ill spare at the present time. When the Prime Minister took a vote for £IOO,OOO he frankly stated that more would be required to cover the expenditure in connection with the recent industrial trouble, but no one expected the amount would run up into the neighbourhood of half a million. The figures are so stupendous indeed that wo prefer to wait to hear what Mr Massey or Mr James Allen has to say about them before accepting them as authentic. Mr Fisher has a rather loose fashion of dealing with finance and it is just possible he has included the temporary loss of Customs and railway revenue in his estimate and has made no allowance for this loss being recovered. But whether tho loss was £150,000 or £450,000 it is not quite easy to see why the public works expenditure should be affected. Mr Fisher told the deputation that waited upon him at Pahiatua yesterday with a request that ho would remind tho Minister of Public Works of a "grant for country roads" he evidently had overlooked that " probably some items in tho Estimates had been cut down " in consequence of the strike. But surely we are not to assume that the cost of the strike is going H be GJw~»ied the Public IVorJ^s

Fund or that the transfer of some £600,000 from the Consolidated Fund, which Mr Allen told our reporter the other day was as good as made, going to be withheld. It would be a poor return to the farmers who gave such timely assistance in opening the ports last November to deprive them of the " grant for country roads " which has appeared as one of the specially good things in the Government's policy. Yet, when wo come to think of it, there are indications that something of this kind is contemplated. When speaking at Waiau, for instance, the PostmasterGeneral, who is less impetuous than Mr Fisher, professed profound ignorance of tho intentions of the Government in regard to the Culverdcn-Waiau railway and assured the disappointed settlers that tho turning of the first sod of "Mr Massey's own line" meant nothing at all. Other recent examples of unwonted economy on the part of the Government might bo quoted, and we hope the Prime Minister will be able to throw some light on the subject while he is in Christchurch.