OUR RAILWAYS £23,305. TO THE BAD IN FOUR WEEKS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9084, 19 June 1888, Page 6

OUR RAILWAYS £23,305. TO THE BAD IN FOUR WEEKS.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—Mr. Vaile's terse and very telling letter of only ten lines on the above is calculated to carry dismay into the hearts of the people of this greatly-depressed community. £23.305 our railways have gone to the bad in four weeks! Shades of Stevenson and Arkwright, what are we coming to? Mr. Vaile says "it is madness to persist in a system that leads to_ such results." It is worse, it is drivelling idiotcy. Mr. Vaile speaks with authority. He stated not long ago on a public platform that no one either in New Zealand nor out of New Zealand could teach him anything as regards railway management, and the proper methods to make them remunerative, and the jolly crowd believe him. I myself was very much surprised at this statement, as I had serious doubts as to the perfectibility of Mr. Vaile's schemes. My idea being that until the land was held by the people and not by landlords that the latter would reap the ontire benefit of cheap transit and not the poople, and Mr. Vaile's scheme dealt mainly with cheap transit and not cheap freights. But after the meeting (a political one) to which I have referred, where Mr. Vaile announced his railway infallibility, I was talking to a knot of ordinary levelheaded citizens who had also been present at it, and hazarded a remark that the statement made by Mr. Vaile was a very bold one. I was at once jumped upon, and told that he really did know more on these subjects than any other person in existence. I said, "Do you mean that Mr. Vaile is capable and has the ability to go straight Home and at once assume command of, say the Midland Counties Railway ? " "Oh yes," said one, " quite capable, not only to manage one, but all of them if necessary." I quoted the couplet, for want of a better argument,

" And still the wonder prew, That one small head could carry all he knew."

But touching Mr. Vaile's last epistle to the nation, in which he says, " any comment of his would only spoil the telling eloquence of the figures," a summary way of damning us financially for ever and ever that is quite too cruel, because he is infallible on this subject, and he knows. Could ho not> have eased it ofT a little bit ? Is there no hope ? Twenty-three thousand pounds odd to the bad in four weeks ! His letter, I don't know why, forcibly brought to my recollection the story of the addle-headed old dame who, rousing up her servant girl on Monday morning, said, "Come, get up Biddy, here it is seven o'clock Monday morning, to-morrow will be Tuesday, the next day Wednesday, hero's half the weok gone and no work done yet." Mr. Vaile is quite correct as to it being Monday morning, that is comparing the railway revenue for April, 1887, with April, ISBS, there is an apparent decrease of the amount he mentions, but it is not Wednesday morning yet, and we are not entirely ruined. The decrease is really only an apparent decrease, for this reason : The returns for April, 1887, represent 30 days ; that is, from the Ist to the 30th of the month, both days inclusive. Tho return for April, 1888, is for 28 days only, from the Ist to the 28th, both days inclusive. Therefore the comparison is not a fair one, as there are two more days in the big return for 1887 than for this year. Then, again, the two extra days for last year were very important days, the Ist and 2nd of April, ISB7, fell on Friday and Saturday, as also did the 29th and 30th of the same month, and these are the two days of the week in which tho principal portion of our revenue is collected, as all weekly ledger accounts throughout the colony, representing several thousands of pounds, are paid in on one of these days each week. Mr. Vaile will see that his infallibility this time is ab fault, and he has unearthed a veritable mare's nest. As a friend I would strongly urge him in future when the " cacoethes railway scribendi " is heavy on him, to submit his manuscript to someone upon whom he can depend, and who is in " the know," before he rushes with it to the newspaper office. Times are bad enough, goodness knows, but we do not want our prospects made worse by the production of mares' nests, even though these nests have been discovered by infallibility.—l am, &c, A Man in New Zealand who Knows More About Railway Matteks than Mb. Vaile.