THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. FRIDAY, MARCH 8, 1889.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVI, Issue 9306, 8 March 1889, Page 4

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. FRIDAY, MARCH 8, 1889.

The unflagging persistence with which the Wellington Post maintains its assaults on the San Francisco service is quite phenomenal in journalism. If it were possible for an impersonal thing like a newspaper to be afflicted with monomania, we might fancy that our metropolitan contemporary had " a bee in its bonnetbut in default of such a hypothesis we must conclude that some powerful and ever vigilant influence is at work which keeps this particular newspaper to its allotted task. It does not require any incitement to start the Post on the familiar tirade ; in fact, in the present case it takes occasion from the general silence on the subject, to conclude that all the more deep and deadly is the conspiracy that is steadily working. It has good reason to believe, it tells us, that a "strong and determined effort will be made when Parliament meets to rescind the determination arrived at last session against a renewal of the San Francisco mail contract." We accept the assurance of our contemporary that this is so, although the general silence on the subject had led us to a different conclusion, and to suppose that people generally had left that question to the silent evolution of events. The vigorous bugle blast of the 1 Post, however, reminds us that the session is approaching, and that this question will in all probability be keenly debated, perhaps at an early stage of proceedings. It is to be regretted that the opponents of this service will persist in bringing in the claims of the New Zealand Shipping Company, and of the Shaw, Savill, and Albion Company, whose claims on the gratitude of the colony for valuable service rendered nobody desires to disparage; and to whose prosperity in their particular sphere of duty every good colonist wishes well. As mail-carrying companies they have been simply a failure, and the experience of the past affords us no prospect that they can in the future be anything else. More ( than this, though the subsidy paid the direct steamers is a valuable consideration, there is not the least doubt that the effort to convert them into mail carrying steamers is injurious to their usefulness and detrimental to the dividends of their owners. It is quite unnecessary at this time of day to discuss the possession by the San Francisco service of the one essential requisite of a mail service, namely, rapidity of transit. Even tor the accommodation of the remotest South, the San Francisco service has the advantage by several days, while in certain parts it mounts to weeks. I his point has been proved by the indisputable logic of recognised facts, and the best reply that has been made or can be made to it is that a few _ days of gain in the receipt or transmission of correspondence is not of material

mail service ver*? a™! ~tt f L eto a ste r r»oasftfJS xng. The considerations prei37' mg. Ihe considerations favour of the directrteamerJa?JgainS the San Francisco service,. are £ they are superior cai-go-carr eSVS no one disputes; and that, theX they should be encouraged and 25 tamed by subsidy from the nuSf revenue. But the principle of ft dising trading vessels as such is U niS' sally regarded as an immoral priS and its application is only defencWß a primitive condition of trade » j where the traffic is so small that it mil be expedient to give a subsidy fZ a time to prevent such t radii steamers from actually ceasing P," 3 in such conditions it is maintained U some that it is immoral ; but noboK could or does maintain on general! recognised principles that a subsid? should be given to trading vessels, such, when the traffic is such that the 8 would continue their trade whether subsidy were given to them or not Th* idea that public money should be riven to an established trading firm merely tn augment the dividends of its s hL holders, is an idea that would ent*>" into the head of no sensible man to uphold. And yet this is the onlv ground on which the giving of a sub sidy to these direct steamers is main" tained. As mail boats, they do nothing for the colony which is not better done by the San Francisco service by the Peninsular and Oriental and the Orient lines, and which would not be done by these equally well if tut direct steamers were withdrawn Ac trading steamers they are in no' v/av entitled to subvention from the State except on such grounds as would war' rant the Government in giving n suK sidy to the Woollen Factory at llosgiel or Kaiapoi or Petone or Onehunga But we go further than this. Not only are they not entitled to subsidy as mail-boats which they do not earn nor as trading ships which would be unprincipled and immoral; but to give them a subsidy in a joint capacity is a wrong to the country. For it would be a wrong to the country to pay them public money for services which they do not render, and far greater wrong if the giving of a subsidy to them renders their service less effective and valuable to the community. And this is exactly what it does. For the necessity of keeping punctual hours for departure is the principal cause _ why these direct steamers do not visit all the chief ports of the colony, taking in and delivering cargo in the manner most convenient and conducive to the interests of producers and importers all over the colony. Instead of this, they are compelled by the force of circumstances to make one point the place of arrival and departure ; goods for shipment must be transmitted by coasting steamers, with all the contingent handling and expenses, in order to reach the Royal Mail Steamers moving under the force of the exigencies of the postal service. Space that would otherwise be available for chilled as well as frozen chambers is devoted to passenger requirements, and generally the attempt to turn these steamers into "greyhounds " of the ocean is militating most severely against their usefulness in meeting the commercial requirements of the colony ; while the extravagant decorations and fitting them up for passengers as royal mail'boats, and the wasteful consumption of coal in driving them beyond their proper speed, are the direct cause of very heavy charges for fares and freights. All this constitutes a distinct injury to the public interest, and a wrong done to the community, in that money is taken from the public revenue in order to pay them for less efficiently serving the country. But there is looming in the distance what will probably give practical proof of our conclusions. For these direct steamers are threatened with, a rerv formidable rival "in the "Imperial and Colonial Trading Company, with a capital of a million sterling, which is to build steamers specially fitted for carrying frozen meat and general produce, and making the passage in lifty days. We should be sorry to see anything injure our direct steamers, which have done so much to develop the colonyeven if they join with shipping rings to raise the freights ; nor are we responsible for the creation of this formidable rival. We only note the matter as a " coming struggle," _in which the conductors of our existing services will require to have their hands untied. When such a conflict comes, if it does come, the subsidy for mails, however enlarged, would be a sorry compensation to our existing steamers for the disabilities of being bound to times and places; while the gain in time of four or five days in steaming would be a small set-off to passengers for heavy fares. Geography wars with the direct steamers in their efforts to combat distance, and though the new management of the service is supposed to promise better dividends, it is not to be ignored that the profitlessness of past proceedings has been largely owing to the attempt to fight against nature and geography. It is simply the narrowness of selfishness—a quality which usually overreaches itself—that can prompt these companies and their partisans to try to grasp these mail subsidies. If they are to be at all, thev ' pertain to the carriers who can really do a mail service ; and while rapidity is incontestably with the San Francisco route, those steamers voyaging by the Capes of Good Hope and Horn shoul be content with the -magnificent ana lucrative service that comes naturally to their hand, the efficiency and profit of which will be amazingly enhanced whenever they cease to long tor tne subsidies to which they can in no become legitimately entitled.