STEAM TO SOUTH AFRICA.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11953, 30 April 1902, Page 4

STEAM TO SOUTH AFRICA.

There is now every reason to expect that within a very short time a regular steam service to South Africa will be established. It goes without saying that it is most advisable that all reasonable encouragement should be promptly given to this trade by our merchants and shippers, for it must be seized upon promptly to be secured at all and may turn out to be a somewhat temporary even though an extremely profitable one. At the same time, it must be remembered that too much should not be expected of the earlier trips of the subsidised service. If there were probabilities of such a line proving remunerative from its initiation there would have been no necessity whatever for State aid; private enterprise would have entered upon it long ago. The certainty that such a trade will take working up, that its development is likely to entail a considerable loss, that when developed it may be at once competed for by companies which took no part in that development, with the fact that the required class of steamships can be profitably employed elsewhere, all these considerations have prevented private companies from voluntarily taking up the route and have compelled the Government to take action lest the obvious opportunity should altogether slip out of our reach. But while we may fairly anticipate that the trade will be some little time in making, it should be the duty of our public officers, as private citizens, to reduce that time as much as possible* Full and up-to-date information concerning the South African markets, and all reasonable facilities for entering it, should be officially provided, while the most stringent care should be taken that no produce which will not maintain our colonial reputation should be assisted to this desirable market by colonial money. "•"