IF THE BRIDGE WERE BROKEN!

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIX, Issue 1514, 9 November 1912, Page 1 (Supplement)

IF THE BRIDGE WERE BROKEN!

BY TOHUXGA, Everybody knows that without roads and bridges, railways and tramways, there would be very little business done in any civiliscd country. If roads were closed, bridges broken, railways laid idle, and tramways put out of action, Now Zealand would be as a man stricken with paralysis, would be as helpless as a new-born babe. There would be no getting from Queenstreet to Epsom for dinner and back for the theatre; no running into market from Papakura and back before dark; no busy shoppers from the suburbs; no workers on the wharves; no milk delivery; no timber trains no transit or traffic of any kind. The Waikato would cease to milk cows excepting for home uses; the Canterbury Plains would leave most of their wheat to rot in the fields; the North of Auckland would use gum for fuel and be unable to drive its fat beasts to the starving multitudes of Auckland. Every industry depends upon transit facilities road, rail, bridge, tramwhich in themselves form a bridge between producer and consumer, enabling thousands and hundreds of thousands to live interdependently and co-operatively upon one another.

As a community New Zealand produces for the British market, deriving its prosperity, its wealth and its opportunities from the payments made by British consumers of its butter, its cheese, its wools, its meat, and its hides. Americans buy its gums and its flax Australians buy its timbers; its breeding stock goes to Argentina and South Africa,; its gold is merged into the gold of the great world as a flowing brook into a brimming river. This trade of New Zealand with Britain and the world is the basis of its industrial and commercial organisation, and depends absolutely and : entirely upon the great transit bridge which arches across the oceans. Supposing that bridge broke ! What would happen? The bridge would break tomorrow if the Empire lost naval supremacy and if ships sailed from New Zealand ports only to be swept up by commercedestroyers and buccaneers. "What would our plight be then? '

It. goes without saying that a country like New Zealand, populated by a million averagely-intelligent, averagelv-healthy and averagely-educated Europeans, could, maintain itself in plenty and with some degree of comfort without any foreign trade. If the rest of the world were destroyed we should have to go without tea, coffee, and cocoa,' but we could have light wines and heavy beers did we allow ourselves to make them. We could have plenty of cheap bread and meat, butter and milk, though clothing would be very expensive and cutAery would be fancifully priced. We should not be able to make economically many labour-saving machines now in common use, but we should use many more than were available in England six hundred years ago. Pins and needles might be luxuries, watches a sign of great wealth, cotton unknown, firearms more than dear. As a compact and self-contained civilisation we should bo comfortable enough, though there would be no trains running between Auckland and Wellington, which might have a few thouwand population, but- certainly would have no more. v . The breaking of ~ our bridge -to London would bo a very different matter, however, to the having of a self-contained and self-dependent civilisation in New Zealand. We do not make our own pins and needles, our own iron and eteel, our own rifles arid saucepans. " ,We do drink tea and coffee, wear cotton and silk, import drugs and chemicals, use machinery based upon the conditions of world-trade. Hundreds of thousands are busy with the production of food-stuffs for the British markets and tens of thousands more in handling exports and imports, in building and maintaining the cities and the railways made necessary by our trading methods. Goods to the value of nearly forty million pounds pass _ annually through our ports. If the bridge broke, if Britain could no longer protect for us the ocean roads, this trade would cease. What would happen if it did? We talk quite easily anout the Balkan War as a very interesting event which concerns us only as spectators. Wo protest to one another of the horrors of war and of the wickedness of the Turk and of the wisdom of being peaceful and not looking I for trouble. We hardly give a thought to what might happen if now or at some other time the British Empire were drawn into the whirlpool and forced to take sides in a great world war. We go on churning butter and selling cotton and building houses Mid making wharves and providing picture theatres as though there was never any doubt about oar cargoes passing safely over the long sea-road to London. But supposing the long sea-road ceased to be sate, became impassable. What if the bridge broke? If we read one morning in the Herald that the British fleet had been sunk in the North Sea, that the Mediterranean squadron had been torpedoed at Malta, that a new explosive had decided the fortunes of war, that the Cape route, the Horn route, the Suez route and the Panama route were in the hands of enemies—what would butter be worth at Hamilton or Wanganui? If a blockade were declared of New Zealand coasts by a paramount naval 'adversary what would wool and timber, meat and hides and flax and tallow bo selling for in Auckland There would no longer be any question of the cost of living, only of the wherewithal to buy. Everything home-grown would be cheap enough—for a time most imported things would be cheap enough—for everybody would be trying to sell and nobody would be easily able to buy —most would be unable to buy at all. For work would cease on the wharves as if by magic. Loading would stop on ships half-laden, on trucks standing at country sidings, on lorries waiting at warehouses. Bills of lading would cease to have their usual value. Agricultural land values would crash downwards. City and suburban properties would become unsalable. Shops would lack customers. Trams would lack passengers. Trains would lack travellers and goods. Only the barest necessaries would be sought after, and these would be hard to get m cities where everybody lives from hand to mouth, depending upon the farmer. The farmer could make his own butter and cheese, could kill cows for food until he could get potatoes and wheat and oats, could have bacon and eggs, arid time to wonder how he could keep his mortgage from crushing him. But the townsman! Who would want

tailored suits or now collars, bonnets or ties, or furniture or jewellery with tho sea-road closed and tho bridge broken ? What need would there he- for Parnell tunnels, or better roads or more wharves, or larger warehouses, or more cottages? Tho •unemployed would be a multitude, too civilised to work for bare rations, and quite satisfied that the Government of the day 1 had done itwhatever " it" is— pur-

Tho breaking of the bridge would be a I catastrophe. New Zealand would become chaotic, prosperity would vanish, and comfort would largely disappear. Banks would have to suspend. Debts could not be collected. Civil servants would be paid in promissory notes, but might find little advantage in that. In a single week, a month, the country would lose more than would have kept the bridge safe for years —which is the lesson to be drawn from the supposition. It does not pay New Zealand or Australia, or any part of the Empire to run any risk of the sea-road being interfered with, of the bridge being broken. It is not only that we might far betifer pay millions for safety tlian lose scores of millions through defeat, but that the suffering and misery of a great suspension of trade would be unconceivably great, while wo can pay for a strong bridge an/ suffering or misery at all, ,