THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, JUNE 27, 1914. THE MEANING OF RAILWAYS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LI, Issue 15646, 27 June 1914, Page 8

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. SATURDAY, JUNE 27, 1914. THE MEANING OF RAILWAYS.

There was no more important sentence in the Speech with which His Excellency the Governor opened Parliament than that which declared that " tho remarkablo growth of settlement and rapid expansion of tho business of the country during recent years have convinced my Ministers of tho necessity for a strong and vigorous policy of public works construction, and speedy completion of more important lines of railway now in progress." The sentence shows a curious invorsion of the usual conception of railways. In other countries, railways aro regarded as a cause, not a consequence, of settlement and expansion. However, there is no need to quarrel over the Ministerial conception provided it is sound on tho vital necessity of providing railways as rapidly as the other obligations of tho Dominion permit. Tho proposition that a vigorous public works policy is essential to the development of a now country is nowadays not challenged, but New Zealand has failed to give practical application to the principle in the same degree as several other now countries. It is useful, thcreforo, to consider what have been the results in states where railway construction has been prosecuted on a scale that dwarfs New Zealand efforts- The | United States affords the earliest, and one of the best, examples of j the railway being used as a veritable pioneer of civilisation and talisman of prosperity. Between 1862 and 1872 grants of land were made to tho Union Pacific, Central Pacific, and other connecting corporations for railways from' the Missouri River to the Pacific, amounting in all to nearly 33,000,000 acres, and in the same period large loans wero made by the general government for this enterprise. Various grants were made to other lines, transcontinental and middle western. Between 1850 and 1871 Congress allotted about 155,000,000 acres of land for railway construction, but not all theso grants were perfected. It is estimated that between 1868 and 1873 over £100,000,000 was invested in the construction of western railways and 'about 28,000 miles of line had been added. The commitments, private and national, were truly gigantic, but the return was immeasurably greater. Tho plains of the far west had up till Chen" supported only bisons, but when the railway came tho bison gave place to the rancher and the wheat grower, and new mining areas of great wealth wero opened up in the Rocky Mountains. Between 1860 and 1870 the population of tho north central group of states (engaged chiefly in grain growing) increased over 42 per cent., and in the next decade by 34 per cent., a total addition to tho population in two decades of 8,000,000. Between 1870 and 1860 a territory equal in extent. to France and Great Britain com bined ras added to the cultivated area of the United States- In the same de<. <*e tho north central s'utea increased 'ucir improved land f m 78,500,000 acreß to over 136,800,000. In. 1860 these states raised 95,000,000 bushels of wheat; in ,1870 nearly 195,000,000; in 1880, 329,000,000 bushels. Startling as aro these records of expansion they have been paralleled within recent yoars by Canada, and the method was precisely the same. During tho past decade some 17,000 miles of line have been constructed, giving a total to date of 36,000 miles. To record the expansion in terms of the human factor, Canada gained by immigration between 1897 and 1912 more than double the present population of New Zealand, half of the total being from the British Isles. In 1897 tho annual immigration was 21,000; in 1912 it was 354,000. In 30 years tho British Isles have contributed two million men and women to tho development of Canada. Most of them have gone to the great prairie of tho west, which until the locomotive began to race over it was closed to mankind, just as areas of the East Coast and the Urewera are to-day as effectually closed to settlement as if they did not exist. Wherever the railway has threaded the prairie it has carried profitable cultivation, villages have grown round the station buildings, and cities round the junctions.

It would be easy to multiply the examples of railways spelling national prosperity, but one case in particular has interest for New Zealand. Railway construction has made 4 .he Argentine our competitor in the export oi frown meat, just as good transit faciues have made Denmark an exporter of butter of ! the best quality. Thirty years ago the Argentine railways wore capitalised at i 18,680,600; now hundreds of millions aro invested. British capital alone reaches £200,000,000, and 1000 miles of new construction are being added yearly. In 1885 all tlie railways in Argentina transported cargo amounting to a little over 3,000,000 tons; now they carry nearly 40,000,000 tons annually. Roads are bad in the Argentine, and bo strictly dees settlement depend on the railways that the agricul-

tural zone is considered to extend! no more than fifteen miles from a station. It is only since the railways reached the plains that Argentina began to export food. Now she supplies a-quarter of the food imported into Great Britain, and a-quartor of a million immigrants aro arriving yearly to increase the production. In ten years the export value of live stock products has risen from £23,000,000 to £36,000,000, and agricultural products from £21,000,000 to £53,000,000. The valno of exports of chilled and frown beef has increased from £i ' ,000 to over £6,000,000 a yeari. .1896 the area under cultivation was thirteen million acres; now it is nearly fifty million acres. With these examples before them, and money cheap and abundant, Ministers need not hesitate to give practical effect to their conviction that a vigorous constructional policy is necessary. It is obvionsly impossible for us to rival the activities of the American countries of vast area, but we can certainly do much more than we have done. The Canadian railway mileage for some time increased at the rate of 30 per cent, yearly. From April, 1912, to March, 1913, only 52 miles of line wero opened for traffic in New Zealand, increasing the total length of the system by barely 2 per cent.