NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19797, 18 November 1927, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

RAILWAY ACCIDENTS. Attention was recently directed to the large number of accidents, principally derailments, that had occurred on the New Zealand railways, apparently as a result of mechanical defects in the rolling stock or the track. A similar catalogue of "accidents of mechanism" on the British railways was compiled by the Times in commenting on the derailment of the second engine and four of the coaches of the Aberdeen to London express early in October. In the early days of August, there was a minor accident to the Cornish-Riviera express; the leading pair of wheels of the engine bogie left the rails. A little later the front axlo of the tender of the Irish mail broke. Five days later a Margate express was derailed. This accident was attrihuted to a subsidence of the track following upon heavy rain. Then came the disaster to the Deal express at Sevenoaks, as to which the findings are still awaited. Not many days afterwards a Cornish excursion train broke in two, and a similar mishap occurred to an express goods train on the, North Wales line, the drawbar of a 30-ton waggon snapping and derailing the waggon. In addition, there were one or two other derailments coming within the categoiy of minor mishaps; but in nearly all these cases the accidents themselves were of such a character that in slightly altered circumstances the consequences might have boen terrible. A sequence of accidents like these is, of course, extraordinary, the Times remarks; and inasmuch as they happened, not on one railway system alone, but on three, one railway company alone does not bear the responsibility. But all should piofit fiom the lessons that experts will draw from them. SLUM LANDLORDS. Discussing the problem of slums, in an address in London, the Minister of Health, Mr. Neville Chamberlain, said he had often protested against the idea that the problem of the slum 3 was mei'ely one of demolition and reconstruction. It was much more complicated and a much more human problem than that. They could only solve the slum problem by exorcising the slum spirit and by educating both landlord and tenant, and in his view the education of the landlord ought to come first. He did not hesitate to say that one of the most potent causes of the creation of slums in the past was to be found in faulty management, which took no account of the mental arid moral attributes of the tenant, offered no encouragement to tenants to fulfil their responsibilities, and made no distinction between the careless, dirty, and destructive tonant and the tenant who, in spite of overwhelming difficulties, tried to keep his house clean and in good repair. If the owners of such property would combine to adopt an enlightened, discriminating, sympathetic, and scientific system of management, they would do much to, raise the standard of comfort of their tenants, they would not bo troubled so much with arrears, and they would obtain a less precarious and a sounder return on their investments. They might even render unnecessary some at least of those costly and dilatory schemes of slum clearance, which in too many cases in the past had resulted in transferring slum-dwellers to the adjoining neighbourhood, where overcrowding had again arisen and led to fresh slums. The key of the slum problem was to be found in management, and no scheme that did not ensure good management was going to have permanent success.

THE BRITISH JURY SYSTEM

A suggestion of professional jurymen, with certain qualifications of experience and education, and paid salaries by the State, was advocated at the conference of the Law Society in Sheffield. It evoked a chorus of disapproval from the loading newspapers. The Daily Telegraph recalled that in 1913 Lord Mersey's committee examined the proposal to pay juries, and rejected it, while recommending an allowance of 2s a clay for food and reasonable travelling expenses where necessary. It was unanimous in treating jury service as a civic duty for which there should be no remuneration. "The nation would not consent to trial by judge alone replacing trial by judge and jury in all cases," the London Evening News observed. "A jury is a very rough-and-ready and hazardous instrument for establishing guilt or ipnocence or for assessing damages,, but people cling to it because men and women cling to'the idea, once, no doubt, substantial enough, that it is a good thing to be tried, or to have one's rights assessed by one's peers. While that idea subsists juries will continue to bo composed of twelve good men and true, and no higher intellectual qualifications will be demanded of them." "The scope of the juryman's influence is clearly defined," the Evening Standard remarked. "He is there to judge on questions of fact, to use the common sense of the common man in determining which of two conflicting statements is the more likely to be true. Moreover, his very dislike of the duty is one of the best guarantees of his fitness to discharge it. Dragged into court by the hairs of his head, reluctant and complaining, he has no interest, either Eersonal or professional, in the matter e is called on to decide. Boredom ii a sound basis for impartiality, much mora so than an instructed technical interest.'*