NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 20111, 23 November 1928, Page 12

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

TRANSPORT OF GOODS. A time-table of goods* trains run by tho London and North-Eastern Railway Company is tho first publication of its kind to be issued in Great Britain, though the innovation was previously made in France by the Paris, Lyons and Mediterranean Railway. It is specially intended for the guidance of traders, but it will also prove useful to everyone who may havo occasion to send Roods of any kind to any part of the country. Tho time-taVle will show the latest hours at which consignments can ho accepted on earti day at the place of departure, and will indicate the time when they will be normally available for delivery at their destination. Tho hour of arrival is not to be given, but only a statement that the trader will find his consignment at the railway yard "next morning" or on "the second morning." At the present time there is a regular daily service of express goods trains familiar to traders who arc concerned in certain classes of traffic. There are, besides, special trains, such as the fish train from Grimsby and the Scottish meat train, which leaves Aberdeen early in tho afternoon and arrives in London shortly after midnight. Last June the L.N.E.It. instituted a fast goods servico between London and certain towns in England and Scotland, and they now find it necessary to run these services in duplicate. A similar service is also being run from the important towns in Scotland to London and other centres in England and Wales Commenting on tho usefulness of tho time-table, tho Times remarked that it is 0110 of those reforms which havo been pronounced impracticable, and to which tho railways, swearing they would ne'er consent, have consented, only to find them quite simple and easily managed. For their own traffic purposes they must run goods trains f.o some sort of timo-table, though it may bo rnoro elastic than thoso which govern passenger trains; and to give the public information about goods trains :s not. to make a very serious rent in the veil of official secrecy.

MODERN CAPITALISM. "A modern capitalist cannot- help, even if he would, allowing his wealth to bo used over and over again by other people,'it is actually to his interest to do so, and so far from levying a tribute upon production ho helps to supply tho great motive force which drives forward," says Mr. I'. E. Roberts, viceprovost of Worcester College, Oxford, in a letter to fho Times, discussing typical Labour views on tho subject. " Tho flourishing economic State requires great reservoirs of capital—of accumulated wealth seeking investment (at a low rate if (ho accumulation is big enough), which can bo ceaselessly poured into the stream that drives tho mill wheels of production Tho most prosperous country in the world, America, the country where the remuneration of tho worker both in nominal and real wages stands highest, is also the counti'y where there are tho most gigantic fortunes and where the taxation of wealth is lowest. According to the basic theory underlying all the doctrines promulgated at Birmingham, this is entirely inexplicable. The only lesson Labour leaders aro inclined to dcduco from America is tho advantage of high wages. But Americans did not begin, in the air, so to speak, by putting up wages to an unprecedented height and waiting hope fully for tho result. Wages aro high in the United States simply because, under an economic system moro individualistic than ours, less permeated by Socialism, and less weighed down by taxation, the profits of tho economic machine working at high pressuro have been so great that

two masters aro running after one man, and employers have to bid ono against tho other for tho labour they want. As tho antithesis to (his, the rapid growth of Socialistic administration since tho war, and tho confiscatory taxation in which we liavo indulged, ought, on Labour principles, to liavo brought us within sight of the millennium. Wo know that tho reverse is tho case; and tho sinister thing is that all tho great productive industries, coal, iron, cotton, shipbuilding, aro stagnant or declining."