EDITORIALS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 957, 4 July 1890, Page 27

EDITORIALS.

The story of the San Francisco service is not a story of success, and now the servics is threatened with the hind of failure which we all understand when we write “ Finis ” on a tombstone. There is a possibility in its favour referred to in the Financial Statement, which may be the only hope of the friends of the service. Of that more anon. Let us first be historical. In the beginning there were great hopes. They were inspired in the breasts of the trading community by a dapper little gentleman who arrived here in a steamboat which looked verv much like Noah’s Ark fitted with engines of a kind discarded as obsolete'by old Noah’s predecessors. To complete the illusion, the little gentleman himself, when dressed up in his high narrow-brimmed black hat, his long-skirted fiat-lying black coat, and his phenomenal little long-

pointed. einuy boots, strongly reminded us of one of the denizens cf the Ark. It seemed a miracle that he should ever have got across the Pacific in the old tub which his family was proud to own. Therefore we thought he must have been preserved for a purpose. That purpose, he informed us, was the establishment, bv means of a mail service running between Auckland and San Francisco, of commercial relations between us and the United States. The advantages of

these relations were to be colossal. need not recapitulate them. Sufficient that we believed our young friend, and established the service. Since then we have paid cheerfully and through the nose, and the service has, as a service, been improved. So much has it been improved that it giveß every satisfaction. The colossal advantages, however, which we were promised have not come to us. Although the youug man from Noah’s Ark had the secret of touching the springs of all the newspapers of the land the right way, and although the newspapers all prophesied accordingly, and the politicians all said “Amen,’’especially the politicians of the North, still nothing came. Tear after year we have waited, and year after year we have failed to see any commercial results. We doubt if nine persons out of every teu thousand Americans know where New Zealandis. Of late, however, a difference has been made in the development of the flax trade. The best market is ths American, and the duty has been lately taken off. Moreover, a very proper feeling has grown up that we ought to be in touch with a great community of sixty millions of English-speaking people. In arts, manufactures, the working out of social problems, the development of the democratic idea,

we must necessarily be the better for the experience of these sixty millions of our race. Further, the stream of all-round travel ought to have a branch to include our country. It is difficult to estimate the exact value of the tourist traffic, but the loss of it nevertheless mußt be considerable, especially as the years roll on. These are the reasons why the average New Zealander believes in the San Francisco service.

But, as we have said, the service is threatened with extinction. It has had for some years two allies in New iL- TT.'.'I 1 1 kJUUKU IT atco «uu iUd united States. The first has been of the practical order that subscribes, other of the unsubstantial kind iCpit promises. During the last month or so the promising ally has renewed his promise more vigorously than ever; within the last few days the paying ally haß withdrawn his support. If the Americana fail, as u*uai, the service is necessarily doomed. Our first duty is to the Direct Service, whose advantages outweigh those of the San Francisco as not less than

twenty to one. If our American coating, finding themselves in danger of losing the service, make good their promises after all, the San Francisco service will of course go on. But without that subsidy w.- cannot keep up two services and must elect to support the line of .-leamships that c-arry our commerce. J

There is a mystery about this ocean carrying of nn.ib which we confess we do not understand. Mr HeunikerHeaton, finding himself lately on board a steamer of the Orient Line, amused himself by calculating that tho Company was carrying him on that voyage for L3O less than his own bulk in letters, though, supplying him with food, accommodation, and attention, noneof which things the letters reauired. UTA • aVi B'nw-rn ~ tl ;*~—*■•■** »' w £%!OU VUU& QUIT

Government and postal authorities, after declaring, with a solemnity worthy of their very last breath, that the reduction of the ocean postages to the basis was absolutely impossible, are announcing that they see their way to do it quite comfortably. In these facts we suspect there lurks another; that steamship owners may be glad to carry our mails for anything we choose to pay them; anything reasonably Ipss, that is to say* than the heavy subsidies of the pash The fact, if tact it be, may afford hope to the San Francisco service even in the worst event.