TRAM CONCESSIONS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVI, Issue 8180, 23 July 1912, Page 5

TRAM CONCESSIONS.

(To the Editor, "N.E. Time?.'') Sir, — In vour issue of Tuesday last you set out Ihe framvvi.v eaucc.-sionft—Work-ers’ . tickets, .kil.t-TS: school tickets, X-’i'.U'-i-, pcnny-liailpeiiny tickets, .iltbod; and various emice.-v.-ion tickets, -Child as slated bv the tramway board of management; and you say that "according to tills retiii-ii "the aggregate value of all concessions made during the time the cars have heen running is C.T1.290.’’ But 1 have looked in vain for even an approximate i.-lunate of what, as against conclusions to the workers, 1 might cull "concessions to the shirkers,’’ tiiat is to say. increased land values produced by the tramways hut allowed to go into private pockets instead of being taxed into the public coffers to pay for tho tramways that have made the values. You quote “an authority.’’ who blindly attributes the tramway losses, not to these concessions to the shirkers, which the tramway hoard apparently cannot yet see. but to the concessions to the workers

and the general public. And this “authority,’’ save the mark! says that “the present fares are too cheap’"; that "to carry a passenger three and a half miles for twopence is absurdly cheap’’; that “tho present system of workers’ concessions, whereby a .navvy, may travel seven miles for i’ourper.ee. is ridiculous’’; and that ‘’many of the people who obtain tho ena-ce-sions are earning as much money as clerks and tradesmen, who have to pay lull fares, etc.” But that is an argument for extending the concession to clerks and to tradesmen, not for abolishing it, ami the deficit (should bo mot by rating unimproved hand values. In fact, as 1 urged in a previous letter, these concessions should in justice be extended until tram fares are abolished, and tho tramways, like tho elevators in r.n office building, should be paid for out of the increased rentals duo to the tramways. The navvy, tho clerk, and the tradesman, do earn what they get, but the more landowner pockets the tramway and other earnings of the public as a whole. If wo make the good-for-nothing landmonopolist hand over to the public their tramway earnings and other earnings, we can readily run the trams free and do a great deal more for tho people that we can never afford to do so long as wc allow tho land-monopolist, to pocket the public earnings.—l am., etc..

ARTHUR WITHY.

Leviathan Hotel, Dunedin, July 18th,