YANKEE DOODLE DOO!

NZ Truth, Issue 119, 28 September 1907, Page 5

YANKEE DOODLE DOO!

NEW ZEALAND RAILWAYS THROUGH AMERICAN SPECTACLES. How the Government Helps the " Backbone." A Tall Tale From the "New York Herald."

One always has 1 to wander away from his own fireside to hear news, and it, therefore, does not come amiss, certainly it does not surprise or startle the ordinary individual when he learns from a Yankee paper what a truly remarkable progressive young country New Zealand is, and how it will m the future just about lick creation. Just to explain what "Truth" is really driving at, it wishes to observe that it possesses . a copy of the " New York Herald," of date Sunday. July 21, of this year, wherein appears a special article, telegraphed from Indianopolis, Indiana, buttering up In a truly marvellous manner New Zealand's railway system. Of course, if it be suggested that the special is an advertisement, the work of an immigrant apent engaged m

KIDDING THE YANK that New Zealand is a second Paradise, we don't think were far off the mark. In love, war and immigration schemes everything is reckoned fair. The lying lucrubations of the immigration agent roi^ht attract fools to the Paradise, and the said fools are not m a position to ascertain how far the truth lies. Here m New Zealand the racket of booming our railways would not work because facts and 1 . ires would soon settle any little argument that might possibly arise. This article, a special article, too, m the "New York Herald," makes amusing reading to those who know anything about them, and as we are told that : — "New. Zealand owns her railroads, both as the constructor of most of them and from absorbing others built by private companies when the Government was " too hard up to build them herself. All but two lines— one a rather important one, and the other a jerkwater running

FROM NOWHERE TO NOWHERE —are owned and operated by the Government, and the-" will be ,add«d to the Government system within the next five years."

That is all very well, and there is nothing to cavill at m those tew casual observations, but there is more, a great deal more, that will not bear investigation. This particular special goes on to observe that our railways advance Government interests. How the immigration agent makes our rail-ways, per special article, at top-notch advertising rates, advance Government interests is told as follows : —

"The Government uses the railroads m many ways to advance Government interests — the interests of all the people, even to the extent of .taking the section ' crews and , construction 'gangs off the railroads m times of heavy harvests and putting them into the fields to help the farmers get m their crops. "It hag used railroad construction as a method of turning bad times into good times, and tramps into property owners and Government revenue yielders by taking the unemployed out of the cities and letting them co-operatively build railroads to ooen up more Government lands, and thus add

ASSETS TO THE GOVERNMENT. It has placed men out on the soil, and has followed them by building steel roads over which they could market their product. Thus the Government has made the people build roads, and the roads enrich the people individually and the Government itself m greater measure. This Government is now continuing this policy. It has now 2200 men at work co-operative! 1^ building: railroads through land the Government owns, and it is settling them on it, and besides creating wealth both by taking these idle men off charity and opening its own waste lands it is also contributing to the common good of the country ' by connecting up cities ami making •transportation more complete."

What "Truth" now wants to know is where on earth* m all this Dominion of ours, the Government, ahvays with its eye on the advancement ol the backbone, ever went to the extent of knocking off gangs of laborers on the railway construction work to help the farmer reap his heavy harvest. Has this any reference to the Main Trunk Muddle, because that's the only work this paper knows of where section crews and construction gangs have been knocked off. Our columns, ever since "Truth" started publication m this country have always dealt with the knocking off of gangs, but it was not to help to bring m harvests. No siree. nothing like that. It has been nothing but muddle and muddle, and if "Truth" was far wrong from the mark, there would have been a lot heard of the matter.

It is recognised pretty well the world over that the Americans have got the best railway system on earth, oven though the Rockefellers and the capitalistic crows do get secret rebates and are rotten to the core, vet the immigration aeent reckons New Zealand better than the Yankee system, and explains m a column of closely-printed matter, how

have moved so fast, to improve the railway stock. But the Government railways have led m the reduction of rates and m policies of treating the big and little alike— in fact, if anything, giving preference to the small shipper. The GovernTnent also regulates the other two private roads by inspection, has a hand m their operation, and sees that they deal

FAIRLY WITH ALL SHIPPERS. To those who are much concerned as to whether or not there would be any recourse for damage and delay against the Government if it owned the railways, it is well to state that the Government railway here can be sued and be collected from on judgment. . It stands m the same relation to the Government as a private company, charging the Government for all services rendered, even to carryin"- mails, and beiug taxed the same as any private concern. It is, indeed, a rosy picture and argument for Government ownership of railroads, but it is only the one side." Which is very nice, of course, but anything can be said m an advertisement which is paid for through the nose. "Truth" is not going to say anything against New Zealand railways. What it wants to emphasise is the damned nonsense of the Government so far helping the farmer as to knock off section crews or construction gangs to help bring m the harvest, etc' In this a new and novel idea of explaining to the Yankees that farm hands can get plenty 'of work m New Zealand, ar.<i if it is so, then the immigration agent is not worth shucks as an agent. Anyhow, "Truth" .just draws attention to the "gas" that is finding way into the Yankee press. It certainlY will be news io the New Zealand backbone, who is eternally, crying out for hands anri can't get them.

IT HELPS THE PRODUCER

with its cheap freights and excursion rates and all that, which, of course, nobody can say naught against. Then there is a kind of peroration, which is as follows : — "SATISFIED WITH MANAGEMENT. As for operation and management, all New ZeaJand people seem to be very well satisfied. No one charges gross dishonesty, and though ' the railroads do not sacrifice human life for the sake of speed, they' manage to get. over about twenty-five miles an hour. There are few accidents. The equipment is somewhat primitive—a cross between the English compartment and the American open car. It is said that the private companies have set a competitive pace that has forced the Government whioh without competition would not