The Oamaru Mail. THURSDAY, JANUARY 8, 1903.

Oamaru Mail, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8091, 8 January 1903, Page 2

The Oamaru Mail. THURSDAY, JANUARY 8, 1903.

The Auckland members and certain citizens meb the other day and urged upon the Government the necessity of pushing on the North Island Main Trunk 'Railway and the Helensville North lines. Of course, those who railed against the Government because of their alleged borrowing propensities were at the meeting and insisted upon these works being completed at once. Perhaps they will demonstrate how it is to be done without more money and, therefore,, without further borrowing. Already the Government are carrying on these lines as fast as the moneyvoted by Parliament will admit and to devote more money to them would mean the deprivation of other railways which Parliament has also ordered to be prosecuted. If these northern Parliamentary agitators only had some sense of the fitness of things, how mean they would feel when they found themselves being driven by constituents to insist on a more lavish and rapid .expenditure of loan money, seeing that they preached to the electors about the extravagant borrowing of the Government, and thus misled them for the sake of getting votes as something exceptionally superior as economists. There are other reasons why these railways cannot be carried on with greater vigor. The labor requirements of the farmers would not admit of more men being absorbed on public works; and, indeed, it will probably be necessary to release during harvest a number of the men already employed, so that they may be available when the season's operations are at high pressure. We have no antipathy to the northern lines. They ought to have been constructed long ago ; but, if they are to be got out of hand expeditiously, there must be a cessation of that hypocritical cry for economy in which the advocates of the lines have joined in order to further their political scheming,