THE OTOGO DAILY TIMES SATURDAY, JUNE 17, 1899.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 11452, 17 June 1899, Page 4

THE OTOGO DAILY TIMES SATURDAY, JUNE 17, 1899.

The support which the general public lends to the efforts of the Otago Central Railway League to secure.more generous recognition from the Government of the claims of the line whereby, it is hoped, Dunedin and Lake Wanaka will some day be connected is not encouraging. The attendance at the annual meetings of the League is generally small, and from this the argument may justly be drawii that there is not that amount of interest taken in the operations and objects of the league which there should be. The explanation may probably be found in the fact that only a small proportion of the population of Dunedin has yet travelled through Central Otago. Added to this we shall not be far wrong in saying that,those who have gone as far as Middlemarch or- Hyde by rail have, in ignorance of the fertility of the country that lies beyond and of its great capabilities in various directions, derived from the unpromising character of the lin for the first 40 miles of its construction an entirely erroneous notion of its advantages." Certainly the importance of the undertaking is but imperfectly appreciated by the bulk of the inhabitants of Dunedin. They do not yet realise the fact that there are

stores of wealth awaiting development in Central Otago. The rapid strides* which the dredging industry is making are now, however/ forcibly directing attention to the productiveness of the interior of the provincial district. Over half a million of Otago money is, as we showed a few days; agoj already at stake in that industry, >nd that amount will be considerably increased before the end | -of the year. - The want of a rapid means of communication.- tjith the dredging centres and the- costliness'•' of carriage by road are under the present conditions seriously hampering 'the industry. An accident to a working part of a dredge already in operation .involves delay for days, perhaps even weeks, in consequence of the difficulties with which the conveyance;of a duplicate part from the manufacturers in Dunedin are at-, tended, and the transport to the claims of new dredges as they are constructed is both a slow and an expensive process. There must be hundreds of townspeople, holders of shares in dredging ventures, whose interests are now- bound up with those of Central Otago in a way that a few years' ago was undreamt of. Upon the sympathies of all' who 'have embarked capital in these, enterprises the Railway League1 has . a strong and a direct claim. ■; The successful development of the dredging industry may, however, reasonably be expected to lead to a large-increase of settlement in the interior, with the- result that there "will be, in the .words of the mayor, not only a healthy gold-mining boom, but also an equally healthy', land settlement boom. No violent'flight of imagination is necessary to picture the benefits that will then accrue to Dunedin. The city as a whole will reap a golden advantage. Tn this aspect of tho question, the entire community is deeply interested in the prosecution of the Otago Central railway to, at least, a point at which it will bo of real assistance in tho furtherance of the development of the resources of'the interior. We are inclined to think that if Auckland was similarly circumstanced to Dunedin the inhabitants of that city would with a common voice demand greater consideration from the Government of the day, just'as they have by the united froni thoy have displayed wrung from the Premier the promise that their port will not lose its monopoly as tho solo port call in this colony of the San Francisco mail steamers. Jf a similar degree of insistence were exhibited in Dunedin in reference to the claims of the Otago Central railway as, has been shown in Auckland invreferencc to tho mail it is impossible to avoid the coiiclasion that the lino would have received- better treatment from successive ■ Governments. No Government has done justice to the line. One Government has treated it as badly as another. It has certainly not been acknowledged, though the mayor assumes it hat, that the present' Government with the means at its command has been dealing fairly with tho line. His "Worship is easily satisfied if he for one is prepared to make any such acknowledgment. All that has been required, he says, has been to keep the Government up to the mark in the matter of expenditure. We shall show, however, that notwithstanding the ceaseless vigilance of the Railway League and the constant representations of Otago members on the subject, the Government has, excepting for one year only, regularly under-spent the appropriations for the line. The following comparative table, in which are shown the' appropriations for and the expenditure on the Otago Central line in each year since the present Government assumed office, will be instructive to the mayor: — Appropriation. Expenditure; £■ ■■ £ 1891-2 '•■ .. , . 15,000' ■ 11,580 1892-3 ..... ,30,000 ■ 20,516 1593-4 .. -15,000 33,060 ■■ 1894-5 ■■■... 45,000 28,130 1895-6 .. 25,000 29,176 1896-7- ■■■ •■.", ■-, 30,000 ■'-'■ - 25,237 1897-8 . \\... .'30,000 .■ ; 21,281' The figures for IS9B-9 are not yet available, but Mr J. A. Millar has supplied the Railway League with figures which warrant the assumption that £10,000 out of a vote "of £40,000 has been allowed to lapse. If tho figures for the other seven years of the Government's tenure of office are.taken, however, it will be seen that 'in only one year was the appropriation exceeded. In each of the other six years the vote has heen to a greater or less extent under-spent— in IS9I-5 to the amount of £1G.570, and in the preceding year to the tune \ of £11,940. These figure* sliow that the net amount of appropriation under-spent between 1891-2 and 1897-8 was £51,01 d, included in which'was a "sum of £5000 transferred two years ago to thcMarton to Te Awamutu line,.-. and another sum of JC3OOO transferred to the vote for additions to open lines. When the sum of £10,000 understood to represent the lapsed vote last year is. added to this amount of £51,014, it will be seen that I Mr Bathgato was perfectly justified at Thursday nights meeting m asserting that if the portions of the votes that have lapsed during, the past «.ovo,i or eight years had been expended on the line they / would have carried it well into vhe Manuherikia Y.illoy. The line has not been treated fairly in the past. That cannot now be helped, however much it may be" deplored*. What is needful now/is to see, if possible, that it is treated with a greater measure of justice in the future. _ .We. believe that on' the whole the prcspectf of "securing this desired end^will be increased by the adoption of the suggestion which Mr Millar made to the effect that for the present the objective point to be aimed at by the League should be Clyde. The,construction of the line from the present terminus--tb Clyde will be for the most part of an easy description. There are two sections "'which wu\l give some trouble, but'they, are" of short-length. When the line reaches Clyde it will have reached the heart of "Central Otago —a busy centre of the dredging industry and iihe core of .a considerable tr»>ct of country that is. admirably fitted for fruit-growing,—and it will have an assured traffic. The cost of extending the line to that point from Ranfurly would not cause a-heavy straiu upon a Treasury which is alleged to be overflowing, and the revenue that would be secured from it would- give an ample return. While we are inclined to .think that it will make for the more expeditious construction of; the line if the efforts of the league are for the present directed towards securing its extension to Clyde, we should, however, strongly deprecate any suggestion, that the. railway should be stopped there. It is only because the cost of construction from Clyde to Cromwell will be comparatively heavy that we do uot urge the immediate prosecution of the line to the latter place, which, it is to be remembered, is a mining centre of even greater activity than Clyde. Still, there is some force

in the plan of asking for an instalment at a time and asking for it with clamant persistence.