THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1923. TRAMWAY EXTENSION.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19009, 3 November 1923, Page 8

THE OTAGO DAILY TIMES SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 1923. TRAMWAY EXTENSION.

Considerable importance attaches to the report of the Tramways Committee of the City Council bn the subject of proposed extensions of the tramways system. Certain extensions are unquestionably overdue. The report which is now published will be studied by the ratepayers with interest as a whole, and possibly also with some dissatisfaction in respect of some of its details. . It is well, no doubt, to have the requirements in the way of tramw.ay extension comprehensively surveyed and a programme outlined, with estimates of cost in the case of the various undertakings that are recommended. This affords the public an opportunity of gathering what is in the mind of the Tramways Committee, and of forming an opinion respecting its claims to be possessed of vision as well as of sound practical judgment. The committee has indicated the manner in which in its view a sum of over £70,000 may be advantageously expended. Its proposals are likely to be submitted to a great deal of scrutiny and criticism before finality is reached in respect of any of them, and an examination of them in detail may be postponed until the bare outline of the suggested programme is supplemented by the full information on the subject ■ which it is desirable should be placed before the council and the ratepayers. The Tramways Committee does not touch upon the claim to precedence of any of the eight proposals briefly discussed in its report. Obviously, how'ever, this is a consideration of moment. The tramway requirements of Maori Hill and of Opoho have been prominently before the council for so long that we should be very sorry to think that they furnish an index of the pace at which it is prepared to proceed with the execution of all further extensions. It cannot be suggested that what the committee now says regarding the Maori Hill and Opoho services is entirely satisfactory and promising. The extension of the tramway service to Opoho is not included at all in the schedule of expenditure amounting to £70,000. The committee recommends the purchase, at a cost of £4500, of three petrol buses with a view to “trying out” any proposed extension, and it is suggested that these vehicles be used temporarily on the Opoho route with a view to giving that district a means of transport at the earliest possible date. In the same connection the committee suggests the desirability of determining the possibility of the use of railless cars ou the grades to Opoho. The committee need not complain if these recommendations are interpreted by the ratepayers as indicative of a disposition ou its part to shelve an extension of the electric tramway system to which the council is undoubtedly committed, and in connection with which the terras of the Order-in-Council have beeu settled as far as the engineering provisions are concerned. If the recommendations of the committee are to be accepted it may well seem probable that the question ,of modifications in the Order-in-Council is likely to remain indefinitely unsettled. Concerning the Maori Hill proposals the committee’s brief observations are not a_ very adequate reflection of the “deal of serious thought” which it claims to have given the subject. The statement that the engineering difficulties in respect to an electric line remain unsolved possibly means, as much as anything, that no decision as regards the most suitable route to be selected has been reached. The committee falls hack upon a. proposal providing for the introduction of the railless car system .to meet the requirements of this suburb at a cost of £13,000. It would be of interest to know, in view of its other references to the railless cars, exactly what degree of definiteness attaches to its recommendations - ami estimates respecting the Maori Hill service, and what route is contemplated. Does the proposal of the committee mean a further opportunity for procrastination? The novelty of the proposals as regards Maori Hill and the obviously stop-gap order of those relating to Opoho make it desirable that these portions of the committee’s report, bearing upon works that have claim to the earliest attention, should be examined with particular care. As regards the various other features of the committee's projected programme, it may be said that the projected extensions appear to be well distributed. The mos i costly of them is-the extension of the cable service at Mornington, where the population is large enough to give promise of an assured revenue. The

line proposed ■with terminal at Forbury Park will no doubt, tap a well-populated portion of the Flat, but the question of the route that will best serve this purpose might be open to discussion butfor the consideration that is given to tho question of traffic on race days. The advantage of a duplication cf the Caversham line via Wilkie road, and of an extension to Carisbrook, seems to be- manifest, and the committee shows almost unexpected courage in suggesting an extension to Look-out Point with a view to opening up tor settlement what is described as a considerable area of desirable residential property. The most modest of all the proposals mentioned in the report is that for an extension to Pelichet Bay via Union street at an estimated cost of £'3500, to which it will be necessary to add a further sum to cover duplication and extension with a- view to serving the Exhibition if it is held at Lake Logan. The Tramways Committee betrays no cognisance of a proposal of ■which the public has heard something, and which was mentioned in Mr Greo Brown’s report to the Exhibition Company, that a double line should be run from Anzac Square to Lake Logan. A FAMOUS JOURNAL. The disappearance of the Pall Mall Gazette, which, the cable announces, has been “absorbed,” swallowed up, by the Evening Standard, is an interesting —retrospective sentimentalists • might say a pathetic—event in journalistic history. Perhaps no evening newspaper has ever been as celebrated as the Pall Mall was at certain stages of its career. The first chapters of its variegated story belong to the world of fiction. They are the thirty-fifth and thirty-sixth chapters of Thackeray’s “Pendennis.” “Is there going to be a new paper?” asked Wenhain. "It’s to be called the ‘Small Beer Chronicle,’ ” growled Wagg. “It is to be culled the Pall Mall Gazette, sir, and we shall be very happy to have you with us,” Shandon said. . “Pall Mall Gazette—why Pall Mall Gazette?” asked Wagg. ■ , ' “Because the editor was bom at Dublin, the sub-editor at Cork, because the proprietor lives in Paternoster Row, and the paper is published in Catherine street, Strand. Won’t that reason suffice you, Wagg?’’ Shandon said; he was getting rather angry. “Everything must have a name. My dog Pohto has got a name. You’ve got a name, and a name which you deserve, more or less, bedad. Why d’ye grudge the name to our paper?” “By any other name it would smell as sweet,” said Wagg. Going further back in the matter of derivations, it may be incidentally mentioned that the London street known as Pall Mall, the locale of so many longestablished clubs and of the War Office, developed from an alley in which the old ball-game of pall-mall was played. The origin of the invariable pronunciation “pell-mell” appears to be obscure. When the actual, as’ distinct from the fictitious, Pall Mail Lrazette first appeared in February, 1865, it arrogated to itself the bold and invidious motto, “Written by gentlemen for gentlemen-'’ Whatever may have been thought of this attitude of social hauteur, there can be no question that in its first palmy years the new paper was marked by a vivacious intellectual distinction which was equalled only by its weekly contemporary, the Saturday Review. Later on, as an average organ of Conservative partisanship, it lost a good deal of its early prestige—-which, however, returned in somewhat different guise, and with a changed political complexion, when Mr John (afterwards Viscount) Morley assumed the editorship with Mi W. T. Stead as chief assistant. ' Under the Mbrley-Stead regime the Pall Mall was a finely potent force not only in the political but also in the general intellectual sphere; but when the eminent litterateur withdrew and left the entire control of the paper to his dynamic but flighty lieutenant there was a loss of distinction poorly compensated by an access of notoriety. Stead was a remarkable man and a great journalist of the melodramatic order; his social enthusiasms were as genuine as they were ill-governed; but his literary style and judgment were essentially commonplace, and his journalistic hair was of an ultrasensational quality. “Under your friend Stead,” wrote Matthew Arnold to the retired editor, “tho P.M.G., whatever else it may be, is fast ceasing to be literature.” The same seldom-erring critic remarked of “the new journalism” (the term which Stead applied to his methods)—“lt is full of ability, novelty, variety, sensation, sympathy, generous instinct; its one great fault is that it is feather-brained. It throws out assertions at a venture because it wishes them true.” At a later stage Sir Edward Cook edited the paper with acknowledged ability, and it should be noted that he was the first to introduce illustrations into daily journalism. Still later the Pall' Mall again changed its politics. To the end it .maintained a respectable place in public esteem, but its distinction under Greenwood and Morley, and its notoriety under Stead, will constitute its chief claim to a permanent niche in journalistic history.

DOMESTIC SERVICE. The cabled summary of the report of the Committee which, under the auspices of the Ministry of Labour, has been making inquiry respecting the domestic servant problem at Home, does not convey the impression that the findings are going to he of great assistance in relieving the shortage of .domestic labour. It was not anticipated by us that they would. The Commit..c heard a great deal of evidence of one kind and another bearing upon the conditions of domestic service, but it is scarcely surprising that it has apparently not been able to seize upon any 'specific evils as requiring removal. It sapiently observes that the intimate relationship between domestic assistants and their employers is the crux of both the happiness and the unhappiness of domestic service. That is no new discovery. Given always the ideal emploj'er and the ' ideal employee, there would probably be no problem to worry about. But human nature is a baffling quantity, and it is very closely- involved in this particular economic question. The Committee urges organisations and individuals to do their utmost to promote the provision of better social, recreational, asid educational advantages for domestic workers, and "to uphold the dignity of domestic service as a skilled and honourable profession.” This is excellent advice, but unfortunately it is not apparent that talk, which there has been in abundance, respecting the need for raising the status of the domestic worker has ever led to much practical result. It is probably an inevitable symptom of the age in which we live that domestic service has become increasingly unpopular

as a sphere of employment among young women. The fact that there is a" shortage of domestic assistants contemporaneously. with a vast amount of unemployment in the Old Country is surely significant. It may be suspected that domestic service is unpopular in tba modern outlook of those from whom its recruits might be drawn, precisely because it is domestic service. When all is said, there is no outstanding reason why ft should be popular. It it probably only the elect who find real enjoyment in domestic duties, and the housewife who performs those duties m her own home is in a different position from the employee who performs them, in the home of another. The “skilled and honourable profession” ideal becomes a matter of considerable compromise in general practice. In tho extent to which maid servants are tho subject of caricature—generally of stupid caricature—as deprecated by the Committee of Inquiry, w<» have no new development, but an. almost traditional attitude, reprehensible no doubt, hut not unintelligible. F r that reason the Committee’s earnest hope that “the press, dramatists, and humourists will realise that they often—> probably unintentionally—inflict paia and increase the difficulties of the position,” may not be realised to the extent that is desired. Certain types of character, as discoverable in connection with certain occupations, will, it is to he apprehended, continue to furnish contribution to the humorous side of life. There is no exclusive lampooning of the domestic worker. Still it cannot conduce to the popularity of domestic service that, being itself a very serious matter, it should seem so ofteu to he taken anything but seriously by the onlooker. ,