The Otago Witness.

Otago Witness, Issue 1540, 14 May 1881, Page 16

The Otago Witness.

wrm which is inoobpobated thb 'southbbm MEBOUBY.' SATURDAY, 14th MAY, 1881.

A State parcel-post has been long contemplated in England. It was proposed first by the late Sir X owl and Hill, and has since been ably advocated by many writers — notably by Professor Stanley Jevons, to whose able article in the " Cohteinporary Review" for December, 1878, we devoted nearly two columns in 1879. It appears that the New Zealand Government intend introducing a scheme of the kind, but parcels are to be conveyed only from railway-station to railway-station, and the tariff is to be uniform. Mr Maxwell, in a letter to the Dunedin Harbour Board, says : "The proposal is to carry any parcel not exceeding 14lb in weight at a fixed rate, irrespective of distance." He goes on to ask the Harbour Board whether a wharfage of 2d per parcel would suit the Board. We cannot see the relevancy of this inquiry. Very few parcels, we should fancy, will travel alone : the bulk will surely go in crates. Now if a crate containing 100 small parcels is to pay 16s Bd, it will pay about 16 times as much as is necessary. The fairest way, we should imagine, would be to make a charge of so much per hundredweight. But Mr Maxwell's proposals generally # will not recommend themselves to practical men. No " fixed rates " can succeed. In the case of letters it has been proved by elaborate calculations that the cost of carriage, even for distances up to 1000 miles, need not exceed about one-twentieth of a penny, while the cost of collection and delivery at the terminal offices is 10 times as great. In other words, it costs as much, within a very small fraction, to deliver a letter within half a mile as it does within 1000 miles, so long as it does not pass over heavily subsidised lines, such as the 'Frisco mail route. In the case of parcels it is different. Let us take a bag of sugar weighing 321b. It would pay very well to deliver this at Mosgiel (if posted at Danedin) for 6d. If, however, it had to be delivered, say, in Ohaupo, it would be saddled with wharfage and steamer dues, besides the railage from Auckland south. In this case 6d would be too small a charge, Another objection to the proposed plan is that parcels could not practically be de* liyeral at fog-^tiooe, at whiqh. there ar?

no resident officials. Large consignments of goods are met by consignees with drays, but no one could be expected to meet a train to receive a pair of boots or a pound of tobacco. We make these remarks in no unfriendly spirit, but with a genuine desire to see a thoroughly emcient system We have before now pointed out how the free interchange of natural products and manufactured articles would tend to cause our industries to find their proper channels earlier than they would if unassisted, and we will now add that from inquiries made we are convinced that the tradesmen of Dunedin would reap material benefit from a State parcel-post. Few persons are aware how many parcels are sent out daily, not only to private customers, but even to the retail dealers up country. Tobacco, stationery, books, groceries of certain kinds, small ironmongery and cutlery, seeds, drugs, and a host of other articles are continually sent even at the variable and exorbitant rates now charged. When the rates are fixed, moderate, and easily ascertained beforehand we may anticipate an enormous development of this tramo. But we must repeat our conviction that the service should be between post-omce and post-office, and into the charge made there should enter two elements, one of weight and the other of distance.

While we had scarcely recovered from the shock of the Tararua disaster, which will long remain on record as one of the most terrible of shipwrecks, we receive news of an almost equally horrifying catastrophe which has occurred in Magellan Straits to H.M.S. Dotterel. By an explosion the ship was destroyed, and eight officers and 135 seamen were killed, while only 10 escaped. No particulars are to hand as we write, but the industrious collator of the horrors of 1881 will have in these two sad events ample material for descanting on the dangers of the seas. We do not realise the calamity to the Dotterel, because it is not close to us and we knew nothing of the sufferers ; but the wreck of the Tararua came close to us, and will long be remembered by every Otagan. It is highly probable that both events were preventable, and that but one individual is responsible for each. But even thus do our lives often hang upon a thread. A little carelessness, or at most a reckless disregard for consequences, on the part of a single individual, and a hundred lives may be loat in a moment. We scarcely see how it can be otherwise without duplicating every office of responsibility and appointing two persons to do the work of one, and even then the divided responsibility would not work well. The wonder is that, considering the millions of chances of fatal accident from such causes as these, men in trust so seldom fail at their posts. To err is human, and though we must always try and improve on our means of safety, we never can be absolutely safe till we can find infallible men to hold poßts of responsibility. The few hundreds who are lost are the conscripts of society —the penalty the world pays as one set-off to the multitudinous advantages of rapid locomotion. All the more should we be ready, when for our sakes lives are lost, to contribute to the necessities of dependents who are thus deprived of their natural means of subsistence.