RAILWAY OFFICIAL AMENITIES.

Otago Witness, Issue 3396, 16 April 1919, Page 51

RAILWAY OFFICIAL AMENITIES.

A SCRAP OF PAPER, A recent investigation by a representative of this office into certain peculiarities of railway administration appears to present results worthy of being reproduced for at least tho amusement, if not tho instruction, of' disinterested readers. The facts in question being (as wo shall show) fully admitted by the local railway authorities, there is no necessity to detail the course of our inquiry, or to follow our frequent practice of inviting a reply to our remarks before their publication. The first matter, which is of the lesser importance of those investigated, relates to tho consignment of gift goods from the country to certain branches of tho Red Cross Association in this city. Some months ago, in consequence of complaints reaching us_ that farmers and their wives bringing gifts of flowers, fruit, vegetables, and. cakes to the railway stations in response to city appeals for such contributions, were charged full prepaid rates on all such gifts—the conditions of humorous irony being satisfied by tho addition to such charges of first 10, and then 21 per cent, "because of the war" —we looked into the matter, and were able as a result to announce in our columns that for the future, at any rate, such goods would be carried on. the railways free, fit had apparently at last occurred to the authorities that perhaps, after all, "the war" really- counted the other way, where Red Cross necessities were concerned.) We have seen the official memorandum, addressed to a Red Cross worker and contributor t which records this concession, and in fairness to the railway authorities it is to be noted that elaborate directions as to the address, form, of consignment, etc., are laid down in this communication which may, not have been always minutely observed in every little particular by consignors. The important fact, however, in this connection is that for. several months at least the authorities have been perfectly satisfied with such addresses and consignment notes as clearly indicated: (1) That .the destination of the goods was one or other of the-Red Cross activities in the oity, and (2) that they were really "gift goods'* within the meaning of the official technicalities. /One wonders, by the way, whether the Railway Department has ever heard of "farmers BELLTNG flowers, etc., to the administrators of the Red Cross.) Within the last two or three weeks, a country railway office suddenly took it into its head to refuse free transit to three successive consignments of the kind to the Montecillo Soldiers' Home—the explanation made, so our information in the matter goes, taking the. form that " that's all knocked on the head now." The ordinary man would probably infer from this that in the opinion of the railway authorities soldiers have no business to suffer, from sickness or wounds during the currency of the armistice, and Red Cross Associations ought to have com© to an end at 11 o'clock on November 11 of last year. A later, and let us hope more correct, explanation has since been proffered to the effect that though the gifts in question were admittedly duly labelled with the official Red Cross label (obtained for the purpose from the secretary, and doubtless officially sanctioned from the first- to that end), and though in addition both labels and consignment notes were plainly marked " gift goods," and the latter notes also marked "Free" in the usual place, the gifts, were addressed to the Montecillo Home instead of the secretary of the Red Cross—who does not live at Montecillo and certainly does not want them dum'oed down at her private residence, there being now no Red Cross shop in the city. (It strikes one that if red tape was really to be stretched to such ridiculous excess as this, the proper time to explain it was when tho goods were presented and to the person presenting them; but no excuse whatever was offered at such time or to such person, the official action being confined to the "knocked" phrases_and a demand for full pre-payment.) At this stage of our investigation, however, the district office in Dunedin cut the matter short by flatly repudiating the action of its country officer and declaring that nothing whatever in the matter had been "knocked on the head." We propose, in these circumstances, to leave the gentlemen in question to fight it out. But we may be permitted to express a hope that the outcome of their controversy may not be unfavourable to tho comfort of the gallant inmates of the Soldiers' Home. It is not every farmer's wife who. having spent a busy day baking cakes or boiling jam t or something for that institution, is able to feel encouraged to renewed efforts when rewarded by the exaction of a monetary penalty because of some twopenny-halfpenny slip of the pen in- compiling the " ipsissima verba" of the official forms—especially when for months past a reasonable approach to exact accuracy has been amply sufficient. If the Railway authorities had simply said " We do not see why we should carry such goods free," and refused the whole thing, that at least would have been a policy, and though it might have put some limit on soldiers' comforts there would have been something to be said for it. There is really nothing to be said for a claim. that a more liberal view has been taken, while at the same time that claim is ingeniously discounted by a system of taking advantage of every petty divergence from a bundle of overloaded technicalities to deprive the public and the soldiers of its benefits. The other matter we propose to ventilate relates to certain elaborations which, as a result of our inquiry, we have elicited from the officials with regard to a regulation which appears to have been . in force for many years, and as to which in itself (the fact seems somewhat surprising) no complaint has ever reached us. We say this is surprising, because the regulation referred to, which is one~ imposing a charge of 3d per bale for loading wool on a truck and another 3d for taking it off again, seems to be an example of "profiteering" calculated to make the mouth of the most conscienceless army contractor water over his lost opportunities. It takes about 20 minutes to load such a truck; wo are informed that half an hour is too liberal an allowance, so we take half an hour. At that rate the railway charge for a labourer to help the wagoner works out at between £5 and £6 a day. Smart work would enable the fortunate railway porter to earn between £4O and £SO a week. (We imagine, however, that he does not get it all: something must be left from his wages for a deservmsr and philanthropic department. Even allowing for that, thtre

ought to be a rush for the job now that we have made tho facts known.) As wo have said, however, the patient farmer has not grumbled, to cur knowledge: probably ho would say himself that he is quite accustomed to that kind of thing. But perhaps he does not know —what we have just ascertained on official authority—that the thing really goes a groat deal further than the peculiarities he is accustomed to at the hands of the Railway Department. The occasion of our inquiry was the refusal of a country stationmaster to give a receipt for a truck of wool consigned to the Imperial Government representatives in this city, and duly- accepted for transport by the railway, on tho remarkable ground that it had been loaded on the truck by the owner and not by the department. As the department is represented at the station in question solely by the gentleman who took up this notable attitude (and who is also postmaster, telephonist, and what not to other departments, and presumably, therefore, not an eager candidate for tho £4O a week in the yard), tho owner naturally demurred to entrusting several hundreds of pounds' worth of Imperial property to an authority which declined in lofty tones to acknowledge the slightest responsibility for its safe conveyance. Among other mild comments on this stationmaster's action, perhaps one of the most effective was the following official statement which will be found printed on the back of every consignment note authorised and issued by the Railway Department:— Notice.— The attention of consignors is dircted to the following: No goods will be received for carriage or carried upon a railway except upon the following conditions : 1. That a consignment note, on a form to be obtained from the stationmaster, Eroperly filled in and signed by or on bealf of the consignor, is handed to the 'officer receiving the goods at the time of their delivery. 2. That the person delivering the goods obtains at the same time a written receipt for the same, signed by the officer to whom they are dehvwred. The Minister will not be responsible for any loss or damage in respect of any goods received for carriage or carried on a railway under any of the following cirthat is to say—(l) If tha above-mentioned consignment note is not delivered with the goods or the receipt

not obtained for the same. We have seen the -written reply of the \ etationmaster referred to in regard to the j very natural quotation of the above by the i Imperial Government's seller. It is simply. \ "The regulations on back of consignment notes appear to be somewhat misleading" I j We think that readers in search of a humorous situation might well be satisfied j with this unique comment upon the ado- | quacy and competency of the General j Manager's, office.' '■ ~ # T However, the further developments of this ! matter carry the comio element to an almost j excruciating point, and our only hesitation in pursuing it to the end arises from the fact that the O'tago Witness does not aspire to the designation of a comic journal. The question having been referred by j us to the district office in Dunedin, j w© have received (and here we may inter- |» polato that throughout - this investigation ; we have had no discourtesy to complain of, j but the reverse) an explanatory communi- jcation in writing, of which the final paragraph is as follows: — j If consignor requires receipt for the i number of bales in the truck such would

be given, but charge made for tallying as if the department had loaded the wool. By this time we had become more accustomed in our minds to the forty-pounds-a-week rate for tumbling down bales of wool off a wagon into a truck alongside; but even so, we were hardly prepared to learn, on official authority, that under some circumstances the same charge is made for merely looking at the bales. For that is, of course, what it comes to. Bales of wool, being almost as uniform in size and shape as bricks, but several feet in dimensions all ways, settle _ themselves • in trucks of given sizes in a quite invariable' 'way. Any man who has been a week in a railway yard knows at a glance how many bales are on any truck. He can tell at once if he sees the top row. A stationmaster, being always a man of experience, can " tally " any truck in sight without leaving his desk. Supposing he does leave it, and formally "tallies" a loaded truck, it would be interesting to know how many minutes (or seconds) the Eortentous occupation would absorb. If, owever, an owner, having just landed his own wool, should so far forget himself as to approach the stationmaster with the audacious suggestion that the latter should deign to cast his glance in the direction of the truck and confirm the owner's count, the Railway Department —by its own confession, surely in this instance the cham-' pion profiteer" of "profiteers"—at once puts in operation its precious forty-pounds-a-week icontrivance, and pounces upon. the presumptuous offender to the tune of threepence a bale. That in order to achieve this highly profitable end it is prepared coolly to repudiate its own urgently worded engagements, scattered by itself literally in millions of copies throughout the length of the dominion in the shape of the printed consignment notes we have quoted, is perhaps hardly to be wondered at considering the golden possibilities opened up by such a remarkable demand as one of so many shillings a look. It is sufficient apparently to dismiss airily those engagements as "somewhat misleading"—a description which, while not so historically rough as "scraps of paper," has tho excellent advantage of meaning precisely the same thing. An element of humour is further added by the fact that at the same moment a demand is invariably (and was in the present instance) made to the victim to sign his name to a paper declaring himself to be " bound in all respects" by "the conditions on back hereof"—those conditions _ including the one we have fully transcribed above I He is also, by the way, obliged _ further to declare in writing that his consignment is "subject to the conditions as referred to"—to which in future the Railway Department ought logically to add "always excepting any whioh at any time the Railway Department or any of its officers may take into their heads to repudiate." One rather wonders if they have really managed to entangle many innocent rustio victims in thia most ing-enious of nets. Probably not; the farmer has learned to be cautious about railway booby-traps. That there is an aspect other than humorous to all this will probably be as apparent to our readers as it already is to the victims themselves, though we have chosen to dealwith it'in somewhat lighter vein. That any

reform will follow the exposure is hardly to bo hoped for; the events of the last year or two have shown the New Zealand Railway Department to be the most pachydermatous of institutions, and about as amenable to public opinion and press criticism (some might even bo disposed to add, common sense) as the Trotsky " Government" in Petrograd. As we have said, our inquiry throughout has been courteously met by the officials locally concerned. What somo of themselves really think of such proceedings as we have instanced above might possibly be surprising were wo permitted to know it. What our readers generally will think of them is less difficult to guess. Perhaps even the Imperial Government's ideas about such treatment of its property by the authorities of a British dominion might some day be worth the ascertaining,while as to the unfortunate country consignor of goods himself, he will very likely 6hrug his shoulders and resignedly content himself with his invariable formula —the result of long and consistent experience—" The New Zealand Railways are the limit."