RED-LETTER DAY FOR WAIROA

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19365, 1 July 1937, Page 8

RED-LETTER DAY FOR WAIROA

MOHAKA FUNCTION ] 1 VIADUCT COMPLETION | TWO MINISTERS PRESENT PRIDE IX GREAT WORK “A GIFT TO POSTERITY” (Special to the Herald.) WAIROA, this day. Deep pride in the achievement re-! presented in the Mohaka viaduct, | which he declared rivalled anything j of its kind in the Southern Hemis-; phere, and had resulted in new re- j cords for speed of wo»k and precision j of administration, was the keynote of j the speech made by the Minister of' gublic Works, the Hon. R. Semple, at j yesterday’s gathering on the northern j bank of the great gorge spanned by: the new railway structure. j Mr. Semple declared that under the 1 control of an engineer born in New Zealand, and entirely trained in this, country, the workmen of his depart- j merit had surpassed all known records | in the particular class of work repre-j sented by the big viaduct. Referring to the fact that he is; shortly to take a much-needed holiday j in Australia, the Minister stated that; he could not have stayed away from 1 the gathering, if only for the reason I that he had to say to the men re-j sponsible for this marvellous strut'-' ture: “Well done, thou good and faithful servants.’’ Speaking further, the Minister add-; eel that he would mention particularly: the engineer-in-charge of the work | who had been able to attend the cere-; rnony at his invitation. Mr. Semple then called forward Mr. D. O. Haskell,! and with him Mrs. Haskell, and before the large audience congratulated ! the engineer on his work. Young New Zealanders Mr. Haskell, he stated, was a young man who had never been out of New Zealand; yet his work on the Mohaka viaduct would compare more than favourably with that of older and more experienced engineers in various parts of the world. Under Mr. Haskell, there had been no trouble on the job from start to finish, for he had been a real comrade and a pal to the workmen under him doing the job. When he thanked Mr. Haskell personally, said the Minister, he also gave full credit to those associated with the engineer on the job. They had registered a wonderful achievement, he said, and had erected a monument, to the credit of everyone who had had a part in the building of the viaduct. There were among those.to whom credit was due the men who had prepared the steel in the Tauranga Workshops, under Mr. 1 Lindell, Public Works Department engineer there. The workshop had turned out the steel with wonderful skill, and among those | whose work called for recognition were Mr. Hythe, one of the depart--1 ment’s foremen, and Mr. Robinson. 1 At the other end of the scale there | was Mr. John Wood, engineer-in-chief to the Public Works Department, who 1 was carrying a great and heavy responsibility in connection with the department’s programme throughout New Zealand. Proud of the Achievement “Personally, I am extremely proud of the engineers and men associated with the department in this country,” added the Minister. “The work that has been done during the last 18 months has been marvellous, for they started from zero, when the Labour Government came into power. They had no equipment, and no organisation for handling large numbers of men, and actually the real work has been done in the past 12 months, for prior to that they could not get going, as Parliament had not given authority for the works to proceed.” Mr. Semple gave some particulars of the extent of the Dominion-wide responsibilities of Mr. Wood, as engineer-in-chief, and then referred more specifically to the Mohaka viaduct job. This structure, he said, was 315 ft. in height, and 911 ft. in length. It contained 1792 tons of steel, and had cost in all £IIO,OOO. “You have heard it said that if the Government was to pay good wages on public works jobs it would bring the country to disaster,” he commented. “This job had exploded that theory completely. The men have been earning 23s per day, and they have earned every sixpence of their money. They have put up hew records for this class of work, and have beaten all the Australian and New Zealand records we have been able to discover.”

Records go by the Board

The estimate of the cost of erecting the viaduct, he said, had been £23,409. To date £13,205 had been spent ,in erection, and though there was still a little bit of work to do, there was no doubt that the job would come well below the estimate. Nine months had been allowed for the erection of the steel, and the job took seven months to actually finish. The best day’s rivetting saw 370 rivets driven, where as the best previous record was 315 rivets. The best month’s work in eretcion of the steel was at the rate of 297 tons per day, while the best previous figure that could be traced was 250 tons per day for any one month. The men on the Mohaka job had broken every record of which the department had any note, he repeated. Such splendid work, he remarked, exploded the theory, which he had always held to be stupid, that it the Government paid good wages it would be a bad thing for tiie country. Ho held, and his colleagues also, that it was impossible to expect good work from any men unless they received a reward measuring up to the value of their work. The men on this job had done something worth while in their own time, and had erected a memorial to their own skill and energy which would stand the test of time and would be the gift of this generation to the people of the future. The tost of citizenship was the service one gave to the community, and the men c.;i tkc.MrV.r.ka job had done their

part collectively and individually. He assured the men associated with the job that as long as he was Minister ox Public Works there would always be a place for them in his organisation, for they had set a standard for New Zealand by their work on this great structure.