Rangitikei Advocate. TWO EDITIONS DAILY. TUESDAY, JULY 8, 1913. EDITORIAL NOTES.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXVII, Issue 10691, 8 July 1913, Page 4

Rangitikei Advocate. TWO EDITIONS DAILY. TUESDAY, JULY 8, 1913. EDITORIAL NOTES.

IN many respects onr system of local government is admirable, especially in those which give the ratepayers power to manage their own affairs locally and with little reference to any central, authority. The chief expenditure of the local bodies is on the construction and maintenance of roads and bridges, and these things 7 should never have been delegated to the local bodies by the State, which should have continued to make and maintain all means of communication. A writer in a contemporary maintains that the construction of roads, and also their maintenance, is, or should be, regarded as a national duty. A road, except in the most limited sense, cannot be local, he says, because it is as much a part of the general system as a small tributary is part o i a great river. Unfortunately for New Zealand, a general impression has grown common that roads

simply belong to the district! through which they pass. H,e points out that at present the management of our roads is divided among SCO different bodies, each one with its office and its paid clerks, its engineers and surveyors. These local bodies derive from rates and other charges which the jpublio have to pay a revenue of nearly £(5,000,000 annually, besides which the expenditure of those 500 county conn-, oil, borough councils, and road boards on management is at the sent time nearly £250,000 annually. This sum is .spent yearly, not on making or maintaining roads, but simply on salaries, travelling expenses of members, rent, printing etc. Considering that all these various local bodies consist of voluntary and unpaid members, this quarter of a million - pounds yearly seems a somewhat extravagant tax upon a revenue of £6,000,000. ” Indeed, the writer thinks that an enormous saving could be effected if, instead of 500 different bodies, each with their separate offices and officers, the whole control were undertaken by the Public Works Department or*by some branch of that Department specially organised for road work. He adds that it has to be recognised that “with the multiplicity of local bodies it is almost impossible that either office expenditure or general expenditure can be kept within economical bounds, and St is accepted as a fact that local interests very frequently conflict with the public ” The writer makes a strong point of the fact that very few local bodies have money enbugh to buy the modern machinery and the labour-saving appliances which are now necessary in the work of making and maintaining roads. In this connection he states that “with a revenue of several millions yearly and the power to borrow money extensively, any well organised Department undertaking the making and maintenance of roads in New Zealand could quickly bring about great and beneficial changes. The time has gone by when the pick and the shovel, the wheel-barrow and the cart, should be the principal machinery in road making; but it is certainly impossible for 500 different local bodies to each own a modern roadmaking plant.” He concludes as follows:—“ The present revenues from road rates and other sources, and the power and willingness of road districts to borrow, would supply funds enough to enable any capable department to do vastly more work than is done now at vastly less cost; and if this can be done for main roads there is not much reason why it should not be made to apply to by-roads also. ”

IN his book on “Socialism and Syndicalism, ”Mr Philip Snowden, a well known member of the. House of Commons, makes some remarks on Syndicalism, which are of interest to the public, and are worth consideration by the Socialists in this country. Incidentally he shows the real reason why Socialists object to our Defence Act. He says: —“The general strike is general nonsense. The Syndicalists have no idea of the resisting strength of the middle and upper classes. It is only recently that they have given any thought to the use which would be made of the military to subdue any revolutionary rising of the workers. They are now hoping by propaganda among the soldiers to undermine their allegiance to the State, so that the army will join in the revolution. They have counted too muoh oh the nublio inconvenience which would immediately result from a general stoppage of work. The miners’ strike of 1913 was a great disillusionment in that respect. It revealed resources possessed by the community which had never been imagined. It had been confidently asserted that a general strike of miners would paralyse the whole country in a week or two at the most. Something of the same sort was predicted as the result of the strike of transport workers, hut the long strike of the London dockers in 1913 caused no inconvenience of whioh the general public was aware. In every general strike which, has taken place it is the workers who have suffered most. So it would be in the general strike which is the dream of the Syndicalists. A general strike which was begun unexpectedly, as in the case of the first postal strike in Paris, might very conceivably bring concessions. But it would simply teach the capitalists and the community te be prepared for the nest. The second postal strike was a signal failure for that reason. ’ ’