South Canterbury Times, WEDNESDAY, MAY 15, 1889.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 5007, 15 May 1889, Page 2

South Canterbury Times, WEDNESDAY, MAY 15, 1889.

A Gazette is to hand containing the financial results of the last year’s working of the railways. The total cost of the opened lines is set down at £13,352,978. The net earnings for the year were 35.14< per cent of the gross revenue, and amounted to £350,570. This is equal to about £2 13s 6d on the cost of construction. The interest paid on railway loans is not easily got at, hut it must he at least twice that sum, so that that the people at large have to pay for the use of the railways, through other taxes, £350,000 a year, or upwards of one-third of the total sum paid for passengers’ tickets, and on consignment notes. We hear people talk of “ making the railways pay.” They are a long way from paying at present. There was a very slight increase in the gross earnings last year compared with the previous year, under £3OOO. The expenditure however was better kept down, it being less by £4;0,000. Mr Maxwell is the genius of economy in the railway department, but it may be doubted whether he will be able to reduce expenses much farther. He has, it may be supposed, done his best in that regard already. It will be vain then, to expect the Commissioners to ‘‘ make the I'ailways pay.” By no possibility can they get half as much more net, one-third as much more gross, revenue, out of the present population.

There is a good deal of solid fact in Mr Matson’s remark at the land sale yesterday, that there are not people enough of the requisite class to take up the properties in the market and others that would be placed in the market if there were buyers at hand. But there is less of solid sense in his expectation of seeing legislation adapted, to correct the deficiency by importing the class of people required. Is anyone prepared with a Bill for the purpose ? There are so many things that we wish to do

or to see done. The difficulty is to find pratical means of doing them. How to induce people to come here, people of the right classes, is a problem as difficult as how to make people buy land who do not want land, or have not the means to buy.

The Cabinet and the Legislature do not believe in Mr Samuel Yaile as a railway expert, but many people do, and they ask him queer questions respecting railway affairs, which they know the Department would not reply to. Someone “ wanted to know you know ” the reason why New Zealand could not get an application for the Railway Oommissionerships at Home, while Queensland, a little later, had 123 applicants for similar billets, and as this was a question which the Minister of Public Works could hardly be expected to answer pleasantly, the curious person addressed it 'to Mr Samuel Yaile. He had no reasons for reticence, was probably rather glad of a new chance to air his general condemnation of our railway management; and his published answer, was, given with all the emphasis of italics, that “it was never intended to import a commissioneras the wonderful “ experts ” who were to make the railways a success had already been found in New Zealand, and it was the whole aim object and intention of 'the Act to provide billets for certain people, to prevent reformation of the system of working, and to throw the control of the trade, commerce and land values into the hands of a ring. But there—Mr Yaile isi a disappointed man. They would not let him make our fortunes by adopting bis scheme of railway fares.