WELLINGTON ECHOES.

Colonist, Volume LII, Issue 12770, 16 April 1910, Page 4

WELLINGTON ECHOES.

(From Our Own Correspondent.) The political event of the week is the agitation for the JSorthern Kailway .League. The idea has taken on in Auckland, because Auckland is the part of JNe.v Zealand marked, quoted and signed by experience as the special home of log-rolling.'. The parents of this political vice are parochialism and meanness. It may, therefore, be easily seen why the iclea of the Northern league has not caught on to any extent anywhere else. The sole exception is Hastings, where the idea originated, but then Hastings is young; inexperienced, and likely to fa.i into parochialism. It cannot, of course, be denied that the policy or railway league very much quickened the making of the Northern Grand Trunk. It was an occasion special, inasmuch as some' supp»r& was wanted for the expedient of favouring tlie project of one district, rather j;han keepiug to the old stereotype of"an equal distribution to all, which advances none in particular. Besides, the justification of the league policy on that .occasion was more apparent than real. .The real causes of hindrance were the badness of the roads and the want of adequate means of grappling with the difficulties of traction! ""On the whole, the completion I ' of the Northern Trunk reflects credit on the engineering of the Dominion. There was a prejudice in the South that the jine never would pay for the axle grease, but that has been proved false by a very long way. The chief objections to a league are ■fchat the policy leads to log-rolling, and thus converts*Parliamejit into a board of works, to be influenced by nothing so powerfully as by sordid motives, and hasty conclusions by outside people. The latter sort of miscliief has be'en lately much in evidence, through the episode of government by deputation' marked by the struggle ot the. railway tariffs. Another objection is constitutional; it is that the only condition on which representative government can. be successful is ' confidence. Confidence must be complete or not at all. If a government is to be trusted in anything, it must be trusted in n.atters of railway policy; if it is not so to be trusted in railway policy, it is not to be trusted in anything, and a government not to be trusted in anything ought.jiot be to endured at any price. That the railways have done well for the year which ended on March 31st last is a good piece of news. We would rather have heard this -in the Dominion, where the news belongs, than from Sydney, where the Railway Minister took.ib to make a good in> pression. Sydney is the centre of the particular railway management with which our own has been compared for the worse. In that country "the profit is declared after payment of interest on the ,cost of construction, whereas here it is declared only after part has been paid. On one side it has been held that this is a proof of mismanagement; on the other the, theory is that it only pi'oved that here the deliberate policy is not to allow the lines to return more than a portion of the cost of construction. This conflict is, or ought to be, now over, because the three per cent, limit of profit is now definitely abandoned. -We need not agree to differ on that point, because the point has disappeared. The question then is is toned down to this:— What is the nett profit on each system after paying the interest ? Mr Millar has not thrown light on that question, for tlie simple reason that the figures for the year were not worked out at the time of his statement in Sydney. He could only give the revenue accrued during tlie last financial year, and it is very satisfactory to know that he was able to declare its amount as better by £250,000 than his estimate. This, , in spite of the increase of the 2ong distance fares, and the rigid cutting down of the services (or more likely in consequence of the cutting down of what are thus strikingly proved to have been useless services). The management has thus been justified so far by results. It remains to see the expenditure'^ and the nett profit after deducting the interest. The figures have been analysed for twelve of the thirteen fqur-wtSekly periods of the railway year^ with the result that the Northern lines have in that time returned 3.6 per cent, on the cost of construction, while the Southern' have not returned more than 3.06 per cent. In the twelve four weekly periods the first has returned a profit of £10,000 over and above the interest, and in the South has fallen short by £82,000. We may all say,.'! Bravo, the South!" But that is not the same thing as de.claring the case proved for the formation of a railway league to prospect tlie North agaiust the South. It is, however," a strong fact in the determination of the amount to be spent next year on railways. throughout the Dominion. It is now proved that the railways of the North pay better than the railways of tbe South. Therefore, there is a strong case for making more tiew lines in the North than in the South ; or for establishing some equivalent. As the Northern members are in a majority, what need for a league to look after the railway vote ? The other announcement made by Mr Millar in the New South Wales capital goes far in the direction of my remarks of last week on the present state of the question 'of ■ compulsory arbitration, in the Dominion. It indeed, goes farther, for it announces the definite abandonment of the compulsory principle. The friends of the old Act are somewhat indignant, insistfng that at mosf"the new system of 1908 has proved nothing more than a restoration of the original proportions assigned to conciliation in the arbitrating scheme of Mr Reeves. They aver that conciliation was meant to be the backbone of the first measure, which kept compulsory arbitration in the back ground, much as a careful canny nurse keeps the "bogeyman" in the background in a judicious state of nebulosity.. Indeed, the speeches of the advocate of the measure in Parliament seem to say, "Don't be afraid. The Arbitration Court is only a make-believe. The threat of appeal to it will make every one toe the mark. ;The Court will never trouble you at all. Conciliation will conciliate because of the exist-

ence of the Court. That is all." But," I mark you, the Court must be real be- I cause there must be no transparency. Now, everybody knows that the j conciliation was found not to concili- ' ate, for the simple reason that the labour representatives on the Conciliation Board ( were determined that it should not J conciliate, and on account of the use i they made of it, conciliation was eliminated from the settlement of all disputes, and the Court passed from "bogey-man" to startling rea.ity. Labour talked freely of "King Stork,"^ and protested accordingly. Result: a eonge~sted Court and universal discontent. The session of 1908 began with a hopeless prospect. Everyone hated the Court, except those who condemned its authority : the definition of the strike proper had made confusion worse confounded ; strikes had obtained alarming frequency ; it was a most acute crisis, and most people thought the arbitration system dead as a door nail. The change, however, that was determined on had the benefit of a good appearance. It abolished the Conciliation Board, and gave conciliation a new life in a different form ; confining tho machinery to each case, handing over the business of conciliation to the parties interested, making expert meet expert, under such fair, auspices — it was hoped— that the inevitable percentage of stupidity and ill-wil. would be reduced to a minimum. The result has been cessation of congestion, to such an extent that the judge of the Arbitration Court can spend much of his time in the Supreme Court, as seventy-eight per cent, of the cases are kept out of his court. On the whole Mr Millar seems right to- say that nothing conciliates likes conciliation. But the friends of the old Act remind him that the compulsory principle is behind all the time. It really comes to this between both sides, that we are atl doing the best we can under the circumstances with a system of mutual accommodation, far more rational than the original scheme, which undoubtedly fizzled out, after dazzling many capable visitors to these shores out of their wits. There is still the over-riding necessity for "give and take" on both sides of all . disputes, and there must be reason always. For example, if labour insists ever again on such an outburst as that which some two years ago nearly convulsed Canterbury into industrial chaos, there would be an end of ail hope of successful afbitration, otherwise-conciliation. Full prevention of such disturbances will take , time probably,- for experience is required before legislation can be fram- • cd. But going* on as we have begun, and in the spirit of common sense we have lately imported into the business, it will not be surprising if we manage to make conciliation conciliate always, or .nearly always. The great point gained during the years that have elapsed since the carrying of the first measure is that both sides now discuss in Parliament the methods of improvement, agreeing to differ about the merit* of political claimants of kudos.

Owing to a furious cyclone the Germiui South-West Africa diamond fields were inundato<d a few wteeks ago. AY hen the sea receded it was found that the deposits were quite as rich in diamonds as before the cyclone, strengthening the theory that the diamonds came from submarine pipes. General lan Hamilton told this story at a recent fuifetion in London to a company of Glasgow men. He was lunching with a party of service men, which included the commander of a submarine. The young officer, gaily gave a generaJl invitation to visit, the sea bottom. "How," asked Sir lan, "can you tell when you are in danger?" "Well," he replied, 'Vo carry white mice, and they squeak when the air gets deadly ; but the engines make such a noise we usually don't hear 'em." "Only one of us accepted the invitation," added Sir lan. "He was Lord Roberts."