The Star. THURSDAY, MAY 17, 1888. GAS AND GRUMBLING.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 6240, 17 May 1888, Page 2

The Star. THURSDAY, MAY 17, 1888. GAS AND GRUMBLING.

There is no need to go very deeply into the causes of complaint against the Christchurch and other great Gas Companies of New Zealand ; they lie upon the surface, and are plain to any just and reasonable mind. The general complaint is that they, being monopolists of a commodity which has become nearly a necessity of life tothe public, have the public at great disadvantage. First, the public are not permitted the ordinary safeguards which one partj to a bargain should have in respect to the dealings' of the other. The whole thing is one-sided. The monopolist provides gas, bat the consumer has no guarantee whatever as to its quality. Tie monopolist provides a source of light the quantity of which he measures himself, and charges for according to the showing of a machine of his own. Into the workings of that machine the poor consumer has no riv;ht of inspection, however certain he may be that its vagaries are emptying his lean purse and filling the fat one of the smiling monopolist. For the machine, which he usually distrusts, he has to pay rent to the monopolist, though a meter is as much an ordinary instrnment of thelatter's trade as is a pint pot, or a very diminutive tumbler, to the New Zealand publican. The monopolist by law is allowed to make Buch charges for the warea he eends to the consumer, as will bring him in a splendid intereßtonthe capital he expends. Into the question of his outlay and accounts, however, the consumer is not allowed to pry. Audit inspection, checks to meters — all these things are embodied in words that may not bo breathed, ideas that may not be hinted at by the public, when the doings of a Gas Company are in question. In short the monopolist, as against the consumer, from whom he makes a royal revenue, has very much the best of an unfair position. This ia true for all New Zealand, but it is doubly true for Cbristchurch. Here by some unaccountable freak the law Bets absolutely no limits to the interest the monopolist is allowed to make. Elsewhere the limit is 20 per cent ; an allowance given in the days when money brought twice the interest that it does at present. From all this it is clear that the time has come for newer and better legislation on the subject.