The Christchurch Star PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1934, TAKE CARE OF THE PENCE.

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20485, 11 December 1934, Page 6

The Christchurch Star PUBLISHED BY New Zealand Newspapers Ltd. TUESDAY, DECEMBER 11, 1934, TAKE CARE OF THE PENCE.

THE LABOUR PARTY, in justice to itself and to the people of the city, ought to define its attitude towards rating for the maintenance of municipal trading concerns. At various times we have had slogans like “ Tramways for use and not for profit,” and logically this should apply to that great profit-earning concern, the Municipal Electricity Department, where the consumers have been building up huge reserves that have been raided for various purposes. The logical thing is to make municipal trading concerns self-supporting and no more, or at ■least to build up reserves on the generous side. Certainly the party* that is pledged to a policy of relying upon rates to make up a deficiency may expect a short shrift politically. For that reason the Tramway Board’s operations are of more than parochial interest in so far as they reveal a policy, and it is yet too early to say whether the board will take the priori rose path of rating or endeavour to straighten out its finances on self-reliant lines. CAREFUL ANALYSIS. * I 'HERE ARE MANY little directions in which a progressive attitude has been taken in the past year, but the revenue figures per passenger are the changing index of success or failure. A close analysis of these shows that cash fare re-, ceipts were reduced on the average slightly, but not sufficiently to prevent a landslide of more than a million and a half passengers away from cash fares. Concession card receipts on the average were very slightly increased, but here again there was a loss of 50,000 passengers. On the other hand weekly pass passengers, who had their fares still further reduced in the past year, showed an increase of over 2,600,000. Thus, for the year, passengers increased from 16,913,075 to 17,911.670, but the total earnings fell by £5535. That is not such a bad performance, considering the increase of a million passengers, and it suggests that if the Tramway Board will take care of the pence the pounds will take care of themselves. With a slightly less generous treatment of weekly passengers the finances ought to right themselves. AN IDEA CATCHES ON. MUSSOLINI’S DECREE that everyone in Italy must surrender foreign credits and securities to the State, and be compensated in lire, looks like the prelude to a plundering process such as the United States has adopted in calling in gold bonds and paying for them in paper dollars having half the value. New Zealand has been monkeying with exchange in the same way, for a poor woman who had money left her in England was not permitted to have (he extra 25 per cent that the money ought to have been worth in New Zealand, and only the favoured farmer can participate in the plunder. Italy is on gold, but it looks as if she is about to leave it. In that case the State would have a substantial wanning over the confiscated credits, and the individual resident in Italy would be left lamenting. There would, however, be a greater premium on moneys coming into the country from Italian immigrants abroad unless Mussolini, like Mr Coates, confiscated that too. SELLING THE ERUPTION. 'VTGAURUHOE in eruption is an -1. x( event which the Tourist Department should capitalise at once by arranging special through tours and flying trips to see it, for there are not many active volcanoes in the world. N'gauruhoe’s display comes very opportunely on the eve of the Christmas season, when people are just forming their holiday plans. And the occurrence of such a magnificent spectacle should be an added inducement to tourists from abroad, to whom the delightful unexpectedness of New' Zealand’s scenic wonders always holds out the chance of some extra thrill not mentioned in their itinerai'ies, or charged to their accounts.