RAILAGE ON LIME

Waipawa Mail, Volume LII, Issue 44, 24 December 1930, Page 1 (Supplement)

RAILAGE ON LIME

“The information that the Government arc proposing to charge railage on liuio has been received with a storm of protest in this province, and many strongly-worded resolutions have been passed and no doubt scut to Wellington (remarks the Southland correspondent of the Otago Witness). Southland in probably us vitally interested in this method of making the railways pay us any part of the Dominion, and nowadays Governments everywhere appear to take considerable notice of protests of this description, provided they arc loud enough, the noise made being more important than the merit of the protest. It can be plainly stated that the free carriage of lime on the railways, while all right for the fanner, living alongside a station, is and has been, no good to the settler who lives say, ten miles from the railway, and has had to pay the ordinary charges to have his lime carted by lorry or otherwise to his farm, and the latter’s farm needs lime just as much as the former’s. The railway officials could name farmers in a fairly big way who for some years have never paid the railway one shilling freight, and yet have had hundreds of tons railed to them, and no Government, board, or human being ever born could make railways pay with this kind of support. Should a charge bo imposed on lime as suggested, and the output fall away to any extent, there will be a cry that the railage has killed the industry, and it is just as well to remember that this past season with free railage the quantity of lime sold was only a fraction of last year’s, the principal and sufficient reason being the lack of ready cash. ’ ’