D.—2

6

other times they have risen as high as 6|d. a bushel. The average freight for one year was supplied to me by Mr. Fink as 3Jd. a bushel, or lis. Bd. per ton, New Zealand weight. To these charges must be added, for the contingency of elevating and storing for a week, 2 cents a bushel, or 3s. 4d. a ton. Wheat therefore will cost for conveyance to Liverpool from Chicago or places west 40s. to 60s. per ton. I was told that farmers in the North-west States had been getting from Is. lOd. to 2s. 3d. per bushel for best grades of wheat delivered at the country stations. In the Pacific States I was assured that large quantities had been sold for Is. Bd. per bushel. In the Chicago market wheat was quoted at 3s. 4d. per bushel: this, however, was for wheat which had already been railborne. In Buffalo market, 500 miles hearer port, similarly, wheat was quoted at 3s. 9d. The difference between the prices of grain delivered in the great markets and the prices got by the farmers for delivering at country stations will, however, be considerable. Most of the wheat produced in New Zealand does not travel more than fifty miles to port; the average travel is not over forty miles; the extreme travel rarely exceeds 100 miles. The average rate will be Bs. per ton, the extreme rate 13s. per ton ; the contingency of handling and storing for a week will be 3s. a ton. Freights to England have been varying from 15s. to 30s. a ton, possibly averaging 235. Thus, from country stations in New Zealand to England the cost may be approximately placed at 345. to 395. a ton, against the charges to American producers in the central and western States of from 40s. to 60s. per ton. The farmers last year obtained, at country stations in New Zealand, from 2s. 9d. to 3s. 4d. a bushel. The New Zealand produce will on the average command a better price than the produce in America of probably nearly 6d. a bushel. On wheat from the Pacific States shipped from Portland and San Francisco, there is a similar advantage in favour of New Zealand. It is therefore within the capacity of New Zealand so to regulate the charges as to retain this advantage, provided that sufficiently low sea-freights are obtainable. The American companies cannot regulate their short-distance rates by the extremely low rates per mile which they offer for long-distance traffic of this class; neither could we do so and make any profit on the transaction. But in the case of long-distance rates there is margin to work on, and it may be necessary for the colony to look to getting the remoter lands under cultivation, rather than to be striving merely to make direct interest on the railway capital. The colony ought to be prepared to face this question, and to realise that, with our small population and high wages, very low rates and high profits cannot both be obtained. With wheat as low as it now is we ought to be prepared to make sacrifices if necessary. Organization. Of the organization of the staff, the practice differs in matters of detail merely from that in other parts of the world. Subject to the board of directors and president are the usual subdivisions— general management, traffic department, locomotive, engineering, accounting and audit, and purchasing agency, corresponding to our Stores Department. The greater the system and traffic the more will these branches be subdivided. The traffic work will fall under two or more branches. The train-running on large systems will require suitable district officers. In one case I found that what we term the " parcels business " forms a separate department; but, as a rule, the railway companies do not deal with the public in parcels traffic, all this work being carried on by "express " companies. Eailroad companies, as a rule, have the advantage of working connected systems of lines, which makes the operation cheaper, easier, and more expeditious than is the case where there are many disconnected short lines. The greater part of the ticket system is carried on as our own is done. Local tickets are issued at the stations. As a rule, single tickets only are sold; but for some special localities return (" round trip ") tickets are also available. Coupon tickets for long journeys, extending often over several companies' lines, are also used. Season tickets such as we use, available for an indefinite number of journeys, are not used. What are termed " commutation tickets," which are issued in small books or on cards, each ticket being available for one journey, are generally adopted. The accounting is complicated by the numerous provisions for check and for the apportionment of receipts among various companies. One accountant informed me that many of his ticket receipts had to be divided among twelve to fifteen companies : this, of course, entails an amount of book-keeping and regulation which on a single system like ours is happily unnecessary. Similarly, in the freight department, the interchange of traffic, the possibilities of various routes between the two points, and the checks and safeguards needful to arrive at the proper control in distribution of charges make the accounting-work especially heavy and complicated. The absence of such clearing-house arrangements as prevail in England is a great drawback. There is at present a movement in the direction of setting on foot such an establishment, which is not unlikely to be successful. The main principles of the railway freight accounting are, however, the same as in other parts of the world. The way-bill is the basis, and the summaries of each station's inward and outward traffic afford the means of balancing and compiling the total traffic of the line. Our accounting is much simpler, because our system and our traffic are much smaller than in America, and complicating conditions are absent. Passenger Trains. American railways comprise every class of line, from those with expensive and luxuriouslyequipped trains running at the highest speeds in thickly-populated districts and between great cities, to lines in newly-settled districts, often with steep gradients, sharp curves, and light rails running trains at average speeds as low as fifteen miles an hour. The Denver-Bio Grande 3ft.-gauge practice is to limit its extreme speed between stations to about thirty-five miles an hour on 521b. steel rails and flat country. On the Eocky Mountains saddle, where steep grades and sharp curves prevail on a line which may be likened to that from Wellington to Featherston, the time is fixed at fifteen miles an hour. It is a common practice on the standard gauge of light construction to limit