The Club Smoking Room

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLII, Issue 3, 20 January 1909, Page 5

The Club Smoking Ro om

By

HAVANA

PEOPI/E talk a lot,” began the city magnate, “about the congested state of our cities, and slum dwellings, and all that sort of thing, but they don’t seem to do much to remedy the matter. The man jvhoae work is in the city must be able to get in cheaply and quickly, and, as far as our suburban train services are concerned, we seem as if we wanted to place every possible obstacle in his way in this respect, and make travelling not Only slow, but expensive. Fancy a train, taking an hour and a-quarter to go 14 miles, yet that is what happens in scores Of cases, and not only so, but the distance from one place to another is often doubled by the roundabout route selected in laying the railway line. I know pf one place, a nice little spot, too, and an ideal place for suburban residences, Where the residents find it far quicker to drive to town than to take the train. They can nevr hope to develop a place as long as this sort of thing keeps up.”

“It strikes me,” said a new arrival, “that you people put up with the deuce of a lot of discomfort and inconvenience on your railways, just because they happen to be Government concerns. You see a private company has to study its patrons, or else it soon feels it in diminished dividends, and the shareholders kick up a bobbery at the annual meeting. ■But you people might protest till all Was blue, and nobody would care a hang what you said or did. If the thing doesn’t pay, you have to make good the deficit out of your own pocket. .You can travel to and from Brighton on a second-class season for one and ninepence a day, or less, if you work the thing properly, and that is a distance of 50 miles. Here you often pay as much to travel a quarter of the distance, and it takes as long to go ten miles as it does to go fifty in England. Not only so, but there seems to be no relying on the time-table, as trains come and go more or less at their own sweet will, and you cannot describe the accommodation on suburban trains as being the height of luxury.” © © © “I know,” remarked an estate agent, “that there are any amount of places near our cities, which would make admorable suburbs if we had better transsport facilities. We seem to limit our suburbs to places three or four miles away from the centre of the city, but there is no reason why we should not jextend the area to twenty or even thirty miles. AH we want is better provision in the direction of cheap fares and quick travelling. A good deal is done in this direction by private enterprise in the shape of ferry companies and tram companies, but they necessarily are limited in their scope. Still, I believe private enterprise has done more to create suburban residential areas than the Government railways have done. The promoters of these concerns deserve every penny they have made out of enhanced land values, because they have enormously benefitted the whole community, and have increased values all round in the districts served. It is all nonsense to say that a train onght to pay in three months or else be knocked off. You have to create a suburb, and often wait years before it really grows to nnythin», but when once it gets a proper start you can rely on getting your money back with good interest to boot.” © © © “Perhaps,” said the engineer, “we shall Boon all be travelling about in motorcars, and then we shall be independent of trains. Edison claims that his new Storage battery will make motoring

cheaper than driving, and tliat every working man will go to and from his work in his own motor. You will be able to travel for less than a half-penny a mile, and the whole concern will Ik- arranged on the principle of press the button, and the machine will work. Or we may all be angels in the sweet bye-and-bye, and fly about on aeroplanes. The phrase, ‘he simply flew to the rescue.’ will have to be taken quite literally then. There would be one good thing about it, at any rate, and that is that people wouldn’t be perpetually grumbling about bad roads. If we had universal motoring, people would make more fuss than ever over the roads, but if we can induce them to take to airships, mud and day will trouble them no more. In (fact, the softer and sloppier the road, the better for them; it would not be so hard to fall on as a metalled road, if anything went wrong wjith their machine.” © © © “You know, really,” suggested the new chum, "I don’t want to seem rude, don’t you know, and of course you are a new country and all tnat sort of thing, and a jolly nice little country, too, but really you don’t do much to make the trip on the Main Trunk line very enjoyable. Of course one expects to rough it a bit in the colonies, drink tea out of a billy and all that sort of thing, but that Auckland and Wellington trip is a bit too ghastly. The train I came by was packed; the guards didn't even seem to know where we were going or whether we changed anywhere or not, and there was such 'a beastly squash at all the refreshment rooms that a chap couldn’t get a chance of even a sandwich, let alone a B. and S. I suppose all the holiday people made a bit of a difference, but all the same something should have been done to make things a bit better. It’s a deuced long journey, and if people are to be herded together like cattle and left without food or drink they will prefer to go by boat.” © © © The last speaker consoled himself for any lack of stimulant from which he may have suffered on his railway trip by taking a long draught front the glass sit his elbow. He then went on: “All the same, I have had a jolly good time out here, take it as a whole. I suould say that a fellow could get as good sport here as anywhere, and it needn’t cost him much, either. In England everything is so beastly expensive; you can’t turn round without meeting some cadger holding out his hand for a tip for doing nothing. And if you go abroad the beastly lingo always beats you, and you are roblted right and left because you don’t understand a word they say. I must say that people have been jolly decent to me here, and fellows seem to go in for sport for the love of the thing, and not just to show off as so many men seem to do at Home.” © © © “ton ought to settle out Here,” said a sporting member. “You could get jolly good shooting and any amount of fishing. We have golf and tennis, and cricket, and, of course, football, if you care about it. You could buy a nice little place in the country, and live at your ease as a country gentleman on a quarter the sum it would cost you in England. I often wonder more fellows don’t come to New Zealand, instead of settling down in poky little places in some remote English county. I suppose they miss their people, and home ties, and all that sort of thing, «ut if you settled here you could got married and make a homo of your own; then you wouldn’t miss your people so much.”

<k lt all dejiends,” put in the cynic. “You might miss them more. Our friend is evidently a keen fisherman, but all the same he may have a strong objection to being hooked himself.”