A NEW ZEALAND INVENTION.

New Zealand Illustrated Magazine, Volume 1, Issue 8, 1 May 1900, Page 599

A NEW ZEALAND INVENTION.

The Story of the Neio Zealand Stage System, and the Hungarian Adoption of it. By Samuel Vaile.

No. 11. fNE of the things that strikes me with wonder is the very small amount of attention paid by our governing men, and the general public, to the vast importance of the road. The road absolutely governs our social and commercial conditions, and these conditions will be happy and prosperous, or miserable and depressed, very much as the road is good and well managed, or otherwise. Without roads (I, of course, am using the word in its widest sense) nothing, absolutely nothing, can be done. There can be no advance, no production, no social intercourse, no civilisation. And yet what little attention we pay to this great matter.

We have now been iv this country for over sixty years, and still we are without any proper overland communication between its two chief cities, Auckland and Wellington, as indeed also with Napier and New Plymouth. This fact shows how little the great question of roads has occupied the public mind.

War time brings vividly before us the great value of the road, and should we bo involved in war, we shall have to pay for our neglect of it. What support, in such an event, could Hawke's Bay, Taranaki, or Wellington get from Auckland under existing circumstances ?

Railroads are our best form of roads, they are now our great highways, and to reform their administration, to reduce the present chaotic mass of charges and regulations to something like order, to greatiy reduce the charges made, to render these highways available in every district, and by every individual, was the task I set myself in 1882. Probably it is well, that we do not always know all that our work means, at the time we enter upon it.

When once the Stage System was before the New Zealand public it commanded a very large share of attention. The Press, with its

vol. I.— No. 8.-45,

nsual liberality, from one cud of tho colony to the other, devoted considerable space to its discussion. It soon attracted the attention of our Parliament, and in July LBB3, the lion. J. A. Tole asked the Minister for Public Works if he was prepared to give it a trial. He replied in the negative, This was the first occasion on which the Sta^u System was mentioned in Parliament. In every subsequent session it has commanded more or less attention, and has several times divided the House.

Unfortunately, from tho very first our chief railway officials took up a hostile attitude towards the now system, and still more unfortunately, in spite of the unanswerable evidence in its favour, thoy still maintain it. Why is it that professional men, almost invariably reject and resout any suggested improvement that comes to them from outside ? They might remember that reforms rarely, if ever, come from within, but almost invariably from without.

One of my great aims was to simplify railway charges and classification, and after the continuous study of seventeen years, 1 still say that there is not the slightest need for the multiplicity of charges, and the terrible confusion that now provails.

When I took this matter in hand wo had 1,333 miles of railway, and to work them, it was thought necessary to have a system of charges that took forty-two pages of closoly printed foolscap to describe, there wore Of teou different classes of merchaudise, seventeen parcels rates, special rates, etc., and to interpret this mass of confusion there were seven hundred and sixty alphabetical references.

What is the number of rates in existence on our railways at the present time, 1 do not know, I have long since given up trying to follow them ; suffice it to ea-y that the confusion grows more confounded every year. It must not be thought that this complexity is in anyway necessary, it is part aud parcel.

of the present railway policy, to so confuse the rating that no one shall be able to understand it, and thus enable the controllers to extract from the users " all that the traffic will hear."

Under the Stage System my proposal is to have only five classes of goods, and four rates for parcels, and to fix these in such a manner that they will not require altei'ing, except to reduce the charges per stage, and any alteration made would apply to the whole colony, and be made by Parliament in tlie same manner as an alteration in postal rates.

One of the greatest evils of the present " no-system " is the effect it has in depopulating all country towns and villages. As soon as a railway touches one of these, it begins to shrink and dwindle. This should not he ; railways, if properly administered, would help these towns. The reason they suffer is because the charges are made by the mile, and differential rates are always given in favour of the large centimes.

Take our Auckland section as an example. Fraukton is a junction town situated eightyfive miles from Auckland, which may bo said to be the only market town on the section. 1 lie charge being made by the mile, it will be seen there are pi'actically eighty-five toll bars which have to be passed, and for which tolls have to be paid between Auckland and Frankton. When this position is once understood, it will be seen how utterly impossible it is for a producer at Frankt on, whose market is Auckland to compete with one who is only ten miles out, for his transit charge eats so much more largely into his profits. Say the charge is twopence per ton per mile, the one pays ten twopences while the other pays eighty-five. It is easy to see how naturally, aud often without knowing why, peoplecrowd down on the centres, for the same principle rules, whether it is wares, or labour they have to dispose of.

There is also, perhaps, even a greater disadvantage, and that is the impossibility of any considerable local market being developed in country towns. What inducement is there for people to settlo in them? Under the Stage System all this would speedily be

altei'ed. A manufacturer, a producer of anythiug, a professional man, a mechanic, a labourer, stationed say at Frankfcon would have forty-nine railway stations, in other words forty-nine districts at command, to and from which the transit charge would be precisely the same in every case. The effect must be to make Frankton a receiving, distributing, and to a large extent a manufacturing centre, and when it had grown to a certain extent, it would have to bear a larger share of the burden of trausifc charges, and other poorer districts would secure the benefit. The same rule would also apply, to a greater or less extent, to every stage station. The least of them would command from six to eight districts, and thus country towns and villages must be formed and developed.

Another great object I had in view was to facilitate the movement of labour. That is to say, to enable those in want of employment to travel to any part of the country where labour might be in demand.

Suppose, for instance, a demand for carpenters arose at Rotorua, how many could afford to go from Auckland and pay a fare of £1 3s. 9d. on the chance of being accepted when they got there ? But if the fare were only 2s. 4d. — as it would be under the Stage System — every unemployed tnau could afford

to go

A scheme like this must encourage settlement on the land. Indeed its great object is to promote land settlement, for it is only by placing a far larger body of people on the land that we can ever hope to bring about permanent prosperity, either in our country districts, ov seaport towns. If we had a moi^e active land settlement going on, and the number of our small freeholders rapidly increasing, what strength we should be gaining. Nothing so much increases the

wealth and power of a people, produces real political freedom, conserves the rights of property, and fosters a real national spirit of independence, as the creation of a numerous body of small freeholders.

I can see no reason whatever why iv this and most other countries, the vast balk of our labourers, artisans, shopmen, clerks, etc.,

should not own their own freehold homes. If this were the case, what a vast accession of national wealth it would bring. All these would, in a greater or less degree, be producers, even if only to the extent of providing a portion of the food for their own householdsIt might not mean more than comfort to the individual, but in the aggregate, a great deal to the nation. Much talk has been made about workman's homes. The only proper way of forming workman's homes is to enable the work people to form them just where it suits them best, where they can most readily dispose of their labour. This can be done, it is simply a question of transit. The Stage System, then, was designed primarily as a land settlement system, to distribute population more evenly over the laud, and as a natural consequence, more evenly distribute wealth, and thus solve the greatest of all social problems. As a scheme designed to produce these results it still stands alone. In the Hungarian adaption of it, this principle has been designedly taken from it, and this is what our railway officials wish to do here. The avowed object of the Hungarian system is " to enable people to visit the capital" The object of our system is to encourage the settlement of the most distant lands, and to enable people to live profitably in any part of the country, just wherever it best suits their requirements, either in town or country, with equal facility. In the Hungarian system there is no recognition of the principle of basing the rating on the location of population, and thus giving temporary assistance to the poorer districts nor is there any provision made for readjusting and equalising the rates, and there is still a great deal too much left to the will or fancy of the railway officials. In December, 1 884, I was asked to give a scries of lectures in the Waikato townships. They attracted considerable attention, and in the following March, I left Auckland, and, commencing with Napier, lectured in all the chief Southern towns, being everywhere well received, and kindly and liberally dealt with

by the Press. Tho outcoino was that such numerous petitions wore sont to Pavliamont praying for a trial of tho new system, that tho Stout- Vogel Government sot up a special Parliamentary Committee to deal with tho matter. This Committee was composed of the Hon. Major Atkinson, ex-Promior, Hon. E. Richardson, Minister Public Works, Hon. Mr. MaoAndrow, Hon. Mr. Ormontl, and Hon. E. Mitcholson, ex-Ministers Public Works, Mr. Goto, Mr. Hatch, Mr. Walker, Mr. O'Connor, and Mr. J. 13. Why to, M.H.R.'h. This Committe was surely able to deal with the subject they had in hand, it will bo seen that half of its members wero either Ministers or ex-Ministers . In fact, it was composed of the best known men in tho country. I gratefully romembor the pationco with which they investigated tho intricate subject placed before them. Mr. J. P. Maxwell, the then general manager of our railways, conducted tho enquiry on behalf of the Department, and I conducted it on my side, or rather on behalf of the Stage System. The enquiry extended over ten weeks, and ended in tho Committeo reporting that the new system ought to bo tried. This recommendation was never givon eJlect to.* In 1888 a number of prominent Auckland citizens joined me in making an offer to the Government to lease the Auckland section of railways for five years for tho purpose of trying the new system. Tho gentlemen joining me wero all men of very considerable capital. Wo offered to give substantial guarantees, that we would maintain tho linos and rolling stock iv good ordor and condition, under tho supervision of thoir own officers, that we would pay an increased I'evonue to the Government, givo reduced rates to the public, and after tho first year, hand back tho lines in good order, on receiving a six months' notice to do so. Our offer was simply declined. This proves that it was not a money loss that was feared by the Government, * Tho minutes of evidence and report of this Committee from Parliamentary Paper 1.— 9, 1886.