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The Audit Office, Wellington, N.Z., 10th March, 1930.
I hereby certify that the publisher's lists and other records disclose the average circulation of the “New Zealand Railways Magazine” for the twelve months ended February, 1930 as in excess of 23,500 copies per month during the whole of that period, and that during the months of January and February, 1930, the monthly circulation has increased to 24,000 copies.
Controller and Auditor-General.
The ability to define correctly is dependent upon many qualities, the chief of which are accuracy, judgment and imagination. Throughout the whole range of the arts, from the painting realistically of either a scene or an idea to the description of a dress or a boxing match, these three qualities must intermingle in true proportion. Engineers and research workers must be able to define accurately, but such a power, strangely, enough, does not seem to be so necessary for inventors. These are often actually helped by an ability to ignore what, by all the known rules of the game, is impossible, and, buoyed up by an unerring intuition, to leap across wide deeps to a right, and previously undreamed of, conclusion. Correct definition in matters of the spoken or written word holds place of highest import, although the capacity for it is often undervalued because of the large number with hazy ideas to whom the necessity for careful analysis and clear statement is never obvious.
Whatever the subject dealt with, the man who can first thoroughly understand it and then so explain the case that even those with no capacity themselves for accurate statement cannot fail to take his meaning, is on the high road to success. If he can help clear statement by the magic of arresting metaphor or graphic comparison, he has every chance of dominating any situation with which he may be confronted.
The late Lord Balfour, whose death at a ripe old age is just announced, and who, during many crucial years, had a guiding hand upon British foreign policy, was one gifted with remarkable powers of analysis. His statements upon matters of Empire moment have been marked by a skilled use of the English tongue to make crystal-clear the reasons for the actions taken or contemplated by, or on behalf of, the British Commonwealth of Nations.
In law, the considered decisions of world-famous judges like Lord Mansfield, men trained to clear statement by the necessities of their profession and gifted with an added inherent power to improve on that training, frequently supply the precedents that settle points of equity for future generations.
In business affairs the same principle applies. A clear-cut statement frequently dispels mistaken notions. It drives clean through fog and camouflage and lays a sound foundation for confidence in decision. In the individual who possesses this gift, it is to be valued above rubies.
To the young men joining the railway service of this country definite ideas upon the problems confronting them and power to understand and explain situations as they arise are increasingly necessary. If the latter capacity has been developed during
Of course, it would be unreasonable to expect balanced judgment based on weighty experience in the reports supplied by junior members. But to all is open the chance for correct assessment of the true meaning of any words used. This is the first essential to accuracy in definition, which should be supported by sound ideas regarding arrangement—the methodical marshalling of the facts regarding any subject reported upon.
It would be a good thing for everyone in business if a more careful study were given to the meaning of words, their derivations, their uncles, aunts, and cousins—for words, like people, have a general family history. Anyone so trained should be able to take a given set of bald facts and from these to build up a dependable, accurate report that could be relied upon clearly to place before any reader the actual situation of the matter in hand in all its bearings.
The seasonal movement of breeding ewes from Poverty Bay and Hawke's Bay is now at its height, and the Taneatua railway has become the principal source of communication between these districts and the Waikato (says the New Zealand Herald). Although eminently suitable for breeding purposes the East Coast areas do not offer the facilities for fattening which exist in the Waikato. It is the practice every year to drive or transport large numbers of Romney ewes to the Waikato, principally for the purpose of crossing with Southdown rams. The fattening of lambs for the export trade is not carried out to a very large extent in the Poverty Bay and Hawke's Bay districts and every year there is a surplus of breeding ewes, which requires to be moved to other areas. These ewes range from two-tooth ewes to aged ewes.
In the past it has been the practice either to drive the ewes overland or to forward them by steamer. The extension of the East Coast railway to Taneatua has resulted in the patronage of the railway for this purpose. Formerly much of this stock would be taken on the Gisborne railway as far as Motuhora and from there driven overland to Rotorua and other districts. The driving of stock overland did not improve the condition of the animals, while it was a more costly business than transport by rail. The railway now takes the stock from Taneatua over the Thames line and even as far as Tirau on the Rotorua line.
Use was made of the railway line last year, but this season has seen far greater movements of stock. First consignments were handled about the beginning of February and there will be continual movement until the end of March. Special trains have been leaving Taneatua with as many as 3,500 sheep a trip. It is estimated that from 60,000 to 80,000 sheep have already passed through.
Favourable comment has been made concerning the improvements recently introduced by the Department for the display of announcements at railway stations. The latest innovation is an attractively designed card, about 24 × 40 inches, printed in three colours, giving, in panel form, a general summary of useful information for the travelling public. For example, the card contains such information as how to obtain tickets for any form of travel—family, season, or tourist, combined train, sea and service car trips—reservations, collection, checking and delivery of luggage, interisland traffic and other points of interest to travellers and business people.
We are requested to notify those members of the Service who are taking the Correspondence Course this year that the Departmental Examinations (junior, intermediate and senior), will be held in September next. In order to ensure the best results from the various examinations it is advisable that those members who intend to sit should commence their studies and enrol as soon as possible. Many tributes have been paid by past students of the Railway Correspondence School, to the benefits derived from the lessons (which cover the subjects set by the Board of Examiners). The passing of the examinations is calculated to be of assistance to members in their future work for the Department.
“The impression of vitality which one receives when perusing the February number of the New Zealand Railways Magazine is caused by the excellence of the magazine's photographs, the up-to-date nature of its articles, and the raciness of its humour. The paper is one able to interest and entertain almost every section of the community.”
The introduction of the principle of local uniform-rates as a method of preventing the exploitation of our low rates for certain commodities by firms who use road vehicles for competitive transport against us in other classes of goods, has proved successful in two ways. It has drawn public attention to a misuse of the railway rating system which was tending to bring about conditions likely to cause a rise in railway freight rates all round, and it has induced many important business firms to decide to send all their goods by rail in order to avoid the disadvantages which the application. of this principle to their traffic would entail. I have been very pleased to find the general good spirit and understanding attitude in which the new conditions have been accepted by the bulk of the business people affected. This has increased my confidence that the action taken was the right one and strengthens the case for definite action in the one or two instances where our representations have not been accepted.
The important delegation of Empire Fanners at present touring the Dominion, under the auspices of the N.Z. Farmers' Union, will, I feel sure, gain much valuable information regarding producing, trade and travel conditions in this country. The transport and accommodation arrangements for the party throughout the Dominion are being handled by our staff, and I have been very gratified to find how appreciative the members of the party are of the value of the tour and of the openings for improved commerce within the Empire which such missions reveal. It appears to be certain that a considerable impetus will be given to tourist traffic from other parts of the Empire to New Zealand as a result of this visit.
I would like again to impress on members of the staff my desire for an open expression of their ideas and opinions upon any of the problems with which we are grappling. On more than one occasion I have found some diffidence on the part of members of the staff to venture an opinion or to reveal a piece of knowledge due, possibly, to some feeling that if this did not happen to coincide with the beliefs of the management it might be harmful to the man advancing it. Now, I want to have that idea banished completely. The member who does not think for himself and who endeavours to mould reports or verbal statements in the hope that they may fall in with what he thinks might be the General Manager's ideas—or any other individual's ideas for that matter—can never be 100 per cent, valuable to the Department. While decision must, of course, rest with the Department, the approach to decision must be based on the best information obtainable from all sources, and if some useful information or opinion, based on sound knowledge, is withheld by anyone in a position to supply it, the problem of making right decision upon any point is made unnecessarily difficult.
General Manager.
After completing the North Island portion of their Dominion tour (the transport arrangements for which are being handled by the Railway Department), the party of British, South African and Canadian farmers arrived in Wellington on 9th March. The visitors were subsequently given an official reception by the Government at Parliament Buildings.
In wishing the British delegation success before setting out from England, the Rt. Hon. Mr. Amery (formerly Secretary of State for the Dominions), said: “New Zealand was so like Britain in climate and area that it afforded the best field for study among the Dominions.”
The tour was arranged by the British National Union, an organisation whose aim it is to strengthen the bonds of friendship between the various units of the Empire. This is the fifth tour that has been arranged by the Union, the others being: 1925, South African farmers to the United Kingdom; 1926, British farmers to South Africa; 1927, South African farmers to the United Kingdom; 1928, Empire farmers to the United Kingdom. The leader of the party at present visiting New Zealand is Mr. Samuel R. Whitley, J. P., of Reading, who accepted the position when Lord Bledisloe was appointed Governor-General of New Zealand. Mr. Whitley is one of England's leading dairy farmers, and is a member of the council of the British Dairy Farmers' Association. Heading the South African party is Mr. Allan Vere Allan, of Natal, who is the accredited representative of the South African Agricultural Union. He is a warm advocate of co-operation between farmers, and has taken a prominent part in the formation of several co-operative concerns in Natal.
Members of the party speak in generous terms of the land they have seen in the North Island, and they are very enthusiastic about the climatic conditions. Visits were paid by the farmers to Massey Agricultural College, and to other research and educational institutions, and they were impressed with what New Zealand is doing in the direction of invoking the aid of science in farming.
The visitors were accorded an official reception by the Government at Parliament Buildings on the day following their arrival in Wellington. In the absence of the Prime Minister (the Right Hon. Sir Joseph Ward) and the Minister of Lands and Agriculture (the Hon. G. W. Forbes), the guests were received by the Minister of Labour (the Hon. W. A. Veitch) and Mrs. B. B. Wood (daughter of the Prime Minister).
In extending a welcome to the visitors, Mr. Veitch apologised for the absence of Sir Joseph Ward and Mr. Forbes, and read a telegram from them expressing keen interest in the tour. It was a great tribute to New Zealand, they said, that such a body of experienced farmers from the older countries should visit New Zealand. It was hoped that the exchange of ideas resulting from the tour would be of mutual benefit to all parts of the Empire. Mr. Veitch said they all realised how much such tours as the present meant to the Empire. There was nothing like the personal touch. The component parts of the British Empire might be widely separated so far as distance was concerned, but they were very close together in every other way. New Zealand was a very small portion of the Empire, with a population not yet up to the 1,500,000 mark, but they had very high ideals and great aspirations. They had an intense love for the “Mother Country, and a profound respect for the Throne and His Majesty the King. That respect was personal as well as official. They had climatic advantage's, and the advantage of an undivided population, and it was their aspiration to found a Britain of the Southern Seas in the two islands that went to make up New Zealand. In saying that he believed he was speaking not only for the Government, but also for all the
Replying, Mr. Whitley said he felt he was in the wrong place that morning, because the future Governor-General (Lord Bledisloe) would have been replying to the welcome had he not been called to a much higher position than that of leader of the delegation. Lord Bledisloe had resigned that position with great sorrow, but what had been the party's loss had been New Zealand's gain. Mr. Whitley paid a tribute to Lord Bledisloe, remarking that he was not only a leader in agriculture, but in Empire matters as well. Many members of the party were making their first visit to New Zealand, and they were all agreed what a wonderful country it was. They had not felt they were away from Home. It would be the aim of members of the party to do everything possible to secure a greater sale for New Zealand produce at Home, provided, of course, that New Zealand took the products of Great Britain in return. He assured them that the farmers of Great Britain were keenly interested in the secondary industries, for, if it were not for their exports, the English farmers would have no market in the cities. They had a special affection for New Zealand, and when they returned they would tell the people of England of the glories of the great Dominion beyond the seas.
On behalf of the South African Party, Mr. Allan expressed delight at the reception accorded them. Everybody had been out to give them a right royal time, and there was no doubt that they had succeeded. As a South African, he would like to congratulate New Zealand on its climate. He had read about the Dominion, but in spite of that the visit had opened his eyes. The farming community was to be congratulated on what they had been able to attain to in a very brief period of years. That had been due largely to a spirit of co-operation, and he would be only too happy to be able to say the same position existed in South Africa. He had been particularly impressed with what the farmers had been able to do in connection with freezing operations, la one case he understood that as a result of co-operation the farmers were able to save 3s. or 4s. on every carcase of mutton that went out of the country. It would be his aim when he returned to South Africa to tell his fellow farmers about that, and to encourage them to follow in New Zealand's footsteps. During the tour they had been able to have a number of conversations that could never have taken place under other circumstances, and the results, he considered, would be invaluable. They heard something about competition between the various countries in the Empire, but he felt there should be no competition; there should be a spirit of co-operation instead. (Applause.)
The Naval Limitation Conference saw two French Cabinets crack. At the moment Tardieu and Briand survive. Unemployment relief is greedy for the dollars spent on warships. Cheaper wheat may cheer the workless, but not the farmer. U.S. tariff still hanging fire.
During the month that has intervened since last these notes were penned, the London conference to reduce navies has marked time, while French Ministers have come and gone. Of the Great Powers, France and Italy are still pictured as the stumbling block. Report suggests that Britain, the United States and Japan might agree on a substantial measure of naval limitation, but the unknown factor of France-Italian requirements obtrudes. This factor may not materially affect the United States and Japan, but it does affect Britain. Japan and the United States have no English Channel, Mediterranean Sea, or Suez Canal. Japan's narrow seas separate her from countries not at present high in the naval scale, China and the Soviet. If Japan and the United States were as much part and parcel of the European system as is Britain, their naval outlook would be powerfully affected. That fact is perhaps more clearly recognised in Japan than in the United States. The Japanese is an islander, the American a continental. And an islander—even in the peaceful isles of New Zealand—recognises intuitively the dangers of insularity. An American school geography once facetiously described Britain as a small island off the coast of Europe. If that simple geographical fact were borne in mind, the public of the great American Continent might see more clearly the complexities of Britain's naval policy and the courage shown by the British people in already committing themselves to a high degree of voluntary disarmament.
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While the naval delegates have been sitting in London listening to the cracking of the French Cabinet crockery, another sound comes across the North Sea, and it has on the whole a tranquillizing ring. It comes not from France, but from Germany, who is reported to have transferred her naval headquarters from the North Sea end of the Kiel Canal (Wilhelmshaven) to the Baltic end (Kiel). German motives are seldom entirely on the surface, but it has pleased some observers to regard this German movement as a gesture of goodwill to the Naval Limitation Conference. Let it then, pass at that. If the naval retirement from the North Sea to the Baltic is strategic and permanent, it is a striking commentary on the ex-Kaiser's drive in the opposite direction. The equipment of the Kiel Canal for the rapid transport of great warships was one of the significant facts of the pre-war period. Completion of the canal, combined with political happenings, directed by the lately deceased Admiral Von Tirpitz, forced the concentration of British naval power in the North Sea. Kiel canals and Channel tunnels are
* * *
From the naval to the economic front is but a step. Naval building is as much an economic as a moral question, and depressed industries provide part of the rea- Hunger's Part in son why governments Naval Policy. would like to waste less money on warships. People are beginning to ask whether ships should work for their owners, or owners for their ship's. Mercantile ships do work for their owners, but the owners of warships are working so hard (through taxation) that the question of armament reduction has long since ceased to be mere pacifism. Latest reports on the United States unemployed (variously estimated from three to six millions) and on the huge relief expenditure's undertaken, wipe out the fiction that the United States has “money to burn” on warships. President Hoover knows otherwise. And so does the American Federation of Labour. Neither of them claims to be master of any political magic that will dismiss unemployment with the wave of a wand. In fact, the Federation is credited by the cablegrams with the statement that “there is no immediate help for unemployed except through charity.” Money cannot be expended even in relief palliative's unless it is saved in other channels.
* * *
Along with falling prices comes cheaper wheat. America reports the lowest wheat price for fifteen years. Cheaper food is not bad news for the unemployed, but it is not good news for the farmer and producer. For a few days the American Farm Board—largely capitalised by the State—was represented as helping the farmer in his effort to hold up the price of wheat, but later press communiques have tried to discount that impression. There are, of course, two opinions concerning any State-supported price-fixing movement affecting the supply and price of staple food, and the American Farm Board does not seem quite to know whether it is going or coming. The paradox of an over-production that cheapens commodities to some while it denies employment to others is being met with in most parts of the world. New methods need less labourers. In that case, says Sir Oliver Lodge, the labourers should work less hours. But he also says that they should work their less hours for less wages. And there's the rub!
The day of the patriarchs has gone, but Parliaments still have Fathers, some of them long-lived. In fact, it is almost necessary for a Parliament to have a Father, one to whom the finger of constancy can point as to a faithful brook—parties may come and parties may go, but the Father remains as the symbol of continuity and of that personal quality which (some people say) rises above partyism and factional strife. The House of Commons has lately lost a Father by death, and the New Zealand House of Representatives has lost its Father by his recent transference to another sphere. But the most notable of all Fathers of Parliaments has just broken his record reign through the bad taste of the democracy in Japan. Tokio cabled that the February general election resulted in the defeat of M. Motoda, a former Minister and Speaker, “who has been a member continuously since the Diet was inaugurated in 1889.” To have sat continuously throughout the whole history of the legislative body of a Great Power is surely a record unique. It is physically possible only because Japan stepped in one stride from bows and arrows to world politics.
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A good deal of the economic history of the British Empire in 1930 may be written in the United States. Will the new United States tariff be enacted as proposed? If it is, Canada and Argentina will consider retaliation, and the latter's trade concessions to Britain (including tariff reduction on British artificial silk, under the d'Abernon agreement) probably already reflect Argentine dislike of United States high protection, and of its possible further extension. The reaction in Canada to the U.S. tariff may reopen the whole question of extending preference within the Empire, yet some of the Canadians who talk most freely in that strain are also the critics of the treaty under which New Zealand has latterly been sending so much butter to Canada. But the United States tariff is not yet law. Will the Senate and the President stand by reprisal-provoking duties in order to please American protectionists, or will they compromise on the tariff sufficiently to ease the pressure in Canada and Argentina and avert a whole series of consequential results? American legislators operate under the shadow of the election in November next, when every seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, and thirty-two of the ninety-six Senate seats, must be filled.
Following on what was said last month concerning newspaper chains, comes evidence from Sydney (per Press Association) of a control that includes four Sydney daily issues, and which has failed to induce an independent morning daily to join in a price-rise from 1d. to 1 ½d. The control then asked the newsagents not to handle any publication selling at less than ½d., except with the control's consent. But the Press Association cablegram very definitely states that the newsagents “passed a resolution unanimously to handle all newspapers at the prices at which they are published.” The next move is not clear. Another thing stated in this cablegram is that the control includes the two evening papers formerly in fierce competition. If newpaper chains are to include dailies of simultaneous publication, this form of combination assumes a new element of interest. If it is practicable to combine direct competitors, it is practicable to combine all competitors. The public is not interested at the price end only. It is still more concerned about the source of news. Until quite recently the placing of all a city's dailies under one domination would have been deemed fantastic. This incident in Sydney is the best possible indication of the way the wind is blowing.
Through the once Dark Continent, catching some malaria en route, has been travelling His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, on “safari.” At one time “safari” meant mostly a list of the slain, but there are indications that the practice of game-watching, as much as game-shooting, is now finding wider and wider adoption. To an increasing extent the photographic trophy is replacing the tusk and the hide. The other day a prominent English weekly devoted its first page to a splendid “shot” (camera-fired) of an elephant intently observing the photographer, whom it had just detected on the other side of the water-hole, 50ft. or 60ft. away. A series of such photographs was obtained in Kenya “during two short safaris” and “not a shot was fired in obtaining the photographs.” A former Wanganui College boy who is now a district commissioner in Uganda, tells that on numerous occasions he “has spent days within range of game, but never fired a shot, occupying his time studying the life of the jungle.” Big game hunting developed from bow and arrow, spear, muzzle-loader, and b.l. gun, to modern rapid fire. Now it shews a tendency to revert to bow and arrow, which is the actual armament that some of the hunter cult are now employing in Africa.
In a recent address at the quarterly meeting of the South Canterbury Chamber of Commerce, Mr. H. H. Sterling, General Manager of Railways, comprehensively reviewed the position of the Railways, particularly from the aspects of developmental and community services. After discussing certain features of motor competition Mr. Sterling indicated a basis of action to check the diversion of comparatively high-rate goods from the Railways to the roads.
The railways are the biggest industry in the country,” Mr. Sterling said. “Transport has been called the vital industry of commerce—the basic industry of commerce—and I believe that very aptly describes it, because I cannot conceive that anything could tie up the commercial life of the community more definitely than any tie-up in the transport industry.”
Therefore he felt that the Chamber could not bend its energies or the capacity of its members as business men to any more important subject than that affecting the railways of this Dominion.
Railways stood in the commercial life of the Dominion as a two-fold organisation—firstly as a commercial institution, and secondly as a developmental institution. It had been a curious psychology that had been developed within the last decade that very often the standards of the one were applied without reference to the standards of the other. What he meant by that was that there was becoming undoubtedly a tendency in modern times to judge the railways of this country from an exclusively commercial standpoint, when it must be very well known, on the slightest reflection, that they were being run, and must indeed be run, from quite a different standpoint wherein the developmental aspect, if not uppermost, was at least a very potent factor.
It was said that the railways were not “paying,” that the railways were “losing” such and such an amount, generally the amount that represented the difference between revenue and expenditure as shown in the figures of the revenue and expenditure account that was contained in the Annual Railways Statement, but he just wondered if, on reflection, anyone would dare to say dogmatically that those amounts fairly and squarely enabled anyone to say that the railways of this country, when regarded in the two aspects he had mentioned, did not pay. He thought that was a very difficult matter, as he would endeavour to elucidate.
The railways gave certain services—some on the commercial basis, some more or less confessedly on another basis. The expenditure was commercial in such a sense that the whole of the cost of the railways, the whole of the cost of giving those services, whether either directly remunerative or not so as to be reflected in the revenue account, was shown in the expenditure account; but was the whole of the benefit from that expenditure shown in the revenue account? He dared to say, without the slightest fear of contradiction, that it was not. He need only remind the meeting that the railway had some services—and a good many services—which were not expected to be directly revenue-producing because it was believed that they would be in the interests of the community either as resulting in an indirect pecuniary advantage to the community, or in some other way—such as social service—they were for the welfare of the people.
For instance, they might take such rates as the preferential rates which were given for locally manufactured commodities. The reason for such rates were generally the belief that the railways were helping to establish local industry and giving employment to people, and consequently it was worth while to give those rates. From that viewpoint, those rates “paid” or presumably they would not be there. There was a direct pecuniary advantage from the sum received which was reflected in the railway revenue account, and there was that indirect advantage not capable of mathematical statement, but which was the basis of the justification of the preferential rate, and was, by the making and continuance of the rate, postulated to exist. That was a rate he placed in the category of those where there was a direct financial return reflected in the railway accounts, and an indirect return not in the railway accounts.
There were some rates which were not intended to give even the community a financial return, but were held to be justified on other grounds. For instance, there were the workers' weekly tickets under which the Railways carried people for distances up to 10 miles for about 2 ½d. A 12-trip workers' ticket in certain areas costs only 2s. a week, which would enable a worker to make six trips in and out. If a bus owner were asked if he could produce transport at that rate he would not be long in giving an answer. The return to the railways was not remunerative, but would anyone dare to say that these tickets should be abolished? He did not think anyone would have the temerity. What was the justification for those fares? It could not be stated in terms of money figures, but everybody knew that the social service rendered by those tickets made it worth while for the community to pay something to secure the social benefit resulting from the prevention of slums and slum conditions.—Mr. H. H. Sterling.
This was an illustration of his statement that while the expenditure was wholly shown in the railway expenditure account the benefits of the expenditure and efforts of the railway men, from the General Manager downwards, were not reflected in the revenue account. He believed that he had probably said enough to bring home to his hearers, as business men, his point and to illustrate the fallacy of saying that the difference between revenue and expenditure in the railway account was the measure of what was (quite erroneously) termed the “loss” on the railways.
Nevertheless, he was not going to say that the difference was a figure that should not improve, or that they should salve their consciences by saying “Sterling says it is for social service or some other thing.” He recognised that that figure had to be kept within the bounds of what the community could reasonably afford; and how was that to be done?
In order to get the answer to the question in its proper setting it was necessary to look into the transport problem, and the conditions in the transport industry, many of which were not peculiar to New Zealand, but were universal, because there was not a railway concern in the world to-day that had not felt the pressure of the new conditions in exactly the same way as the New Zealand Railways had. In the old days, before the advent of the road motor vehicle, the railways had what might be termed a quasi - monopoly. They could in those days give unpayable services and readily recoup themselves. Sometimes there would be objections from the people who were going to be asked to pay a little extra in order to make the accounts balance, but in the final analysis they had to pay.
In time a new element was introduced, an element which enabled the people to say: “We are not going to pay this; and if you do not remove it we are going somewhere else,” and in these and other ways arose disturbances of the public mind which have led to an inadequate analysis of the position.
Especially in New Zealand, a careful analysis of the position was necessary in order to determine the soundness or otherwise of the railways. “As our railways are a developmental as well as a revenue earning institution we have
The inevitable result had been that the railways, through no fault in the management whatever, but solely due to the altered conditions, could not square the ledger by the means that were previously adopted. What then was the position that had to be faced? The people had either to face that difference between the revenue and expenditure account and say they could afford to pay that as a community for the benefits the country was receiving from the railways, and pay it, or else they could not afford to pay it or they were not going to pay it. Very frequently the latter course had been adopted inferentially by the people concerned complaining about the financial position of the railways, saying that they were not going to pay and something had to be done.
Well then, what was going to be done? One course at once suggested itself, and that was to restore the status quo. Well, that appealed to him as not being quite possible. He was not, as a Railway Manager, so blind to the changes that had taken place within the transport industry as not to recognise at once that the road vehicle had come into the industry and was capable of serving a useful purpose, and that it was here to stay. He believed, however, that much might be done by the community to bring the motor transport section of the industry to a position of greater economic usefulness to the community. He did not propose to pursue that further at the moment because he had dealt with it in his last Annual Report.
The transport costs to the community were not necessarily what any individual might pay, but what it cost to produce the transport, because that sum total of costs had to be paid in some way. It was only a matter of distribution. It might be paid by the users or the taxpayer. The cost in respect to one commodity might be apparently paid for by the charge on another commodity, but the point he was making was this: that the sum total that had to be paid, whether by way of railway charges or otherwise, was measured by the cost of producing the transport.
“Last year the railway management would have squared the railway accounts, including developmental costs, at 2.86d. per ton mile average. Could any motor carrier produce transport by motor of the commodities of this country at that figure? The actual revenue came to 2.41d. per ton mile; the balance required was .45d.—less than ½d. per ton mile—to square the ledger.”—Mr. H. H. Sterling.
He wished to deal with the alternative. It appealed to him, as he hoped it would appeal to his audience, that, if the railways were to be judged more and more from a commercial standpoint, if the people were to say they were not prepared to make up that deficit as taxpayers and the users of the railways should make it up, then obviously to the extent that the capacity of the Railways Department to give the low-rate goods the low rates was reduced by the higher-rate goods being taken away, inevitably the result must be that the lower-rated goods could not have the advantages they had hitherto enjoyed. That raised the important question as to whether a general increase of these rates was a desirable thing. He personally felt that, if it could be avoided, it ought to be avoided, and he himself had endeavoured to avoid it, more particularly when he observed that there were many people in the community requiring transport who, recognising the position, remained loyal to the railways and gave their business to the railways, the whole of it their high-rate as well as their low-rate goods.
Obviously in any action that might be taken in the direction of a general increase in the low-rate of goods they were going to put an impost on that man who had been loyal to the institution because of the fact that his neighbour had not been able to make such a detailed analysis of the position and had deserted the institution with his better - rate goods, while leaving the lower-rate goods to the Railways Department.
How could that inequity be fought? There seemed to be only one way in which to do it, and that was to say to the man who could not recognise the advantages that he or the community received in respect of the low rates: “If you are going to adopt some other form of transport, let that be your standard, but let us be consistent and make it the standard of transport throughout. You cannot have the benefit of the low rate on the low-rate commodities if you are prepared to go to some other form of transport with your high-rate commodities.” That seemed to be a perfectly fair and equitable position to take up, not only from the point of view of the railways, but from the point of view of the users of the railways.
That was the position the railways had reached. The capacity of the country to carry a deficiency on account of the railways was, as in other countries, limited. With a deficiency approaching £1,000,000 for a country with a population of 1 ½ million it was apparent that New Zealand was reaching the limit of its resources in that regard. It had to be recognised that there was a limit to the ability of the country to pay for those low rates through taxation. When all was said and done, it reduced itself to a question of the distribution of the transport costs.
From time to time references were made to the great desirability of having rates cut for such things as fertiliser, and particularly commodities that went to make up the costs of the man on the land. The basis of that was generally the statement that as New Zealand was a primary producing country the more prosperous the primary producers could be made, the better it was going to be. Admitting the fact that New Zealand depended for its prosperity on the primary producers, it was difficult to quarrel with that statement. The railway administration as such had been impressed with the great desirability of continuing that line of action if it was at all possible, and that had created some hesitancy in the minds of the administration in the matter of making any general increase on those low-rate commodities; but then occurred again the question of doing something to prevent an increase in the deficit. He believed that inasmuch as any particular man or concern set up the charges of some other form of transport as his or its standard as against the Railways, then that man or concern could not complain if the Railways in their turn insisted that that standard should operate uniformly in respect of the whole of the transport business of that man or concern.—Mr. H. H. Sterling.
This prompted him to mention a belief or suggestion that had struck him as being very fallacious and mischievous, but was fundamental and led people to wrong conclusions. It was that the motor had reduced transport costs. That was based on the fact that in some cases the motor carriers charged less for certain goods than the railway charged between the same points, but it did not follow by any means that the sum total of the transport costs to the community was being reduced by that procedure.
The point that had to be kept clear in mind was that there were two questions involved that must be kept distinct — first, the total transport costs to the community, and second, their distribution.
If a man adopted a line of action that increased the total transport costs to the community and, provided the distribution of those costs was not altered, so that the increased burden was borne by the party responsible for it, then probably no great harm was done, or at least no great discontent would arise; but when action of that kind was followed by an alteration in the distribution of the costs so that the proportion to be borne by the party concerned was reduced and the burden shifted to other members of the community, or to the community as a whole, then of course cause for dissatisfaction arose immediately. The trouble was that, when a man secured a reduction
Just to show exactly what it meant to the railways if the Department recouped itself for the loss on account of the higher rate of goods, he had had a few figures prepared which he thought would bring the railway position in this country into vivid relief. These figures showed that if they were considering the railway position of the country on the basis of the service given to the people, instead of the balance of revenue and expenditure, the difficulties, so far as they depended on service, disappeared. He was not going to say that the financial difficulty would disappear, because there was a limit to the capacity of the country to carry social, developmental and other such rates. The railways carried 360,000 tons of grain; meals, 120,000 tons; root crops, 100,000 tons; hard coal, 1,110,000 tons; soft coal, 1,000,000 tons; agricultural lime, 140,000 tons; New Zealand timber, 540,000 tons; chaff, hay, and other low-rate goods, 320,000 tons; and manures, in six-ton lots and over, 630,000 tons. These were just a few figures that he had got out, but probably the more interesting would be the totals. The total quantity of goods accounted for by these low-rate classifications was 6,530,000 tons out of a total of goods carried of 7,613,000 tons.
But the point of view he wished to bring out so far as the passenger business went was its commercial aspect. The position was well in hand, and the commercial competition with the railways in New Zealand was not growing to any material extent. The Department had instituted cheap excursions, which had saved the situation from the point of view of the railway passenger returns. It was almost a wholly new traffic, and the result had been that the passenger traffic had now assumed more substantial dimensions. It was certainly a “bread and butter” line, but from the point of view of service to the community it stood very high indeed. It was found to-day that the people whose pecuniary position was not strong and who were to a large extent crowded together in cities were now able, through the railways, to get out and have a breath of fresh air at a rate that was within their means and could not be given by any competitive form of transport. This was something for which the Department was entitled to credit, a credit that was by no means directly represented by the figures in the revenue account.—Mr. H. H. Sterling.
It would be seen that those goods represented, approximately, 86 per cent. of the total that the railways carried. The revenue from these goods was £3,798,953, out of a total goods revenue of £4,898,391, or less than 78 per cent, of the total, so that while those low-rated goods represented 86 per cent, of the tonnage the revenue got from them represented 78 per cent, of the revenue. It would be clear to the members, therefore, that the other 14 per cent, should carry a margin on the rates which would enable the railways to catch up on the low-rate goods. The main point was this: that inasmuch as the low-rate goods represented such a large proportion of the total tonnage it would not be an impossible matter for the Railway Department to square its ledger by increasing the rate on those low - rate goods.
Why, then, did the Department hesitate? It hesitated for two reasons. The first was that, if it increased those rates to an extent that would balance the ledger, it would be collecting from the users of the railways more than a private company would collect—from this point of view: that inasmuch as the community was receiving a benefit through the developmental rates from the railway expenditure, the community as a whole and not the users of the railways, should pay for that. The community enjoyed the benefit and should pay something for that benefit, and the Department should not require to obtain more in the way of revenue from the customers than a private railway would do.
The second point was that the Department might find that an increase on those low-rate goods would not be in the best interests of the community.
If a man was not willing to give the
When members of a Chamber of Commerce were considering, as taxpayers, or as shareholders of the railway concern, the question as to whether that deficit should be there or not, they, as business men, said: “Well, if the expenditure were less or the revenue more, that would mean at least that the deficit, to the extent that it is affected by either of these factors, would be lessened.”
They wished to know was the expenditure down where it ought to be and were the railways getting as much business as they ought to get by such methods as it was within the scope of the Department's authority to adopt. He could assure his hearers that the railways were being run as economically as the circumstances permitted. He had gone into this matter at considerable length in his last Annual Statement and he had placed definite costing figures before the public. He gave the statistics of railway operation which were there on record for perusal by anyone who might care to analyse them, and he had made an honest endeavour to give such explanations as would make the significance of the statistics manifest and enable anyone interested to get an intelligent grasp of them. endeavour to give such explanations as would make the significance of the statistics manifest and enable anyone interested to get an intelligent grasp of them.
In New Zealand there was another fact that they had to keep in mind when they were making use of the words “Making the Railways Pay.” The whole difficulty in viewing the railway situation was the interpretation of that term. It might mean making them pay as an abstract commercial proposition or it might mean as a community investment. The difference was vital to a clear conception of the railway position. If the railways were to be made an abstract proposition all consideration of social and developmental benefits from the scheme of railway rates had to be taken away.
If the railways were viewed as a community investment, giving returns to the community of various kinds, some financial and some in the direction of development, or sound service in some other direction, it had to be admitted that the railways did very adequately pay. He mentioned that both on the passenger and goods side the management was guided by a desire to give adequate service to make it worth people's while to use their own railways, but he felt that while there was a responsibility on them as workers of the railways there was a reciprocal responsibility on the part of the people as shareholders and potential users of the railways.—Mr. H. H. Sterling.
No one could stand up at any particular moment and say there was nothing further to be done on the expenditure side. The efforts to secure reduction of expenditure and greater measure of economy were not static in their nature but dynamic.
As the railways stood to-day there was no opportunity being missed for their economical working so far as the matter might come within the control of the management, and economies were constantly being effected. He made that last qualification advisedly because there were some matters outside the control of the management, some of them inherent in a State institution, others arising from other sources. He did not hesitate to say, as General Manager, that on the expenditure side no opportunity was being omitted to keep the expenditure down as far as they were able to do, and he did so with a full sense of his responsibility.
The management also seized every opportunity for increasing the revenue not so much by increasing the rates as by going out and getting traffic. On the passenger side there were very great difficulties which were outside the control of the management of the railways and which were world-wide in their operation. In commercial competition the railways were holding their own. The returns showed more passenger journeys than ever before in the history of the railways, but unfortunately the
The trouble on the passenger side was not so much commercial competition as the competiton of the private motor car, which was in a sense non-commercial. It probably was very rarely indeed that the question as to whether a person was going to travel by private motor car or railway was determined by the financial considerations involved. Day by day people were travelling by their motor cars and they did not give one single thought to the question as to whether they could not do it more cheaply by rail. Circumstances of convenience entered into it, of course, and all too often—he was afraid — circumstances of vanity.
On the goods side, the Department was adopting business methods. It was going out with a message to the public, a message of service, a message that was backed by truth and sincerity, and a message that had, he believed, the honest will-to-do of the 19,000 employees of the Department. The result was that he felt himself on sound ground in saying that on the goods side also the Department had gone out to get the business with a very large amount of success.
It was not those who worked in the railways that put the railways there to be used. It was the people through their representatives deciding in accordance with the constitutional methods existing in this country. The railways were put there without reference to those who had to work them. He was not criticising in any shape or form whether that was desirable or otherwise, but the point he wished to bring out was this: that inasmuch as those railways were put there by the people it was the duty of the people to use them or abide by the consequences. The utmost responsibility that could be fastened on those who had to run the railways was to make the use of them as cheap and attractive as possible. Those responsible were endeavouring, and as he hoped and believed with success, to do that. Whether the people discharged their responsibility, if he might put it in that light, was a matter, of course, entirely for themselves. The job of the railwaymen was to make the service worth while for the people not only in their capacity as members of a community supporting their own investment, but as users of the railway finding it profitable and pleasant to do so.—Mr. H. H. Sterling.
He did now and again come across some people who railed against the railways because they had probably bumped up against some member of the staff with whom they had got at cross purposes. It would be queer, indeed, if in a fold of that size there was not an occasional black sheep. He said that, not by any means by way of apology, but simply in recognition of the known frailties of human nature. But surely the whole outfit was not to be judged by such exceptional cases as those mentioned. The great body of the men of the railway service were guided by a sincere desire to do their best for those who were employing them. It had been his happy experience in recent times to hear many testimonies supporting that view.
In the application of business methods to the affairs of the Department, he said, the management was, however, under some disadvantages, many of which were inherent in State ownership. It could not have the flexibility of a private concern in either its external or internal relationships. It could not have that freedom of action which the owner-driver of a motor vehicle could have in quoting rates. The people of the country, impelled by their democratic instincts, insisted on uniformity of treatment and the slightest deviation was enough to bring down upon the railways a very emphatic protest. The efforts of our competitors were not in that way circumscribed. There were other points in connection with State ownership that had similar effects. He did not mention them by way of excuse, because he did not think that any excuse was necessary.
He pinned his faith to the service they were able to give, service that was demonstrated in the figures he had given—the fact that the railways were able to carry 86 per cent, of their tonnage at a rate that no competitive form of transport could possibly look at. If to-morrow they were told that the railways were formed into a commercial institution and told: “Now, go to it on that basis,” he would not hesitate to say, without the slightest possible doubt, that
Within the Department the managerial policy had been one of co-ordination of effort. In the external relationships it had been along similar lines. Within the Department, by frequent conferences of executive staffs and by receiving sympathetically and suitably rewarding suggestions and inventions, they were making an immense collective effort.
In their relationship with the outside public they had endeavoured to merit their co-operation. His presence at the meeting was an illustration, if he might put it, of the policy in endeavouring to make the utmost possible contact with those who were sufficiently interested in the railway problem of the country to want to make contact with them. In order to carry out that policy it was necessary that he, as the executive head, should move freely about the country. He had endeavoured to do so, and believed that the fact that he had done so had been helpful to a great many earnest thinkers on the railway problem. It had certainly been helpful to him, because even criticism represented a point of view, and inasmuch as the capacity of all to know the facts at first hand had a definite limitation, it was only by a constant contact with people and exchange of ideas that satisfactory progress could be achieved.
It would almost be impossible to over-estimate the importance of adequate ocean outlets, in the way of docks and shipping facilities, to the average railway system. At Home, a very considerable percentage of the passenger and freight business handled passes through the various ports, and there is much competition for shipping business of every kind. Many of the docks around the coast of Britain are owned and operated by the railways themselves, those at Hull and Southampton being noteworthy examples (writes our London Correspondent).
The Port of London Authority is a most “go-ahead” undertaking, and recently it has opened a new entrance lock and dry dock at Tilbury, while a new passenger landing stage is also being constructed nearby. The new entrance lock will accommodate the largest vessel afloat, being 1,000 feet long and 110 feet wide. It is by vessels engaged in trade between Britain and New Zealand, Australia, and India, that Tilbury Docks are principally used. Tilbury Docks handle 150,000 outward passengers and 60,000 inward passengers annually.
One of the first benefactors of his country is the man who builds a bridge. He would not be appreciated in the Sahara, or in Central Australia, but in a land like New Zealand he is the pioneer whose work is of prime importance to progress and civilisation.
In this land of rivers and streams, gulches and gullies, we owe an infinite deal to the skilful engineers who spanned with steel such canyons as the Makatote and the Makohine and who laboriously built long bridges across the fierce snow torrents that come roaring down from the Southern Alps. Every now and again we hear of such and such a river having been bridged at last, the Mokau or the Motu, or the Waiapu. It marks a stage in the country's advancement; the ford or the punt giving place to the reliable way for wheels.
Soon in the North Island every important stream will have been spanned. It is rather different in some parts of the South Island, particularly far down in South Westland, where you may ride a hundred miles, fording a snow river every few miles—one of them is half a mile wide at its mouth—and never a sign of a bridge, until you come to that high, rickety affair strung over the narrow canyon of the Wills River, near the Haast Pass.
The bridge is one of the first tokens of man's march in such a country as New Zealand. It was just the same in early Britain. The country troubled little about bridges until the Romans came, and then the bridge-builders gave the country arched stonework that lasted for centuries. Here the Maoris of the era of violent contact between white and brown looked with suspicion on the bridge; the deep river that could not be forded or that could only be crossed with difficulty was a means of defence. The shrewd “Kingmaker,” Wiremu Tamehana, strongly opposed road-making in the South Auckland country in the early Sixties; even before the Waikato War began he perceived that a road and a bridge were the forerunners of conquest.
The primitive emergency bridge of the old campaigning days in New Zealand was a bridge of barrels. On such a bridge horse, foot, and artillery crossed the Whangamarino in the advance into the Waikato. Bridges laid on floating barrels were, too, the first means by which Cameron and Chute crossed their troops over the Waitotara and Patea Rivers in the West Coast Wars of 1865–66. The bridge-builders who accompanied the army in the invasion of the Waikato laid permanent bridges over the small streams, but the Waikato and the Waipa had to remain unspanned for many a year. There was a time not so long ago but what many of us can recall it, when only four bridges crossed the Waikato on its whole length of two hundred miles—one at the head at Taupo, one at Atiamuri, and the others at Cambridge and Ngaruawahia. It was an exasperatingly slow job crossing in the old-style punts on wire ropes at such places as Hamilton, Huntly and Tuakau.
The building of the railway bridge which spans the high-banked Waikato at Hamilton will be remembered by old-timers as a particularly difficult task, because of the unreliable nature of the quicksand-like river-bottom. The engineers who sank the piers thought they would never reach sound footing for their lofty bridge.
Curious little byways of pioneering memory are explored by the lightning flashes of memory as one travels the country and rolls smoothly in a railway carriage or a motor car over some long white bridge. Such a river as the Rangitaiki was at once useful for military purposes on its lower reaches, by reason of its navigable character, and an obstacle on its swift upper course. In later times, when one had to cross it on the long ride from Rotorua to the Urewera Country, it was a river to be dealt with circumspectly. Strong and deep and fairly wide, it was not at every place that it could be forded. I have a shivery recollection of getting out of my depth, or rather my horse's depth, at the ford opposite William Bird's place, some miles below the present bridge at Murupara, and drifting down stream towards some rapids. It would not have mattered had the Rangitaiki been low, but she was running rather high, and I was not sure of the right ford. By
It is perfectly easy to get into trouble at an unfamiliar ford, no matter how much o:.e may have crossed back-blocks rivers on horseback. I know places in the King Country where the ford is just above a waterfall; there is a shallow, slippery papa rock ledge at such crossings on which your horse must contrive to keep his footing or go over with you. Those are the places where you would say your prayers to the first man who built a bridge.
There are far worse rivers, however—the icy torrents of South Westland. The Waiau, which rises in the terminal face of the Franz Josef Glacier, was a nightmare to far-south travellers. It has been bridged during the last two or three years—a blessing to all whose occasions take them south of the Waiau. Getting wet in one of our northern rivers is a trifle, but it is a serious business in one of those snow rivers if you have a long ride to follow, and have not time to thaw out and dry your clothes immediately on getting out of the chilling bath. But the worst risk is that of getting rolled over and over in the torrent should your horse lose his footing—one of those rock-bedded glacial watercourses where you never can see the nature of the bottom because of the discoloured water.
Queer bridge some of us have crossed—sometimes literally straddled—in the back country. Often just a tree felled across a stream and its branches roughly lopped off. I remember in particular one which it was a ticklish trial to tackle; slippery smooth above a deep, dark creek; but a Maori woman with a big kit of potatoes strapped on her back took it with so little concern that she paused when half-way over the log to light her pipe. The lady, however, was barefooted, which accounted for her confidence.
Perhaps the most curious bridge of all is one at Ototohu, near Mahoenui, quite close to the main road between Te Kuiti and the Mokau. When some of us roamed about those parts of the limestone country, we walked up a smooth-bedded little creek from Mr. John Old's farmhouse, until we came to the natural bridge, which spanned the miniature canyon, fifty or sixty feet above our heads. It was a perfect bridge of rock, beneath which its white-walled stream had worn its way ages ago. Useful, too, as well as wonderful, for
The natural difficulties on the Rotorua line surmounted by the skilful engineers who constructed the great viaducts, concrete-bedded and steel-trussed and latticed, on the North Island Main Trunk railway, make that era of public works construction a quite splendid chapter in the story of our pioneering development. Elsewhere on our railway construction works there were incidents in which Tangata Maori took an obstructive hand.
The late Daniel Fallon, one of the good old generation of Irish contractors who bossed the pick and shovel men and the axe and saw brigade on many a big railway job, once told me of the “divil's own row” he had in putting up a bridge over a stream on a section of the railway to Rotorua. It was up in the hill country after you leave the Matamata Plains. The local Maoris, over some question of title, disputed the right of way, and while some of the most stalwart wahines, as was the pleasant custom of the old days, grappled the nearest workmen, their husbands and brothers threw the timbers into the creek. Others tackled the supports below with axes.
Tempers waxed hot, and a big Irishman on the half-built bridge, seeing a black head below in the gully, tugged away at a heavy timber that would drop beautifully on to John Maori's skull.
Dan Fallon saw it just in time to prevent murder being done. “Leave that alone!” he yelled. “If you drop it I'll knock you into the creek!” His angry countryman reluctantly obeyed him. Had that Maori's skull been cracked, Dan's contract certainly would have come to grief, to say nothing of other complications.
There were some trying times in our pioneer bridge-building, as in surveying and road-making, but wise old lads like Dan Fallon found it paid to go easy with Maori obstructionists, and to keep their tempers in spite of provocation. It may be that is why the men from his part of the Green Isle make such good policemen.
Commenting in a recent issue on the transport arrangements made by the Department for the recent annual picnic of the Napier Post and Telegraph Department, the Hawke's Bay Herald says: “The Railway ‘Bus Department's four big ‘buses, together with three smaller ones, presented an imposing spectacle as they left the Marine Parade. Too much praise cannot be given for the efficient manner in which the ‘buses were handled, the comfortable ride afforded the picnickers being the subject of much favourable comment.”
In his present contribution our London Correspondent discusses the wider education of raiwaymen in relation to the special problems of modern transport, and reviews interesting aspects of current British and Continental railway practice.
Railways have always offered interesting and worth-while employment to the ambitious and careful worker. To-day there are genuine opportunities within the railway industry for the go-ahead man. Railways everywhere have discovered the need for men of broad education and wide vision, untrammelled by the shibboleths of the past, to grapple with the many diverse problems associated with inland transportation. No longer is transport divided into water-tight compartments, such as railway working, road conveyance, canal movement, and so on. For the first time, transport is now viewed as a whole, and the necessity for broad minds and wide visions among railway workers is indeed real.
Sir Josiah Stamp, Chairman and President of the Executive of the London, Midland & Scottish Railway, probably the best-known railway leader in the world, recently pointed out the great need for the study of transport as a whole, and the fact that, in his railway career, the young man of to-day had tremendous advantages as compared with the young man of yesterday. Speaking before a meeting of the Metropolitan Graduate and Student Society of the Institute of Transport, in London, Sir Josiah remarked that only by regarding the various modes of transportation as under one heading could there be avoided chaos and waste of capital and human energy. How was this new situation being met? It was not difficult to find men who were sufficiently skilled and instructed in one particular line of transport; but to find men who had made a practice and a habit of looking at the thing as a whole, and taking into account other aspects than their own, was still a novelty. The younger men of the transport industry, however, were beginning a mode of thought which would later become a habit, and in the future, when all transport matters would be dealt with on comprehensive lines, we should look back upon the days of water-tight compartments as days of barbarism.
It is well that, at this stage in transportation's progress, a man like Sir Josiah Stamp should remind us of this marked change which is taking place within the industry. The fact is that, to get out of the rut, the railwayman of to-day must interest himself in much that lies outside his own particular job. He must secure education in its widest sense, not only acquiring the fullest knowledge possible of the many branches of railway working, but also mastering the fundamentals at least of road, water and aerial transport, and keeping in touch with developments in every field of transportation. This may sound something of a task, but it is really remarkable what knowledge may be acquired by the keen seeker after information, and in the years that lie ahead the broadly educated railwayman will undoubtedly find the effort to have been well worth while.
Railway mechanical engineering embraces no more important task than that of maintaining in good running order, the locomotives of every type utilised for passenger and freight train haulage.
The London, Midland and Scottish Railway was formed by the amalgamation of eight large and 27 smaller railways. These individual lines owned at the time of amalgamation 10,316 engines of about 300 types. By the end of 1928, Sir Henry Fowler stated, the stock had been reduced to 9,871, and the number of different classes cut to 129. One of the first essentials of rapid and economical repair was put as the standardisation of renewable parts, including the boiler. Probably the best method of determining the time the heavy repair of a locomotive should be undertaken was the mileage basis. As regards the boiler, however, the number of times fired up was also a factor to be borne in mind. The process of repairing a locomotive might follow one of three courses, viz.: (1) The whole of the repair might be carried out while the locomotive was in one position. (2) The locomotive might, after being put on wheels, be moved forward on the same road at predetermined intervals on what is styled the “belt” system, as common in motor car construction and repair, (3) The system by means of which the frames or locomotives were moved two or three times during the period they were in the shops. The first method, Sir Henry Fowler stated, was the one to be most commonly used in the past, and it was one which gave fairly good results. It meant, however, that men who carried out specific repairs had to take with them their tools and appliances, and this was not an ideal arrangement. The second method was that followed in the Crewe works of the L.M. and S. Line, and it proved most successful. The locomotive, on receipt, was stripped in two days, and received frame repairs occupying four days while stationary. After this, it was placed on wheels, and for one day then formed the last link of a chain of six locomotives coupled together by wire ropes, each day from this moving forward one place until it was drawn out of the shop a completely repaired machine. Method number three was that favoured at the Derby Works of the L.M. and S. Railway.
As regards locomotive repair costing systems, Sir Henry Fowler stated that, at all the workshops on the L.M. & S. Railway, a uniform method of compilation of workshop expenses was in operation, by means of which, expenditure on maintenance and operation of workshops, plant and machinery, was ascertained for each shop under about one hundred separate heads. This information was compiled every four weeks and was circulated among works managers and shop foremen for the purpose of checking and, where necessary, explaining any exceptional expenditure incurred. The percentages of workshop expenses to direct wages were ascertained for each shop and applied to these wages. A uniform system of costing of manufactures was also in operation at each works, all stock articles being made to specific stores department orders and passed to that department on completion. By this means no new
No railway system in Europe ranks of greater importance than that of Germany. A recent study of conditions throughout this far-flung railway undertaking reveals strikingly the prosperity of the system, and the ability and energy displayed by German railway workers of every grade. The German Railway Company was formed on October 1, 1924. Its tracks run to 33,000 miles, and in 1928, the German railways handled 2,000,000,000 passengers and loaded on an average 150,000 wagons of merchandise on each working day. In addition some 160,000,000 tons of coal were conveyed during the twelve months.
Generally speaking, train speeds are not high in Germany. Only about four per cent, of the passengers handled in 1928 travelled by fast train, the majority preferring to take advantage of the cheaper service offered by the slow trains, or “Personenzug” as they are styled. This feature, by the way, was brought home strikingly to your correspondent during his lengthy stay in the Rhineland when engaged as a Staff Officer on supervisory work on the railways in the Cologne area. Express trains were used almost exclusively by members of the Allied forces with a mere handful of German civilians. The slow trains were packed with civilians, a very small proportion of whom found seating accommodation. On the main trunk routes of Germany the fastest trains are those between Berlin and Cologne, Frankfort and Hamburg, these averaging speeds up to 55 miles an hour. The average length of haul for freight traffic in Germany is 94 miles, and the average freight train consists of 39 wagons. Goods rates work out at about 39 per cent, over the 1914 figures.
The most famous of all the fast passenger trains in Germany is the “Rheingold Limited,” running daily between Hook of Holland and Basle. This
The carriages of this crack express are of all-steel construction. They comprise combination salon-dining rooms, with intimate compartments in the first-class carriages for two and four passengers respectively. The seats are heavily upholstered, with high backs. They consist of revolving arm-chairs in the first-class, and of stationary individual and twin-seats in the second-class. A separate kitchen is provided for each pair of passenger carriages. No two carriages are alike in interior colour combinations, upholstery or tapestry. The exterior of the “Rheingold Limited” is painted bright lavender, with cream window-frames and a silver grey roof. Extra fares, over and above the ordinary passenger rates, are charged for travel on this most famous of all German passenger trains.
While the German railways are marching steadily ahead, the railways of the neighbouring European land of Austria are being worked under very great difficulties.
What amounts almost to a crisis has now been reached in the Austrian railway world, and there are many alarming rumours in circulation concerning the future of Austria's railway system. On the one hand there is mention of a complete change in the management. Another rumour speaks of the possible return to hard and fast government operation. Yet a third report tells of the possible leasing of the Austrian railways to a foreign syndicate. Hard and fast bureaucratical rule will certainly not pull the Austrian railways out of their difficulties, nor is the idea of leasing the railway system of the land to a foreign syndicate at all attractive from the point of view of the average patriotic Austrian. What probably will be done eventually will be to call in the aid of some outside railway expert of international repute, to investigate the situation, and report as to what remedial measures he considers desirable. The Austrian railway system is one of the most important of central European transportation links, and it would be a thousand pities if the undertaking were allowed to slide to a second-rate standard.
Of course the vast majority of rumours are unconfirmed, because they are concerned with rather delicate or intimate personal matters. Attempts to confirm many of these rumours would greatly increase the world's production of black-eyes, battered noses, and broken sconces.
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Years ago it was believed that the unconfirmed rumour—passed on through the town in “strictest confidence”—had a bigger run among women than men, but it is rumoured that as femininity has become a little more masculine in outlook and masculinity to-day has a feminist tendency, it would need a double Royal Flush Commission of extraordinary power and courage to determine which sex is the busier creator or distributor of unconfirmed rumours.
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Many thousands of journalists, the world over, remember the lure of the unconfirmed rumour in their early days of reporting. How rosy it looked on the wild tree! What a fruity thing to hand to the public! The editor had given the traditional warning: “When in doubt, leave out.” The young Sherlock Holmes had tried hard to find out, but it was not possible to clear away every speck of uncertainty. So, after much cogitation, he decided to chance it. “One more wild shot like that,” the editor said next day, sternly, almost fiercely, “and you may look for another job. This is a solid, respectable, newspaper office, not a bureau for issuing guessers' licenses.”
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Barbers' shops have been claimed as the sources and spreaders of many unconfirmed rumours, but the full responsibility must not be thrust upon the barber. If customers could sit about smoking in grocers' shops, waiting for their turn, these mild places would have their share of the wild rumour business, but not so much as the barber's boudoirs where the atmosphere is more conducive to gossip. The barber, as the recipient of the city's chat, simply passes it on to successive occupants of the chair.
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A much-quoted saying, attributed to the late Barnum, who specialised in the collection and exhibition of freaks, was something like this: “The public like to be humbugged.” Yes—but only once in a while. They will pay cheerfully now and then to be humbugged now and then, but they will not agree to pay all the time to be humbugged all the time.
Here, then, is a pretty problem for some merchants of humbug. When and how do the people like to be humbugged? For the man who picks the right time and place for bamboozlement, the public has a bouquet, but a bucket of very cold water for the person whose mock-oranges are grown out of season. It is very, very difficult, my masters.
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More nonsense is thought, spoken, and written about the public than about economics or the balance of trade. The great joke of the business is that there is no public at all, in the sense in which the word “public” is commonly used. Every so-called “public” in the world consists of innumerably small and large publics within the big public (which is ever changing its constitution). There is a general sound public opinion about the need of fresh food, but not about the need of fresh air. Even in the matter of fresh food there is not unanimity, for some
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Within the public of New Zealand come many publics, dividing and subdividing until even a single tavern has its own public (subdivided also), making and unmaking policies for anything and everything, anywhere and everywhere.
It is much more easy to make or shape public opinion to-day on national, political or social questions than time before the evolution “movies,” and radio — but more easy to unmake it same arts and crafts are available to the breaker as to the maker. The public is not more changeable at present than it was in the past. The difference is that long ago, when distractions were fewer, people could think more solidly about their own welfare. If they took a long time to make up their minds about anything, they also took a long time to unmake them. To-day the demands on public attention are so many and varied that the public mind must feel like a whirligig. An opinion about anything is here to-day, gone to-morrow, and back the day after.
It is hard to write anything new about sex. Poets, dramatists, novelists, uplifters, and others are trying to be original on this question, to the great amusement of the world's women and some of the men. But, then, who can say or write anything new about anything? (See Ecclesiastes 1, 9d.) However, as everybody is always forgetting what others have said about the world, the flesh, and the devil, one can put a change of dressing on old bones and flourish the figure as a new creation. The only scope for originality now is in the new turns of world-old thoughts, and—but that can wait for another day.
Here is a girl (alias young woman, alias young lady) on a tennis court, playing singles against a young man, sturdy and agile. The girl has bare brown arms, supple and strong, and she is fast on her feet. The man begins gallantly, true to the traditions of chivalry, he thinks. He feels that he controls the game, and sends over “soft stuff” which is slammed back out of his reach. Onlookers laugh, and the man thinks it will be well to harden his play. He does, but the girl goes a little harder. Once more the laugh is against the man—again and yet again.
In the following instalment of Mr. Dale's series of articles on Industrial Psychology interesting reference is made to the noise factor and its relation to production and accident causation in the modern workshop.
Reverting to the noise principle referred to in the last article it will be discovered that the worker finds the clang of hammer or the rat-tat of the riveting machine adversely affects production. Psychologically, it has been proved that the distraction due to noise lowers his output, because of the cross-currents of attention. Recently, a case was noted at Otahuhu shops. One of the workers in the undercarriage shop, where there is considerable noise due to the nature of the work, complained of feeling sick and applied for a change of shop. Investigation followed and, as a result the employee was transferred to another shop where there was, comparatively speaking, silence. Reports indicated in a definite manner that noise was a large factor in his output, while no further complaints as to his health have since been made.
On broad lines, too, noise is a fatigue factor which affects, to a serious degree, the output scheduled for the period. The schedules for jobs do not show this to any extent because of the method of computation, but a superficial examination of the employees leaving the engineering shops, as compared with those in the painting or upholstery sheds, indicates the truth of the laboratory findings. There is the strain produced by noise as well as that which is the outcome of work, irrespective of the amount of bodily exertion which the job demands. That this has a serious effect upon the nervous system cannot be denied for it reacts upon the worker who cannot make the correct motor response in a situation demanding accurate perception of the position.
This is demonstrated by perusing the “First Aid” book at Otahuhu. One is struck by the lack of serious accidents listed, but impressed by the number of slight accidents to hands and eyes. An investigation showed that the operators gave as reasons: “The tool slipped.” “Finger got caught on the wheel.” “Sparks rose when I didn't expect them.” “The goggles are uncomfortable;” and so on. The answers bear out what has been said in respect to the relationship between noise, fatigue and late or incorrect motor responses (or movements).
Through the courtesy of the Manager of the Otahuhu Workshops, figures which have a definite bearing on this aspect can be quoted. Selections made at random from sheets, show the relationship of accidents as follows:—
An analysis of the sheets indicates clearly that it is neither equipment in the shop nor carelessness on the part of the worker that throws the great incidence of cuts, foreign bodies in eyes or similar small accidents, to the account of the steel shops. But rather is it the noise, which is inseparable from the work, reacting on the nervous system, which, in turn, produces conditions suitable for mishaps.
Intimately bound up with the rhythm of the organism, which, in this case, is the workshop hand, is the rhythm of machinery. The average man dealing with machines learns to distinguish
Similarly has this “swing” factor been considered in riveting where the electric heaters turn out the material at the pre-determined intervals so that there is an even flow without undue haste or piling-up of ready rivets. Many numerous small points have been combined with the main machines in one shop so that there is a steady forward movement over the whole of the working unit. From the time small angle-irons are punched for rivet holes, until the complete undercarriage is strapped together, the rhythm is maintained. So complete is the organisation, that the shop has worked out a time schedule for a complete shift in the assembly shop every two hours. At the same time it must be understood that if machinery is “speeded-up” so that the rhythm at which it is intended to operate is thrown out, the effect is deleterious, even disastrous, to the machine. (Private factories, in an endeavour to increase output, occasionally fail to realise this factor.) On specialised jobs, such as boring holes in flooring sheets, thought has been given to promote movements calculated to be both natural and, at the same time, quicker. The order of boring holes has been fixed and the worker has been instructed in procedure. The saving in both time and effort will be more obvious if the reader attempts to work from left to right and proceed
This work movement, too, is intimately bound up with the emotional life. A machine used by Titchener, and named the Automatograph, measures the effect of mental pleasure, or displeasure. It has been established elsewhere, and local experiments bear this out, that pleasure gives an involuntary forward and upward movement about 2cms. long, while displeasure shows a contrary movement, flatter and comparatively longer (up to 4cms.).
It will be apparent at once that if the work is arranged pleasurably the result will be attained with considerably less involuntary movement. One foreman, in discussing the matter, mentioned the case of a man who had had a slight accident with his machine. His output declined slightly, prompting enquiries for such falling off. This particular worker could give no reason, but desired to be put on to other work. Consideration of the position, in the light of the laboratory experiment, shows that the man, under the emotional stress of fear of a further accident really did “retire within his shell” every time he made a new movement. Given that it was 4cms. from the correct place it meant a loss of one second on each fresh movement, which at the end of the work unit, totalled a considerable loss of time and, hence, of output. On being transferred to other work the possibility of his fear being inhibited promised success. Physically the employee working under pleasure breathes quicker and weaker, with a consequent slower and stronger pulse than that observed under displeasure. This enables the repair of the cells to proceed more rapidly, so that there is less contamination of the blood stream.
In concluding the review of machinery factors, it would be incomplete if one omitted to mention the degree to which mechanical aids have been utilised. The layout of the shops indicates an appreciation of the advantages of machinery. Old, obsolete machinery passed away with the demolition of the Newmarket shops. Wherever machines can do the work these have been installed, so that production is now increasing while time schedules indicate a decreasing time-span on the job. But that is not all. Considerable thought has been given to economy of time and effort in small details. As a result, there are labour saving devices in all the shops. As an instance, the riveters use a small holder, adjustable, by means of a lever, to changing working conditions. This
While the shops are run upon strictly business lines in keeping with modern psychological findings, the social side, with its enormous reaction on shop life, has not been neglected. Mention has been made of the grounds. The promise of park-like surroundings is finding fulfilment. Native trees, flower beds and trim lawns are in evidence. The maintenance work is done by the employees who have also provided the material. The underlying factor that, what is provided by the hands will be appreciated by them, is recognised by the Works Manager who stimulates out-of-door activities. Nor is the fact lost sight of that such effort has a personal reflection in workshop practice. Granted that conditions under which the work is performed are pleasing, the “job” must also be superior. This is simply an emotional or aesthetic aspect which, although not always objectively measurable, is as true as the statement that poor shops invariably produce poor work. The men hastening to catch the train provided, free of cost, to take them to their city homes, use paths and avoid “short cuts.” The sward is unbroken by tracks; woe betide he who seeks to walk across the grass. “He who runs may learn” that the paths are the places on which to move. There is much civic and social training resulting from this outlook which must be reflected in pride of craftsmanship.
The next article will discuss the other social aspects of the shops, with their bearing upon interrelationships.
Dear reader, man admits with acclamation that he is the epitome of anthropological acumen and biological brilliance—in fact the biggest and brownest bun produced by cosmic cookery; and certainly, when one considers the multifariousness of his mundane mechanism, he seems compact and complete; apparently nothing has been omitted from his body-work which might have been added with advantage, and nothing has been added which might have been subtracted. He sports no decorative doo-dahs, futile fizz-gigs, or exotic extras, and in fact, is a euphony of utility.
Take, for instance, those whiskery what-nots which act as eaves for his eyes; can even Henry afford to boast that he embellished His Lizzie with eyebrows? By the seven brands of the bounding bedstead, he can Not.
But reluctantly, we must admit that the facial filaments aforesaid have of late been maltreated by certain false females; it is only too true that the beautiful Beatrice has had them peremptorily plucked and supplanted by pseudonymous substitutes which look as near to Nature as whiskers on a whale; but in the main, man shrinks from such vile vandalism. Scotland, for instance, refuses to be brow-beaten; Caledonia condemns this particular brand of “plucking,” with a spirit which is proof (over-proof in fact) that no matter how Scotch a Scotsman may be, he'll never scotch his eyebrows—he realises that Mother MacNature produced these bushy buffers on the Border of his brows to prevent his bonnet from skidding all over his map, and obscuring possible “spots” before the eyes; thus the subtle significance of that Highland harmony, Blue Bonnets over the Border. How, think you, historical reader, could he have won the Battle of Bannockburn with one hand clutching his bonnet and the other holding the cork in his esprit de corps? Well might We absorb the spirit of Scotland in full measure—or at the very least, in ninepenny nips, for not only does Scotland venerate its eyebrows as a hirsute hatrack, but also as a sanctuary for songsters; it is said to be not uncommon to hear the liquid notes of Scotland's national warblers or burblers—the bearded bagpiper and the red-beaked gargler—issuing from the hirsute herbage abaft the binnacles of some kilted clansman, as the sun staggers to rest behind the distilleries.
But enough of this eye-browsing; let us look physiology in the face—peer into its open countenance, in fact; for is not the mouth the gateway of gastronomy and a masticatory mausoleum? Life is a grind, so let's get to the grinders; truly, “Relinquish hope all ye who enter here” is an apt epitaph for every forkful of fodder which greets the grinders; peradventure, dear reader, this is a painful subject, but putting all
Screams are made of?” But perhaps you are one of those fearless folk with heart of oak and jaws of jarrah who have helped to found the Empire on corned beef and carrots; one of those men of stainless steel and ferro-concrete courage, who laugh in the face of forceps and giggle at gas—one of those sunny characters who give the whole world sunstroke.
On the other hand, it is more than likely that you are just one-of-us, the grated majority, the boys of the cold brigade, the febrile fugitives from forceps; truly, trembling reader, speaking inci-dentally, “the darkest hour is before the door,” as doubtless you know, unless time and a complete top-and-bottom set have mercifully obliterated memory.
Undoubtedly, dentists are men of Probity, but they are usually so Boring; they dig into things so ruthlessly and often drag the very worst out of you.
Vain for you to recollect what Nelson said at Trafalgar, what the Governor of North Carolina remarked to the Governor of South Carolina, or what the Spartan boy didn't say when the wolf under his waistcoat took advantage of his good nature; hopeless to mouth with Sidney Cartonish candor: “'Tis a far far better fling that I have now than ever I have had before,” or words with similar defects; for, from the moment you are parked in the dentist's pull-pit, and he unships his cuffs, jacks you up, lifts your bonnet and dives in among the molars, you are for all practical purposes merely a jawbone under gas, or a faceful of fixings for dental distraction and extraction; you are in the hands of a maddened molarist, a barbarous bicuspidist; infuriated with fungoid fancies, he ropes himself securely and climbs into your face; he lowers himself into that cavity your tongue has told you is as wide as your views on Sunday excursions and as deep as the deeps; you feel him prospecting with a pick, and then he gets down to the root of things with a pneumatic drill; he maltreats your molars with a maul, biffs your biscuspids with abandon, and incites your incisors to insurrection. You feel that he has taken a look into your soul and found you wilting, and you are only thankful that he has not attempted to unship your jaw and reassemble it more to his fancy.
If only that great frictional fictionist, Mr. Headgear Walruss had studied the terrors of tuggism in his youth, what horrors he could have added to his I-scream specials! Think of such toothsome titles as:
It is moments like this,—but enough of these gumbroils, these dental dolors; let us ponder on pleasantries such as hey-days and pay-days, cash-as-cash-can, and other healthful sports and pastimes.
A pastime, frisky reader, is an expenditure of energy regardless of expense, perspiration in combination with inspiration, toil with oil, and work without whiskers; recreation is recreation and not wreck-creation, as some melancholy “toilunatics” would have it. It is quite true that “all work and no play makes Jack a killjoy.” “The play's the thing” quoth Shakespeare, and it is well known that He was a bit of a sport.
Life itself is a pastime, serious reader—the fine old game of blind man's bluff; the bluffer the “bluff” the better the blind.”
It is vain to squawk at the Squawkies, air our objections to aeroplanes, or ostracise Oxfords.
The world has always been modern; Jacob was considered slightly futuristic and a bit over the fence when he wore his coat-of-many-colours, and Henry the Eighth was a little before his time. Personally, it is my secret sorrow that I have never worn a beret. Of course you know what a beret is; it is a sort of bedspread for a deadhead, a counterpane to counter brain —a veritable vacuum-screener; but still, envious reader, who is there, here present, who would not amputate his chin-ware, have his face sifted, and throw in his old age pension, to wear a beret? There are few of we moderns who would not be wee moderns.
Recently I had the pleasure of interviewing the Duchess of Thorndon, who was acting “in loco parentis” to some of the younger branch of the family; the subject touched on was modern modes and manners. The Duchess happened to be in the yard, cooling off at the tank after (as she explained) a hard cross-country run, in which she had led her personal train the whole way; she was smoking and panting freely, and at first I thought she looked faily well oiled, but I discovered that this is just her permanent way of acting. She is really an iron-bound aristocrat, but at times she gets a bit hot and is liable to boil over; however, I waited politely until she had let off steam and got over her pressure. She is a dear old hot-head—one of the tender class. As usual she looked charming in glistening black which shewed off her graceful lines admirably. She hummed quietly to herself for a moment before answering my query.
“I've no objection,” she murmured “To young people, well—putting on a bit of speed; I've done it myself and can still do it when I like.” She chuckled deeply and sighed. “Of course,” she continued, “it's all right as long as it's on the
level, but the question is, can these moderns last long enough to make the grade. I must admit that I've been—well, not exactly fast—say swift, in my day; but I've always known where to stop, and have never ignored the signals of common sense; I am not what you would call narrow, by any means, and I believe in running on broad lines, but I Do think it is very foolish for many of the present generation to leave the rails as they do; they expose themselves to all sorts of dangers careering round without restraint, and leaving the path of security. These days you've got to be on your metal. When I think of the thousands and thousands I have drawn to safety, and the fun they have had out of me, and the comfort I've given them—well, it warms me to think of it. But bless their hearts, I am not worrying about a few who have strayed from the straight and narrow gauge; they invariably return; quality always tells, and in their hearts they simply can't help loving me—and they know that they are always sure of a sterling welcome. Oh yes, the Duke's quite fit, thank you— slight palpitation yesterday, but going strong again—pip, pip, young man, give my regards to the guards.”
The Otira Gorge was a picture of glory last month, with the rata trees in full flower for miles along the mountain sides. So, too, were other parts of the great alpine range on the western side, such as the steep slopes around the Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers. This summer seems to have been a period of exceptionally rich blossom for the rata and its northern cousin the pohutukawa. Close observers of Nature in the north have noted cycles in the flowering of the pohutukawa, the cabbage tree and the flax plant. The “Christmas tree” and the flax flower with exceptional luxuriance every three years; the cabbage tree, as a rule, flowers only every third year.
The pohutukawa has been particularly rich in blossom this summer all along the shores of the Hauraki and on the beautiful islands.
It is just about time that some restraining hand was placed on those enthusiastic acclimatisation folk who are forever craving to make New Zealand a replica of other lands in the matter of wild life. There is scarcely an introduced animal that has not developed into a nuisance and a source of positive injury to the native forests and native bird life. Deer are the biggest; goats run them a close second; then come the stoat and the weasel, and the opossum, over which so much controversy has raged, must also be included in the list of undesirables. Our native life comes first, and anything that tends to reduce the food supplies for the birds whose existence is bound up with our forests, must be classed as a pest and a peril.
The fact that some trappers make a living from the wily 'possum is no more valid an argument than the fact that a lot of people profit from the rabbit.
There are some queer enthusiasts who would like to see American beaver in our Southern forest streams, and one game hunter who had been to Canada advocated not long ago the introduction of the silver fox as a splendidly profitable bush habitant. An Australian told the present writer that he didn't see why New Zealanders should be so scared of the snake family. He thought the Aussie carpet snake would be a capital addition to farmhouse life; it was “quite harmless,” and it kept the place clear of rats and mice. None for our selection, thanks!
Quite a model country town is Te Awamutu, a place that has long developed a true civic 'spirit, and has done much to make itself attractive to travellers. It has an atmosphere of the historic too. If you have not seen its pretty church, standing in its churchyard by the willow-fringed Manga-o-Hoi stream, you have a picture of old-time yet to admire. It is a steepled church of the first Bishop Selwyn's time, and it was built in 1854, so that it is the oldest English building in the Waikato, and one of the oldest churches in New Zealand.
Like its sister church amidst the beautiful farming lands of Rangiaowhia, three miles away, it was a Maori mission place of worship, when the Waikato was still in native hands, before the war.
Te Awamutu is very proud of its St. John's, and the church of antique look is tended with a care that will ensure its preservation for many a year to come.
Thirty or forty years ago the name of Richard Henry was often before the public, in association with matters of natural history and exploration in New Zealand's Fiordland. He was one of a small band of Southerners who did a great deal to make that untamed corner of these islands better known to the world, and he was always a strong advocate of the preservation of native wild life there. The Government appointed him custodian of the bird sanctuary, Resolution Island, in Dusky Sound, and he lived alone in that magnificent solitude for years. His home was on Pigeon Island, a bush-covered dot near Resolution, and the Government steamer “Hinemoa” called once in every six months; his only regular link with the outer world.
Henry's periodical reports to the Lands Department on his life and bird-study in Dusky Sound made quite fascinating reading. He was the Gilbert White of Fiordland. Later on he was in charge of the Kapiti Island sanctuary for some years.
Now, long retired from Government duties, Mr. Henry is living at Helensville, up on the Kaipara, a very old man. One would like to see some of his reports of thirty years ago reprinted for popular information.
There is always with us the malevolent who “can't abide” laws of any kind that interfere with his peculiar notions of liberty. One of this species of the human family is the motorist who wants all speed limits abolished. Following on the example set by the no-limitations faction in England, some New Zealand motorists are agitating for liberty to go the whole hog on the people's highways. They even suggest that slow drivers should be prosecuted for keeping the speedsters back. Fortunately, there is still such a thing as sane public opinion in the matter of road speeds. The scorcher of the highways, whether a motor-cyclist or a car-driver, is a public nuisance and only brings the whole body of drivers into disrepute. The no-limits party is no more likely to succeed in the agitation than the man is who proclaims his impatience with the law which punishes him for getting drunk in public.
It really wouldn't matter in the least if the speed-fiend broke his neck, if he only did it in private, somewhere off the roads. But on the highway there are the rest of us to be considered, and, strange as it may seem, there are actually some of us who still like to walk alongside the roads without having to scramble through a fence whenever a frenzied ass on wheels heaves in sight.
“On Rotorua,” remarked a recent visitor, Lord Craigavon, Prime Minister of Ulster, “I could dilate for hours. It is one of the most marvellous holiday resorts I have ever seen and in the course of my various travels I have seen a great many in all parts of the world.”
It is hard to say who are the more to be envied—those who have already succumbed to the irresistible lure and thereby laid up a store of wonderful memories, or you, perhaps for whom that fascinating trip is yet to come. For of Rotorua one can say with perfect truth that it fully lives up to expectations.
And note here that, thanks to an enterprising railway management, Rotorua is no longer confined exclusively to the well-to-do. Low excursion fares, and comfortable accommodation at £2 10s. and less per week, bring Rotorua within reach of the most slender purse.
Soon after the train passes Mamaku, you get your first glimpse of Lake Rotorua some few miles distant at a drop of 1,000 feet, a circle of lazy blue water in the middle of which a bush-clad island dreamily reposes. And here and there also you will soon see clouds of white steam curling up menacingly. There, in brief, is your Rotorua, a strange mingling of utter peace and contentment, with riotous outbursts of pent-up fury. You could almost imagine that here the whole of Nature's forces of good and evil are engaged in a titanic struggle for supremacy. Fortunately the good still much more than hold their own.
From the moment you alight at the Railway Station, which nestles coolly among a grove of green trees, you at once begin to form agreeable impressions of what is undoubtedly the most cosmopolitan inland town in the Southern Hemisphere. As you walk along the broad streets comfortably paved and shaded by avenues of trees you are following in the footsteps of people from all parts of the world—princes and peers, statesmen and business magnates, famous people of all kinds, just ordinary globe trotters and your own countrymen of all stations and degrees in life. Added to the charm of this cosmopolitan atmosphere is the happy-go-lucky spirit of a place where everybody is bent on enjoyment or catering for enjoyment. Yet even under this strong spell one can quite impartially describe Rotorua itself as an exceptionally attractive town. It is laid out in the form of a square, its streets running at right angles; electric power is supplied from Okere Falls on Lake Rotoiti thirteen miles away; while many of the buildings are new and handsome in design. In short, before you commence operations as it were, you feel that you are working from a perfectly sound base, that in Rotorua you have found a town worthy of its greatness. One other point: wherever you lodge, whether you pay 8s. or £1 a day, you will find a thoroughly warm-hearted host or hostess who will do all that is possible to make you comfortable and contented.
Before you begin the famous all and half-day trips you will find many spots to interest you in and around the town itself. The foremost of these is the Government Sanatorium. This magnificent building is set well back in grounds of surpassing beauty and like no other gardens in the world they are unique for their display of thermal activity. Clustered close together near the entrance gates are numerous hot pools, bubbling, spouting and throwing off wisps of steam with ceaseless activity. Lest you venture too near, however, they are well guarded by strong iron-piping fences. Here in these grounds, when you want a rest from strenuous sight-seeing, you can spend many a happy, idle hour. The giant arms of trees will shade you on the grass; soft paths winding in and out will take you to mazes of carefully tended flowers and shrubs; or, if you are one of those holiday makers of inexhaustible energy, there are croquet and tennis lawns and bowling greens all laid down in grass and kept in perfect order. It is a point of interest that, while the town is under the control of the Borough Council, the Sanatorium and grounds are administered exclusively by the Tourist Department. From as far back as the
The Sanatorium itself is famous throughout the world for the curative work daily carried on by the harnessing and application of mineral waters drawn from the surrounding hot springs. Many people come from great distances to get rid of otherwise incurable ailments and among the latest sufferers to seek relief is the Prime Minister, the Right Honourable Sir Joseph Ward. You may take treatment either as an indoor or an outdoor patient. Accommodation for indoor patients consists of open wards and cubicles only at a fee of £3 3s. a week, which includes baths, treatments and other incidentals as well as residence. The wide range of complaints of which sufferers have, in many instances been completely cured, include nearly every kind of gout and rheumatism, sciatica, neuralgia, anaemia, skin diseases such as eczema, neurasthenia, heart - disease, muscular wasting, debility and constipation. In addition to the mineral baths specifically recommended for special complaints, there is a massage department very completely fitted up with modern electrical apparatus in the hands of registered operators who have been trained in the latest methods. But the Sanatorium is not only a Mecca for the invalid, it has also its attractions for the casual visitor. Apart altogether from those in the main building, there are several large detached baths where, for a few pence, you can indulge in a hot swimming bath at certain times each day and evening. To move lazily about in these soft clinging waters that give you the most delicious sensations of rest, warmth and comfort is to experience only one of the infinite pleasures of Rotorua. Like a beautiful woman is this place, inexhaustible in its attractions, always surprising you with some new form of wonder and delight. I have touched here only sketchily on the Sanatorium and grounds. After you have seen all the sights, you will still return to Rotorua when you can, as so many do already, just for the sake of sauntering round these beautiful gardens, playing your favourite sport, and bathing luxuriously like the Romans of old.
Another healing institution known as King George V. Hospital is situated on a piece of rising ground called Pukeroa Hill, a little to the northwest of the Sanatorium. It was founded during the War for the treatment of wounded soldiers, but has since been acquired by the Health Department and is now also used for civilians. Special attention is given to children suffering from infantile paralysis while extensive use is also made of mineral waters pumped up from the Kuirau Reserve, a wilderness of thermal activity in ground covering several acres in extent below and on the far side.
Apart from what has already been mentioned and from the Maori villages at Whakarewarewa
So much for what Rotorua offers you in the daytime—no description can give you an adequate picture of it. During the evening, until recently, the visitor has found time apt to drag, but a progressive Council is now doing all it can to remedy this drawback. A good municipal band has been organised and plays regularly in the summer months. Christmas week in particular is the merriest week in the year. Beginning on the 24th December the carnival spirit sets in and, waxing faster and more furious as the week goes on, culminates on New Year's Eve in four hours of riotous fun. Mock Courts hold omnipotent sway, spotlight waltzes thrill the young and romantic, the streets reverberate with the stirring music of the band and, finally, the fun is capped by a grand procession through all the principal streets. And mark you, this is not merely a local carnival—like everything else in Rotorua it is thoroughly cosmopolitan, globe trotters gaily rubbing shoulders with local residents. The aim of the Council is to make the evenings interesting not only at Christmas, but at all other times of the year. There are two picture shows, there is a library well stocked with popular novels and magazines which can be borrowed by the visitor for a trifling sum, and efforts are being made to persuade the Maoris to stage regularly big, open-air performances.
The Maoris already hold indoor concerts almost every night in the week. From lack of interest you may not at first be very keen to go,
Mr. Ralph Hanan, of Invercargill, who recently visited the South Sea Islands, writes of a rail journey in Fiji as follows:—
Perhaps one of the most unique railway systems in the world is in the colony of Fiji.
The longest section of railway is on the main island, Viti Levu, and runs from Tavau, on the North Coast, to Sigatoka in the South West. This section is controlled by the Sugar Company, and is claimed to have the only free passenger service in the world. Passengers are carried, free of charge, in fairly comfortable carriages, for the entire length of the Company's line.
A trip along the route is one of absorbing interest. Seldom out of sight of the coast, the line winds between banks of brilliant greenery, dominated at intervals by the grace and majesty of cocoanut palms. At every turn on the journey new panoramas greet the eye. Now by the edge of a mangrove swamp; now through an enchanting banana plantation; now through green fields of waving sugar cane. Village after village is left behind. Everywhere are the gaily dressed, care-free, friendly natives.
The scenery changes. Verdant hills, beaches of golden sands bordered by innumerable graceful palms; beyond, the deep blue waters of placid lagoons. Combined with the scintillating brilliance of a tropical sun, this presents a glorious picture which must cause a journey over the railway of Fiji ever to remain a pleasant memory.
Young mathematician: “Mum, do you know how to get the cubic contents of a barrel.?”
His Mother: “No, ask your father.”
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Inquisitive Woman (eyeing catch): “Oh, poor little fish.”
Annoyed Angler: Well, madam, if he'd kept his mouth shut he wouldn't have got into trouble.
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He: “Are you fond of moving pictures, Jennie?”
She (hopefully): “Aye, Sandy.”
He: “Then maybe, lass, ye'll help me get half a dozen doon out o' the attic.”
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Customer: “To what do you owe your extraordinary success as a house-to-house salesman?”
Salesman: “To the first five words I utter when a woman opens the door—‘Miss, is your mother in?’”
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There is a porter at a station near Aberdeen who estimates that on the average he handles the luggage of thirty-six passengers a day.
“And,” he remarked, “if each of those passengers would increase his tip by one penny, my average daily takings would amount to three shillings!”
Magistrate: “And you were having words with your wife?”
Defendant: “Not with'er, Your Honour, from 'er.
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Jock (in outfitter's shop): “How much are these collars?”
Assistant: “Two for half-a-crown.”
Jock: “How much will one cost?”
Assistant: “Eighteen pence.”
Jock: “Then I'll take the other one.”
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Landlady: “And what's wrong now?”
Youthful Lodger: “I just wanted to say that I think you get too much mileage out of this roller-towel.”
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Lady of commanding appearance returns to her seat in the train and finds it occupied by a small man reading a paper: “Sir, I'm sitting there!”
Looking up placidly, he replied: “Madam, pray remain seated.”
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“Gentlemen,” said the professor, “this is one of the most dangerous experiments known to science. The slightest mishap and the experimenter will be blown to atoms. I will now step into the next room while my assistant performs the experiment.”
It hung there on the wall—sometimes bathed in a flood of sunshine—sometimes mysterious in the shadows of night. It was the portrait of a young girl in a summer frock. The half gay, half sad and wholly childish face looked down upon the boy as he lay there day after day in his long chair. It seemed to call to him in the silence of the sick room—a clear call of youth and health, of sunshine and green fields. All the things that had been denied him because of his infirmity were in that portrait of an unknown girl with wide questioning eyes and a smile of friendliness and sympathy. Sometimes Guy would hold long conversations with the picture—although he would have been terribly ashamed to confess to such romantic folly. He would call her Isobel—because that was his favourite name—he would tell her about the books he had been reading—would imagine that he was racing over the hills with her in the wind or dancing with her to the lilting music of the “Blue Danube” which floated through the house from the gramophone downstairs. She would tell him of many things—of the bright gorse on the hillsides—of her dreams and the beauty of the starlight on the waters. “Poor old Guy”—his brothers' friends would say—“Tough luck for him, poor chap, lying there all day with a crippled leg!” They sometimes rushed in to see him—jolly boys and laughing girls—invited to the house by his sisters. They talked merrily of dances, the latest “hits,” Edgar Wallace yarns. He tried to be interested and amused as they obviously wanted him to be, but he looked at the portrait on the wall and in his heart there grew up a great love, fostered by his infirmity and his loneliness. He wanted to leap up from his bed—to be strong once more—so that he could win the world. Then he would seek everywhere for his girl of the laughing eyes and heap all his treasures at her feet. Guy was only twenty at the time and being a cripple shut away from the rushing world he still cherished many illusions—he belonged to the days of Sir Galahad—to the days of chivalry and old world romance. In reality it was just before the Great War—the momentous year 1914.
Ten years have passed, ten years full of the most terrible and devastating experiences known to mankind. In one short decade boys have become old men; jolly girls sad-eyed women—and Guy Maitland, the crippled lad who used to lie in his chair and weave fanciful dreams about an unknown girl—what has become of him?
At the outbreak of the Great War Guy was a cripple—a fractured hip owing to a fall from his pony had robbed the boy of all the joyous activity which is the birthright of youth—had turned him into something of a dreamer and in his way into a rather cynical young philosopher.
In the year 1915 a very skilful operation was performed—made possible by the increased scientific knowledge necessary to patch up hundreds of distorted limbs on the fields of Flanders—and Guy found himself once more as other men—strong, active and burning with desire to “do his bit.”
We will not follow him on his weary journey through the trenches—let it suffice that during those two ghastly years our dreamer became a practical hard-headed man—terse of words, prompt in action, but cherishing always in his heart a deep and youthful love for the girl who still smiled down from the wall of his old room. Some day, somewhere he would find her, and it was this thought which kept his soul gay and fresh among the sordid realities of war.
1925! London in a yellow, suffocating fog. Guy Maitland was walking along the Thames Embankment among hundreds of other shadowy figures, coat collar turned up, hands deep in pockets, mind far away. The yellowness all around him carried him back to the trenches—to clouds of suffocating sickly gas. He threw back his head and longed to breathe once more the freshness of the fields—to see once again the blaze of gorse upon the hillside of his New Zealand home. He had almost given up his mediaeval search for the girl of the picture. He felt on this miserable choking afternoon a heavy sense of disillusionment, loneliness and isolation from his fellows. Tomorrow he would leave all this behind him—his passage was booked and he would journey home once more to New Zealand with his unwritten love story buried deep in his heart.
Guy sat down wearily upon one of those historic seats, although the sordid day was closing in. Far away he heard the shrill scream of the news boys; one by one the lights came out, glowing through the fog. His last night in England!
By and by he became aware of a figure in the shadows and he heard a gay whistle, “It's a Long Way to Tipperary.” “Some one from Over There,” thought Guy, and obeying an impulse he hailed the stranger: “Who goes there?” “A brother Boche,” came the reply in a girl's clear voice. “Help me, if you can, to crank my car, for old times' sake. Something has happened to the self-starter.” The voice out of the fog was singularly sweet, low and gay. Guy, always susceptible to sense impressions, sprang to his feet to confront a slim mackintoshed figure—the face he could not see. “Righto! where is the car?” he asked, and together they strode off through the fog.
In the darkness Guy had some difficulty in starting the engine, but finally succeeded. He stepped to the side of the car while the girl at the wheel leant out and thanked him for his services. “Can you possibly give me a match—I am a frightful nuisance, aren't I?” said the voice, rather husky, but very sweet to the ears of the lonely man on the kerb. He produced his box, leant forward and struck a match—sheltering the flicker in the hollow of his hand. Then the world seemed to change for Guy—to sway and stagger. The fog lifted—he was looking up from the pillows at a picture on a bedroom wall. “Isobel,” he gasped. “You at last. Oh, my dear, I have searched for you all the world over!” The words were out before he had time to think. A pair of surprised brown eyes stared into his. He had a glimpse of a little pointed chin and a soft round cheek. “Sorry, old thing,” said the girl, “you've made a mistake, my name is Cecil—Cecil Alloway.” “It doesn't matter a bit,” said Guy. “You are and always will be Isobel to me—my picture—my childhood's friend. Why, I have known you for years. You have changed quite a lot since the days when you used to tell me fairy tales—but your eyes are just the same!”
At first Cecil thought her cavalier was mad—a man who cranks your car in the fog does not usually seize you by the shoulder and insist on calling you Isobel. However, she yielded to his ardent persuasions to have some coffee with him at a “jolly little place” he knew of—banishing from her mind the horror of her family at the idea of their only daughter picking up a perfectly strange man on the Thames Embankment as unconcernedly as if he had been a stray puppy dog. Indeed he reminded her of one. Anyhow it would be an adventure.
Sitting at a little table in a quaint Italian restaurant, he told her about Isobel of the laughing eyes, and she listened in silence, touched at his devotion to an ideal. He found that she was not, of course, the girl in the picture—but she had the same soft curls—the
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The deities who preside over our fashions have decreed that skirts shall be longer and waists higher this autumn—just an inch or two both ways, and the result is amazing.
The little frock in the illustration is extremely simple, and very useful for street and office wear. Any light woollen material is suitable: viyella, rep. or checked tweed. Notice the higher waistline, and the stitched yoke. This frock opens right down the front, and has an inverted pleat from each side of the yoke. A suede belt and small hat will complete a very smart little costume for daytime wear in the autumn.
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Beauty! What is it? I am talking now of human, feminine beauty—that divine gift which poets have praised since the days of Helen of Troy—a gift which has drawn from musicians their sweetest, saddest songs—which has inspired the artist to produce melting and exquisite gleams of colour—which has even caused mighty empires to rise and fall. Did not the great Mark Antony lose the world for Cleopatra's dusky charms? Oh, Beauty! What follies, but, also, what noble deeds have been committed in thy service!
To the twentieth century has been granted an astonishing number of characteristics unfamiliar among our feminine ancestors. We are admittedly enterprising, practical, clear headed and strong-willed. We are frantically busy, reasonably joyous; we are living every second of our allotted three score years and ten; and they tell us that in consequence we are sacrificing our supreme gift—the gift of beauty. When we look about us in a crowded tearoom—at the theatre, in the trains, trams, everywhere—we are reluctantly compelled to admit that a poet, however poverty-stricken, would hardly prostrate himself in admiration before the lanky, shingled, loud-voiced young thing who dashes about so independently, who refuses a seat in the tram, and who discusses anything from birth control to the Labour Government, with intelligence and vigour. What we have gained in one respect we have lost in another—they tell me. The lordly male of the species takes off his hat to our acquisition of brains—to our good fellowship and help—he is faintly jealous of our capacity to do everything that he does equally well and infinitely more gracefully—but he bemoans our loss of charm. Before, he admired from afar, he looked upon us as something half angel and half imbecile, something to be cherished, chided and indulged, something strictly ornamental; in fact quite a valuable “possession.” He was proud of our beauty, and did not know, or wish to know, how we produced the effect that charmed his masculine eyes. Now-a-days all is different. “The old order” has changed indeed. We make no secret of our powder puffs and our lip-sticks—therefore we have lost half our charm! However, it is too late to draw back, and we can't give up our intellects and retire once more into servitude. We have gained freedom—why on earth should our beauty suffer from intelligence and thought? Let us give it just a little more thought, and I am convinced that a Shakespeare, a Schubert, and a Michael Angelo will arise to do homage to the eternally provocative faces of our daughters. There shall be no antagonism between Brains and Beauty, but a reconciliation resulting in a super-woman!
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Here is a dainty little playtime dress for the kiddies. Very easy to make up, even from one of your own “cast offs.” Chose something bright and pretty — spots or checks. Notice the little knickers to match, showing well below the frock.
To-day, in this age of competition and perfection, the more things you can do the better. And it is not enough to be able to do something “fairly well”—you must be good—you must excel. “What are you going to do,” you answer, if you are only mediocre at everything?—if you are one of those who seem only to be able to jog along the middle path? Perhaps you are a typiste, quite good, but not excellent. You can cook “a bit”; you can sew “after a fashion;” you are not bad at tennis, and people have said that you have “rather a sweet voice.” So many of us are like that—we aren't brilliant at anything—and the chances are that we never will be.
We watch with envy and admiration those gifted individuals who seem to be able to do everything with little effort and tremendous effect. “They are born like that,” you answer. “As for me. I'm just middling at everything.” That is absolute nonsense. Every living person has some particular gift—some special faculty which enables him to excel beyond his fellows. You may be quite unaware of the existence of your genius. All too often we go right through life unconscious of the little something deep within us which never finds expression. Herein lies the tragedy of thousands of lives, and here is unhappiness. Nothing is more fatal to human well-being than the inability to discover, develop and cultivate our own special talent—which does exist in every one of us. No one is mediocre. That is comforting. You can do something better than others—what is it? Once you have discovered your talent, give it every chance to express itself. Perhaps it is music; perhaps sport; perhaps drama; whatever it may be, cultivate it to the best of your ability and you will find a large measure of happiness.
Do as many things as ever you can—lots of girls nowadays “detest” housework—but they can all do it, and well if they have to. Nothing is beneath doing, try to develop every side of your character and become an “all round” girl—able to do everything—play a game of tennis, work well in the office, cook a good dinner, dance, take a hand at bridge, drive a car—everything! And one thing try to do really well and brilliantly.
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