A Picturesque Tariff.

To the unseeing eye the railway tariff appears as a book just as books of the kind usually are, dull, heavy, a toilsome tome of multitudinous discriminative charges, with no “magic casements opening on the foam of perilous seas,” rather does it seem flat, stale, though possibly profitable; a weary trail through a sandy desert under a broiling sun to a deserted village!

But to the eye of understanding the tariff of the N.Z.R. is full of life and vivacity—a whole library—dictionary, encyclopaedia, atlas, history, statute book—all in one, with fiction the only missing element. Here the scales of justice are seen busily at work, weighing in 1,500 different articles to be carried by one of the 13 alphabetical horses entered for the railway rates race.

Under the modest title “Coaching and Goods” is hidden a world of hard fact bearing on the whole science of rating, and the extent of the field covered may be judged from the proposition page 13 that the Department carries a different commodity for every two of its 3,000 miles of track. It deals with wharves and rumours of wharves, with parcels, goods and livestock; with ton lots and small lots, local rates, and general conditions.

Mechanical calculators have enabled a grouping of commodity classes and the revenues derived therefrom. Apt use of these figures makes possible an adjustment of rates to requirements.

Some think that our rating is too complex, but the cry for a “simplified” tariff is the cry of the primitive, who would hold that a truck of coal, or treacle, or sand, or bullion, or bulls, drapery, or dynamite should all be carried at the same rate. As it is, it must have been no small contract to allocate properly the 1,500 commodities listed among the 13 classes provided on the railways goods scale and avoid misfits.

In regard to the general facilities for freight railage, these are being constantly added to; better cranes, longer sidings, through goods trains and improved shunting facilities, are the order of the day.

I trust that this little talk about freight on the rails will help you to understand something of what the State-owned railways of New Zealand do for the community they serve.