The Alternative.

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.