Some Arresting Figures.

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.