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Help the Railways and Help Yourself
Direct Road Orchard to Consumer is Open—Traffic Wanted.

(By a Plain Citizen.)

“I am sure that any member who goes out of his way to help build up business for the railways will find a great deal of pleasure in the work, and will feel amply repaid by the valuable results which almost invariably follow such efforts.”

This sentence is taken from last month's “General Manager's Message,” and is part of an appeal that Mr. Sterling made to the railways staff in the course of that message.

But the appeal to help build up business for the railways service may just as fairly be addressed to the public as to the railways staff. The public are shareholders in the concern. Their capital is at issue. In the matter of vested interest, there is no distinction between the railway staff man and the ordinary New Zealander, except that the former is an employee as well as a shareholder. They actually row in the same boat.

To build up business for the railways service is to build up internal trade. At the moment external trade meets intense temporary difficulties. The exports that have to pay for imports are not this year pulling their former weight in gold values. To buy within New Zealand will therefore help the balance of trade. There are New Zealand commodities that constitute cheaper and better buying if the people of New Zealand knew about them.

The railways system is the chief transport factor in internal trade. In the exchange of commodities within New Zealand it provides services and freight that no other transport system could or would supply. It provides extraordinarily low freights on New Zealand-grown fruit, and it also complements this train freight with a very low delivery freight by railless services that operate in cities and large towns. Thus the New Zealand fruit-grower's New Zealand customers in the population centres may receive fruit in case, direct from the orchard or packing station to their homes, at a very low total cost.

This complementary delivery service from railway station to home is parallel with the “deliver-to-your-door” policy of the modern motor transport. Such delivery service—arranged with local motor interests—is obtainable in eleven cities and towns of New Zealand at the very low rate of sixpence per case, available to residents within a wide radius of the railway station. For instance, a case of Tauranga lemons costs by rail eightpence (8d.) for carriage from Tauranga to Lambton (Wellington) railway station, and from Lambton to the suburban home of the person ordering the case the cost is sixpence (6d.), total freight 1/2—a remarkable achievement in the way of the much-talked-of co-ordination of rail and road.

The writer, who happens to live in Wellington, did not realise what these opportunities mean to the consumer until he made a trip to Tauranga in February. He paid to the Tauranga Citrus Association thirteen shillings and some pence (the transaction was not deemed at the time to be of sufficient importance to make an exact note) for a case of second-grade lemons. The case, on being opened in Wellington, turned out to have fifteen dozen and three lemons (183), so that the whole cost was appreciably under a penny each. These lemons were at least as good for domestic purposes as imported lemons selling in February in the Wellington shops for 2d. each, and not much inferior to those selling at 3d. each.

The reader will ask: What was the evidence of quality? The answer is: The lemons were parcelled out among three housewives. One made lemon jam; another made lemon cheese; and each approved the other's manufacture—no mean test. The best evidence of approval is that they exchanged recipes. The third housewife relied on no culinary skill. She simply kept the lemons on a shelf for occasional use. She kept some from February to June. And she lost none.

Do people realise the opportunity that the railway service offers them in case fruit alone? What is true of these lemons is probably true of other fruits. Do people realise the opportunities of buying and selling in case lots, instead of purchasing, retail, imported fruit at double or treble the cost? Do they sense the benefit to buyer, to grower, and to the railways.

If the average household of New Zealand diverted only fifteen per cent. of its fruit consumption to the case-order method, profiting by transport concessions, the resultant gain to internal transport would be substantial, and a great deal of this trade would be new trade, not a subtraction from the volume of retail business. In one way or another, nearly every New Zealander can help to “build up business for the railways.”