Paying railway charges in New Zealand is doubly advantageous to the taxpayer. He obtains transport at the lowest possible economic cost for the service rendered, and at the same time his payment is an almost direct contribution towards meeting the necessary costs of running the country—in other words, every additional penny paid to the Railways for fares or freights goes to help the Treasury to meet New Zealand's obligations.

Railway charges are based upon years of patient study and experience to give the best possible value for the work done in relation to its economic worth; and they can hold their own against competition in most lines provided such competition is itself worked, financed and controlled upon an economically sound basis. In giving business to the Railways, therefore, the farmer, the businessman, the occasional or frequent traveller, is assured of a fair direct return for his money in the value of transport supplied. If such service is obtained elsewhere at below its economic value, then ultimate loss with repercussions unpredictable in their extent or full seriousness, will follow. The history of New Zealand transport in recent years is studded with glaring examples of such results.

The effect of railway receipts upon taxation is very direct. As matters now stand, increases in railway traffic can be handled at little additional cost, and there is a gap between what the staff and services are handling and the maximum they could handle at practically no additional cost. If half-full trucks or carriages or trains were filled because of additional traffic offering, the fares and freight on such new traffic would be an almost net addition to railway revenue, and additions to net railway revenue make a direct and equal decrease in the costs which have to be borne by the Consolidated Fund.

Not all “double utility” facilities are so unfailingly attractive as this of railway patronage. The couch of the daytime which converts into a bed for nights is liable to prove inconvenient at times, and Hood's pathetic character who was “sewing at once with a double thread a shroud as well as a shirt” was not well occupied. But the pencil with rubber attachment “fills the bill” when employed to write accounts for income tax to meet the requirements of social services with one end and to rub out with the other end those portions of the account covered by increased railway receipts.

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In the present state of the industry, the economics of railway transport conform to the law of increasing return to make gains from additional traffic thereon more nearly net profit than can be secured in almost any other business in which Governments invest. Hence the dual benefit of “taxation reduction plus full value service for payment made” is most marked in connection with payments made for railway services.

The public are required to pay a certain amount in taxation. This can either be paid direct—as levies on imports, amusements, incomes, and so on—or it can be made to do a service on the way to the Treasury, via the railway, in the conveyance of the taxpayer or his goods. It matters not to the Treasury whether the required amount reaches it through the Income Tax door, the Customs door, or the Railway door—so long as the required amount is found. Is it not good, then, economically sound, and basically advantageous, to make such payments “work their passage,” in one of the many ways that they can be made to work, throught the transport facilities available on the railways?