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in front of the wheel, where the sand is wanted for retardation, arid Mr Cable admitted that it was in some types of oar in Wellington 4 ft. in advance; and I have shown where on curves the sand is deposited not on the rail, but outside the rail, and is therefore not of any use at the time when it is most needed. The pipes should be placed in front of the wheel, and the finding of the last Commission on the Auckland service should be carried into effect, so as to provide for a pneumatic sand-gear whereby the sand is deposited in a similar but more effective manner right on the rail. This would be provided for under paragraph (c), where the Government Inspector would have the right to have them placed in operation from time to time. With regard to the Appeal Board, we consider this the most important clause in the Bill. The present Appeal Boards are, to put it baldly, a farce. There is no representation of the employees; and how can you give a proper appeal when there is no representation from the class of men who are appealing from an unjust decision? In Auckland the appellant has to plead his own case against the Inspectors, who are interested parties, because the Inspectors have laid the information, and the decision appealed against is the result of that. The Inspectors are trained in every artifice in picking a man up. We had one case where I was allowed to be present, the case of Inspector Tickell against Motorman Williams. Williams was a man of few words, unassuming, and was unable to plead his case as it ought to have been pleaded, and it was not until there was a veiled threat made by the union that they would see, at any rate, that Dr McArthur's finding was carried into effect if the company did not see to it, that the case was considered, with the result that this man was exonerated. The threat was this : that the union was determined that the finding of Dr McArthur should be obeyed, and that the company should obey it, too. The Wellington Appeal Board is composed solely of Councillors, and has only been in operation since Mr Wilford came into his position as Mayor, and even now it does not provide for a representative of the men being on the Appeal Board. Intimidation exists in Wellington, and this has been shown, and cannot be objected to. Evidence has been given by Mr Faire, Mr. Sutherland, and Mr Timms, and when men who are sent as the mouthpieces of their union to state matters to the Minister are subjected to a carpeting for so doing, and giving what they believe to be the opinion of the union, I say it clearly shows that intimidation exists in Wellington. To deny to men what the whole of the Dominion possesses, the right to approach a Minister of the Crown about their own working-conditions, I say is not creditable to any service. The Christchurch and Dunedin Appeal Boards are not likely to reverse decisions against their own managers, because it would be equal to a want confidence, and I take it that it would mean getting a fresh manager to replace the one whose decision was reversed. Practically no Appeal Board was in existence prior to 1907, therefore they are setting their houses in order to a certain extent by setting up these apologies for Appeal Boards. We have been asked whether we would take the Arbitration Court: as an Appeal Board. In reply to that, I have to say that there are generally two to one against an employee in the Arbitration Court, and I speak with a very extensive knowledge of the Arbitration Court, going back as far as the time of Mr Justice Edwards as President, fourteen y earg ago, and I say the odds too great against an employee. Even Mr O'Shea, as a sporting man, must admit that the odds of two to one are rather wreat. There is a representative of each class, and a Judge of the Supreme Court as President. In the first place, the Judge, by reason of his legal training, is conservative. He is a member of the most conservative profession in the world, and therefore must be conservative. One member of it said he was conservative because he was a Judge. Then he was conservative because his father was a Judge, and he was conceived when his father was a Judge; therefore you have the ultraconservative. Mr Hardy Is it not a grand thing to be conservative? Mr. Eosner Yes, it is a grand thing, but not conservative when the march of progress is going on. It has been proved time after time that labour gets very little chance before the Arbitration Court. We have had a case where the Judge of the Arbitration Court refused to grant an award because he felt that to give an award on just lines would militate against an industry. And we say that if an industry cannot sustain fair and just conditions it is not worth going on with. We have tested the system, and found it wanting in equity to the employees. We would rather not have an Appeal Board than have the Arbitration Court, or a Stipendiary Magistrate as the Chairman of the Court. As Mr. Carter said in his evidence, rather naively, "I would want to know the Magistrate " , and in that lies the crux of the whole question. We want a provision in this Bill, and it has proved to work elsewhere, and is a reasonable provision. We cannot conceive any reasonable man objecting to this proposal of one representative on each side and a Chairman to be selected by the two, and we have had instances where the Chairmen have been selected by two other parties. We have had it in Auckland, and I can instance the Board of Conciliation, where the Chairman was selected by the two representatives, and, failing that, by the Governor in Council. It has been said that it would be subversive of discipline, but we fail to see that. One man said in evidence that such a Board would confirm the manager's decision in his dismissal of a man who was in the wrong, and would satisfy him; and, on the other hand, if through want of evidence the manager had done rather an unjust thing, he ought to be satisfied that an independent tribunal had prevented a wrong being inflicted upon a worker. Now coming to the car reportbook, I want to point out that we have not had many epidemics in this Dominion of ours, but there was an epidemic in 1908. It started in the north of the Dominion, and it swept away those bound books. It started with the prosecution of Motormen Low and Veart, in which the book was brought forward in evidence, and showed that the car had a bad character, and that its defects had not been remedied. One sheet has been placed before the Committee as an exhibit at this hearing The next morning, after the last of these trials, when the men went to work, they found that the book, which was a very big book, had an iron clamp on it, so that it was impossible to turn back to any of the previous leaves, but the other leaves were not clamped , and then the loose-leaf system came in. That shows clearly that the ideal loose leaf was not adopted primarily to secure better reports from the motormen, but to prevent back references. Then the epidemic spread to Wellington, and it needed something to bring it to light. there it was the Cuba Street accident which was responsible for the loose-leaf system. It spread from there to Christchurch, and it