D.—4.

170

[M. MYERS.

The Chairman: There is another point: that if you help the tramway in getting an extension and some sort of connection, thoagh not a physical connection, with the railway, you would put an end to the competition perhaps of motor-lorries, and in that way help the railways. Mr. Myers ; I think that probably one of your Honour's colleagues, who is a railway man, will agree The Chairman : You will reduce your competitor to the tramway. If you will not encourage the tramway people the motor-car people are going to assist the tramway, and possibly that will encourage them, to interfere more with the railway. Mr. Myers : The Railway Department would much sooner run that, risk ; and, your Honour, the risk exists just as much if there is a mere dead-end or terminal siding as without it, and for this reason, that —— The Chairman : We shall have greater development in motor-cars than we have had up to the present. Mr. Myers : But my point is this : that a terminal siding or dead-end is never satisfactory, and cannot except under extraordinary circumstances be worked profitably. Mr. Williams : Then why object to it. Mr. Myers : Because we know, and it must be obvious, that that is not what they want, and, the moment they get it, then we are faced again with an agitation for the major thing, and there is this constant pressure for something which would not be payable and which should not be granted. But what I was going to say is this : in regard to motor competition, it the dead-end is not satisfactory —and it would not be satisfactory , ' —we would get the motor competition much the same as we have it now, and then the tramway people would come along and say, " It is the motor competition ; you might get rid of that if you take over this line," and that is one of the difficulties, of course, with which the State which is running the railway is faced. Then Mr. Purnell, who gave evidence here and also before the Oommitte in 1910, said in 1910, "If the railway connected at Greatford it might mean that two railway junctions would be required within a few miles of each other. We say that this petition should receive special and favourable consideration from the fact that in 1895 the Government of the day refused to allow this work to be carried out by private enterprise, and since then the Manawatu County Council has fought an uphill fight in running its services and improving it —that is, without the aid of a, through connection." Again, Sir James Wilson when giving evidence [see page 59, question 134] is asked, " Then if you had to tranship from your trucks to the Government trucks at the point of junction, would you be any better off ?■ —No, but I should imagine that the Government would not deal with a public body in that way. We do not assume that we would be allowed to go any further than the deviation in that way. The Chairman : You do not mean that goods from your trucks would be emptied into the Government trucks % —No, we would expect them to take our trucks away over their line. Mr. Myers : And you would expect them to bring their trucks down on your line unless, of course, you purchased your own trucks ?—Why not ? I cannot imagine any want of reciprocity in that way being refused. It would be for their benefit. The Chairman : I understand you do not want the mere connection with Greatford, but you want the trucks to go on the main line to the destination ?— Yes, just the same as the Manawatu Railway Company did. They interchanged." So that the Commission will see that this dead-end or terminal siding is quite a new suggestion made during the course of these proceedings ; but it is not what they want, and I submit with great respect that it is not what was intended to be referred to this Commission. In any case, if they now ask for v a terminal siding or a dead-end, they are asking for something which they have suggested all along would not be satisfactory, and it is not what they want or are asking for. There is only one object they can have; in asking for it, and that is for the purpose of using it as a lever —the thin end of the wedge, which, they will endeavour to ram home if and as soon as they have the dead-end siding. The Railway Department honestly thinks that the tramway could not be run at a profit having regard to its traffic in the past and to the probabilities in the future ; but for the purpose of my present submission I am entitled to put it that the tramway would not be successful, as the Manawatu County Council seem to think it would be. But whether it is a commercial failure or a commercial success, whatever business they obtain must be obtained at the expense of the Government railways. And it is not new traffic'—it is existing traffic. How can it pay, really ? The cost would be at least £25,000, including the connection. Then rolling-stock would have to be purchased and their various expenses would be increased, and it will bo seen that in the past their expenses have increased just about equally with their revenue. How are they going to make it pay ? The items of traffic they speak of are chaff, timber, fencing-posts, firewood, sheep, and grass-seed. Now, Sir James Wilson, in his evidence [see page 60, question 149] admits that the chaff trade is problematical. He is asked, "So that as far as the export of crops is concerned northwards, that is problematical—except grass-seed ? " and he replied, " Yes, except grass-seed." The whole of the grass-seed, as a matter of fact, goes into Palmerston and Feilding, and there is no tramway extension required for that. Take fencing-posts, and look at the trade in fencing-posts and firewood. In 1.899 there were .109 trucks, and that number has gone down gradually until in 1915 there were only sixty-eight, and for the first four months of 1916 the number came down to twenty. Yet the late Mi , . MeKenzie said before the Parliamentary Committee in 1910, " The most important matter of all is the connection for timber and fencingmaterial." The timber has not been an increasing trade; the trade in fencing-posts, we have been told, is not a permanent trade ; and as to firewood, if the firewood increases, the coal-importations decrease. Where, then, is to be the increase of trade ? They talk about sheep ; but look at the returns put in by Sir James Wilson. In a letter from Mr. Malcolm Fraser, Government Statistician [see Exhibit 18]. it is stated that the number of cattle in the county has increased between 189G and 1911 by over 12,000; sheep have gone down between 1896 and 1916 from 21.4,010 to 1.27,137. Indeed, from 1911 to 1915 the number has gone down by 37,000. That shows that the district has