The Akaroa Mail. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20. LOCAL INDUSTRIES.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume VI, Issue 541, 20 September 1881, Page 2

The Akaroa Mail. TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 20. LOCAL INDUSTRIES.

That the depression in the Colony, owing to the cessation and completion of nruiy of the great public works, is now acknowledged by all thinking men to be no uuniixed evil is generally allowed. Had labor continued abundant and expensive, there would have been no effort made to get out of the groove, and v> c should have continued, tor years to come , the importing from distant lands of manufactures, the materials of which lay scattered around our feet.

The appointment of a Local Industries Committee of the House of Representatives in the session of 1880, of which Mr Wakefiold was the able chairman, did a great ck-al of good. The general public awoke to the fact that labor could be employed profitably in other ways than in the construction of railways, and that amongst the immigrants from Europe were thousands of skilled artizans, whose knowledge would be of great value if once manufactures were commenced. It presently dawned upon communities that those towns which first established industries would have a great advantage over others, and the holding of Industrial Exhibitions in almost every important centre, and the strict investigation of every new claimant in the slmpe ot a manufacture, showed how much the people were in earnest. Thoroughly concurring in public opinion, the Government offered a bonus in man}' cases, and already one of them has been claimed by Messrs Kempthorne, Prosser, & Co., of Dunedin, for the manufacture of sulphuric acid.

Whilst all New Zealand, then, north and south, is puzzling , its brains to find the manufacture best suited to its own peculiar locality, and even little Tcmuka aspires to its paper mill, surely Akaroa should not s-tand with its hands in its pockets and let the tide of events flow by, without—to use an expressive vulgarism—trying to be in the swim. As every human being can do some one thing better than any other, if one can only find out what fiat thing is, so every locality has some peculiar advantage which can be utilised. One great benefit Akaroa possesses is, that anything she does make con be sent away to any part of New Zealand or Australia, or, in fact, the world, by that cheapest of all methods of carriage, water traffic.

In this article we do not intend to touch upon cheese and butter,, which, we look upon as already established industries, regarding the safer transport and better manufacture of which, we hope to devote many a column in the future. Our object is to see whether anything else can be done, so that, unlike the Irish of the past, we may not depend on the potato alone, and suffer from famine if our one product fails.

The thought that crops up naturally is, Is there anything that can bo produced abundantly in Akaroa which can be profitably manufactured into an article of commerce? and the immediate answer lhat occurs to one is, fruit grows here better than elsewhere, and very large quantities of it are annually wasted. And yet no one has attempted the preserving of it on n large scale, and the great niajoiity of tho people of New Zealand have to depend for their jams and preserved fruits on Tasmania, and even on Europe ! The next query that naturally arises is, What is the reason of this ? what do we lack to make this a profitable industry? We have the fruit ; we have the land on which to grow ten times more if it could be profitably utilised ; we have the timber for the cases ; and we can cheaply cbtain skilled labor for the making of the tins, for the men who use 1 to penonn that work in the preserved uu'afc manufactories are to bo found all over tlie Colony. Last, but not h'nst, w<; have every facility for shipping uur goods tho -moment they !

nre made It seems to us tti.it tne real want is, the want of a person in our midst who thoroughly un erstands the business on a large scale. from the enormous quantity of jams and preserved fruits exported, there must be many in n in Tasmania possessing this knowledge, and if we could only get such a person to visit us and give us the benefit of his experience, we believe such a manufacture could be started. It is all nonsense to say that they can make the jam in Tasmania at a lower price than we can buy the sugar that is used in making it, for there is no sugar made in Tasmania. Where they buy it ire can buy it, and at the same prices, for we are quite as near the sugar-producing countries, and have just as good a h.irbor as either Hobart Town or Launceston.

There are doubtless many persons with the requisite knowledge who would be only too glad to come here if they knew anything about Akaroa, and it seems to us that the best thing to be done is to let them know that there is a place possessing such peculiar facilities for the manufacture. If a number of the principal people of the town would only subscribe a very small sum each, an advertisement could be inserted in the Hobart Town jl/mnm/inviting communications from experts, and at the same time an article describing Akaroa could be sent to that paper for insertion. The experiment is certainly worth trying, for the expense would be very trifling even if it failed, and if it succeeded it would be difficult to overestimate the benefits it would confer on Akaroa and the Peninsula generally.