The Feilding Star. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1885. River Navigation

Feilding Star, Volume VII, Issue 51, 8 October 1885, Page 2

The Feilding Star. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1885. River Navigation

♦- Our contemporary the Wanganui Herald on Wednesday last in an article on the "Wanganui Eiver Steam Navigation Company, laments the apathy displayed by the townspeople, and their unwillingness to take up the shares necessary to make the company a success. Our contemporary says : — " When we read day after day of the large subscriptions to racing sweeps and the amount of money which goes through the totalisators at the meetings, it does seem a most humiliating thing that for so worthy an object as the opening up of a great trade, the people have to be repeatedly appealed to before they can be got to subscribe less than they would spend on a single race meeting." This is unhappily too true. But we venture to believe that under no circumstances would the persons who waste their money in gambling on horseflesh lend any assistance to so useful an object. The people to be relied upon are the prudent and the f arseeing, who have the means as well as the desire to assist in the progress of the place where their interests are centred. To us it appears that a blunder has been made in the direction of too mnch centralisation — the curse of this colony. The country districts have never been encouraged to sympathise with Wanganui, or where an attempt has been made the agents have generally too clearly shown that the primary object of all their efforts was the benefit of Wanganui alone. Any crumbs which might be allowed to fall to outsiders would be merely apocryphal, in the form of hypothetical dividends on indifferently managed speculations. This was not the way to encourage union. We may mention that an outside company — the New Zealand Frozen Meat Company, of Auckland — which has a branch in Wanganui, has done more in two months to attract produce from this district than has been done in the last ten years by the business people of Wanganui. This is not as it should be. Another important factor in creating almost a feeling of antagonism is the neglect shown by the Wanganui Harbor Board of their valuable endowment in our immediate neighborhood. Thousands of pounds in revenue are lost annually by this land being tied up, or from being left inaccessable when good roads should be made to give access to either those who have already purchased land, or who are desirous of so doing that they may settle thereon. This being the case, it is hardly fair the whole people of Wanganui should be jibed at, as a race of gamblers whose main object in life is to draw a winning ticket in a sweep on a horse race. The " leading citizens" are those who ought to be blamed— not the struggling citizens who. have a hard fight to make both ends meet. The navigation of the Wanganui River, which would make it a safe highway into the rich interior of the island, is of commercial importance to everyone on this coast, and it is the manifest duty of the Wanganui people to show that they think so. At the same time they should endeavour to establish the faith that whatever is done, or whatever money is expended is for the good of the whole, and not for the mere aggrandisement of a few business people in the town at the mouth of the river. Haicbmbe and Sherwill's stock sale was held this afternoon. The attendance was unusally good, and prices maintained their level at recent quotations.