The Chronicle. PUBLISHED DAILY SATURDAY, JULY 16, 1910. DEBTS AND PRUNING KNIVES.

Horowhenua Chronicle, 16 July 1910, Page 2

The Chronicle. PUBLISHED DAILY SATURDAY, JULY 16, 1910. DEBTS AND PRUNING KNIVES.

July is accounted the 'best month for pruning. The Horowlieiiua. Chronicle, recognising this, is getting into line with the .fruit growers, and other wise people, and its pruning knife is ready ,for lopping off some unprofitable branches. There is an overdraft at our bankers, for which we are paying percentages, chiefly because scores of iapn-ard debtors will not pay us for papers we have sold them and (advertisements we have printed for them. Over a score of people in the county who are on our books have not paid one penny piece of their newspaper subscription during the last two years. They are only "partly" to blame for that; they should have been written off the books long ago. The present management of the paper will see to "that" forthwith. One brassy-faced individual who had not paid his subscription lor over

t'welve months wrote in at the end of June that he wanted this paper stopped. As w<j, had refused to keep his name out of our columns, during May, when he was prosecuted 1 by the police, we guessed the reason of his wrath, and felt, no concern; but we "were" « .trifle disgruntled when we found that no cheque for arrears accompanied the withdrawal notice. Will he please accept this remindo'r? He is sure to see it in the copy of our paper which! he borrows from his neighbour! Levin and surrounding parts, itseems to us, suffer exceedingly from the prevalence of trust. Some of

the citizens who are in ,a position to set tetter examples, but who conform to the general practice of booking their purchases, might consider the advisa;bleness of trading as much as possible on a cash ibasis. Everyone who actually does this assists materially in helping other to do so. Already there are a fair number pursuing this course, as far as the experience of this newspaper shows; and to them we are grateful. Those who rpay every week, ail the office, we are always pleased to see ; those who pay every month we are similarly obliged to; for .regular quarterly payments we are thankful ; and we have no objection to those subscribers who discharge their subscription liabilities twice a year. But when we contemplate upon onr

books the names (conskleralbly over fifty) of those subscribers who have paid us nothing the past

twelve montlis—some with subscriptions in arrears to the extent of £3 10s, inclusive of postage diues—we feol inclined to oast in our lot forthwith with the .local tobacconists, who are forming an association for mutual protection against the "waster wearies" w.ho are fixed like leeches to the body politic which nourishes them for nothing and to its own undoing.