Mangaotaki Branch.

King Country Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 250, 13 April 1910, Page 5

Mangaotaki Branch.

A branch of the Farmers' Union was formed in Mangaotaki, on Monday, 4th, and the chairman of the branch (Mr W. B. Lindsay) in his remarks to the meeting, emphasised the necessity for combination amongst farmers generally to enable them to get a fair share of the general expenditure. etc. He pointed out that the Mangaotaki district was settled eight years ago, and so far as wheel traffic was concerned the district was in the same primitive condition as it was then, as all stores had to be packed or conveyed by sledges. It cost the settlers from 35s to £2 per ton to get stores from Te Kuiti to the Crown land in the Mangaotaki block, and for the next three or four miles it cost the settlers 25s per ton. It costs the settler? at the rate of from 6s to 8s per ton per mile to get stuff carried in the Mangaotaki. Is it any wonder (he said) that the settlers want to shift away? The Waitomo County Council has been in operation for about four years, and so far as this district is concerned, it might as well have been inoperative. There have been no rates spent in the district and up to 1909 the whole of the "thirds" had been diverted to make roads for other people to use, while the settlers who paid the "thirds" had no roads themselves. The chairman, in concluding his remarks, pointed out that these were things that interested everybody, and the Union would held to keep them right, and all should join, and make their strength felt.