MOKAI.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 7 August 1912, Page 3

MOKAI.

(By Our Travelling Correspondent).

Mokai is neither so big nor so •' beautiful "as Auckland, nor has it any desire to be so. Big cities, like big potatoes, are too often bad at heart. " Greater Auckland " indeed ! " Better Auckland," may it please you. city fathers! The AuckJander who is proud of his city because it is the biggest of Naw Zealand cities, has not much cause to be proud of the bigness or brilliancy of his intellect. Increase of the wealth and populalation of a city means, alas, increase in a direct ratio, of its poverty, with its concomitants, vice and crime.

Mokai boasts no costly public edifices or patatial residences; the exteriors of its workmen's cottages are unadorned and eve.n unpamted, except in the sombre grey laid on by Nature's own hand, with the brushes of rain and sunshine, heat and cold. But the rough exterior covers a comfortable interior ; firewood —the waste of the mill—is plentiful and free, ana the wolf of want never prowls about their doors.

There is plenty of work, good wages, as wages go, an eight and a hours day, four and a half on Satur-. days. Of course, when the weather is wet, and it frequently is, the work in the adjacent bushes is considerably curtailed and the bushmen's wages do not average high.

Hot w rater batha are free for him who takes the trouble of walking a few miles on Sundays or Saturday afternoon; and—bachelor's paradise I — house rent is also free for him who remains a single man, Yes, when to-day there is a tendency in other parts of the world to tax a poor bachelor into matrimony, here there is direct encouragement to keep him out of it. In Mokai it is only the married man paj'S rent. Advance Mokai ! Like every other Anglo-Saxon com-, munity, Mokai has its out-door and in door amusements, its super- abund^ ant energies in heels and toes finding outlet in the delirium of football or the more rational pleasures ot the dance. As I write the sounds of music and dancing are borne to the ear from the Gymnasium, Mokai's Town Hall, the occasion being a social and dance as a send-off to Mr and Mrs Keane, 'who have been residents of Mokai for about four years. Mr Keane, a Wairoa boy, has been millrcanager for that time, and Mrs Keaue, by her musical talents, a willing contributor to every social entertainment. Both guests were recipients of handsome presents ac parting gifts. It may interest your median ica readers to learn that the inventor ofl the Jansen Patent Truck Pedestal w rhich, it is claimed, " with a wellpacked journal and good lubricant will run a thousand miles with the one oiling," is a resident of Mokai, Mr Alexander- Tausen. I enclose descriptive particulars and photographs of pedestal, which you might be good enough to show to any interested inquirers.