THE COUNTY ADVERTISING.

Manawatu Herald, Volume III, Issue 91, 15 July 1881, Page 2

THE COUNTY ADVERTISING.

TO THE EDITOF OF THE MAXAWATtT HERALD. Sir, — Iq your issue before last you report a very remarkable resolution of the County Council on the subject of advertising. Now, if advertising was a Bubject ohat affected the Press alone, or a matter nerely between the Council and the news papers, then outsiders might look on aud ■mjoy the fun ; but unhappily this is not so. It goes further than this. Every ratepayer is injured by the course taken by the Council in advertising in the Post, to the exclusion of the County papers, in the .following manner : — First, the cash of the ratepayers i 3 taken out of the County to support a Wellington paper, to the injury of these papers, 'hat are supporting the •>est interests and lighting the battles of the County. Second, by advertising in die Wellington papers, you bring all thtworkmen in Wellington into competition with those in the County who have made this their home, and advanced its interests !>y both their labour and expenditure, and so, in proportion as you take the legitimate money of the ratepayers out of the County co support foreign labour, bo in proportion lo you starve the laborer", the contractors, i ud storekeepers, bakers, and butchers ol -he County. Why ? Because the settler who could have paid his baker and butohetiad he got work cannot do so now, because the Wellington man had got it. t Third, you say this is a narrow-minded View to take, becauso the workmen in th«.Mauawatu Couuty can teuder as well a» the Wellington man. No. That ia juni fcho point. How can he, when ho is kepi in ignorance of what the Council are doing. The County works are only to be advertised in a paper 100 or 150 miles away, and to which he does not subscribe. The men whom ho, as a ratepayer, placed in the Council to watch his interests, have turned traitor to him, and treat his interests with contempt or indifference. Fourth. The newspapers are as much the guardians of the people's interest) as the Cmncil. The pipers in the County have dove as much to get roads opened, bridges made, streets repiired, and wrongs rectilied as any County Councillor, and the papers are as much a necessity to the County and are a3 much a part and parcel r»f its wealth as any other Company, or Institution, or settler in it ; aud therefore the injustice is the more apparent. I am no friend to the newspapers, nor the newspapers to me, any more than to any other aettler. I contend for a principle of common justice, and I say that those C >uacillors who voted, as I have already shown, against the best interests of this County, should not be allowed to pass without some expression of opinion from those whom they have wronged, either by publio meeting, or by a requisition to resign, or otherwise. Aud when I say this I know that I express the opinion of a very large number of resident* (if not the majority). I would earnestly but respectfully commend these suggestions to every reader of your paper, in ©rd«r that such united and calm but d«-

oided action may be taken as will in future insure that our interests shall not be ignored with impunity. I am, &c, A Resipkn-t of the County. . F.>xton, 13 oh July, ISSI. [Wo think our corespondent has stated the caa<* fairly. There is, however, one orror in his letter, relating to tendei-3 for County advertisements. A9 we understand the matter, the C.mucil have determined not to advertise for tenders for three months. Wuethcr, as a sequel to this, all county vorka are to be stopped, we do not know Possibly tenders will be called by means of placards.— Ed M Herald]