Manawatu Herald. SATURDAY, JAN. 31, 1903. The District.

Manawatu Herald, 31 January 1903, Page 2

Manawatu Herald. SATURDAY, JAN. 31, 1903. The District.

We had the pleasure, in our last issue, of announcing the fact that Messrs Stevens, Austin and Easton bad effected the purchase of the Moto 1 Estate.- As the case stands at present it may be said that the district has only got out of the frying pan into the tire, in that the change secures one man for another, as ojvner. This, actually is not so, and it will be in the memory of our readers that it required one of the largest deputations to visit Wellington to prevent the Manager of the Assets Board front wholly depleting the estate of flax. How much wider awake the inhabitants were to what the Manager was has since been proved by the Assets Board securing a revenue close on £7,000 a year from the very material they were wantonly destroying. The deputationists to this day have never had offered a return of the costs they were, put to in rendering this excellent advice. While the estate was in the hands of the Assets Board there was never any surety of similar blindness to the best interests of the district, being displayed, and it was open, which we have continu--1 ally - contended it should not have been, for the inhabitants to wake up some day with the knowledge that the raw material necessary for an important industry, affecting hundreds, was not destroyed to -please some pet, fad of the Board. Fortunately this has been so far removed, as two members of the company are ' flaxmillers who understand the value of the green leaf, and understand how much more might he obtained by some judicious draining. There are great hopes that the , company may prove that much of the valuable feed would realise more

by dairying than simply -fattening', which might lead to a judicious suby, division of the property. As private owners they have their right to tie-; velope the estate in the way they think best, but all being business men the public will be content to leave all these matters- in thenhands, feeling sure that there will be a far greater chance of seeing more people as settlers on the large block of land contained in the estate, than there has ever been before. Whilst matters are progressing in the we understand that fill things jioint to the establishment , qf. an industry near the river which would be of vast advantage to the large district surrounding, so that the prosperity and the future prosperity of the looks assured. ,