AN EXPLANATION.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 497, 21 October 1909, Page 2

AN EXPLANATION.

In our issue of the 13th inst. we called attention to what we did then and do now consider a grave injustice inflicted upon the Harbour Board by vesting a portion of the Board’s valuable endowment, upon which part of Messrs Devin and Co.’s grading shed is erected in the Railway Department from whom Messrs Devin and Co, hold a lease. We wrote inter alia : By some means the firm and Railway Department quietly squeezed the Harbour Board out of the question, and a Gazette notice vested that portion of the endowment occupied by Messrs Devin and Co. in the Railway Department.

The point we desired to emphasise was that the Railway Department, not content with annexing the Board’s principal source of revenue, i.e., the wharfages, had perpetrated a further injustice by seizing a valuable portion of the foreshore endowment, thus still further depriving the Board of much needed revenue which the Board could equitably demand from Messrs Devin and Co. We regret bracketing Messrs Devin and Co. with the Railway Department’s annexation, for we are assured by the local agent of the firm that Messrs Devin and Co. had nothing whatever to do with the matter, and in common fairness to the firm we now make the amenne honourable, and throw the whole blame on the Railway Department. Uuder the lease (obtained at public auction before the Board was constituted) from the Railway Department, Messrs Devin and Co. were granted permission to erect wharfages, subject to the approval of the Marine Department. We hope the Board will thoroughly thresh the matter out with the Minister when he visits Foxton.