FOXTON AND ITS FUTURE.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 1375, 18 March 1915, Page 3

FOXTON AND ITS FUTURE.

A VISITOR’S IMPRESSIONS.

[l}V A VISITOR.]

. Foxton should be—and could be—at least as big and busy as Wanganui, and however much the latter town may—and will —grow, Foxton should —and could —keep pace with it. To attain this result needs the co operation of two par ties, one of which is the Foxton public, the other the New Zealand Government. The Government is proverbially hard to shift, and won’t shift till the people ot boxton stir it up. Ho if Foxton is going to be what it should be and could be —its people will have to start the ball rolling themselves. One is naturally chary of telling other people their business, particularly if he happens to be a visitor. But a few days in Foxton have immensely impressed the writer with this district’s potentialities, and he yields to the editor’s request to summarise his impressions. One day he went down to the Mauawatu Heads, aud was immediately struck b3 r the great similarity between the Mauawatu and Wanganui estuaries and entrances. By a common sense harbour improvement scheme, aud at a low cost in comparision with the benefits secured, Wanganui has obtained a deep water entrance to her river, aud one moreover that can be worked at almost any state of the tide. The conditions at the Manawatu entrance are so similar that I have no hesitation iu saying that a like result could be secured here, Betweeu the heads and the town of Foxton the river winds a great deal, aud there are in this locality latge areas of swamp. Napier supplies an effective object lesson for dealing with this problem. A good dredge to cut out new channels through the bends would so straighten the river as to reduce the distance to town by two or three miles. Instead of the periodical floods being a nuisance, they could, by the use of flood gates through the swamps, be intelligently aud practically used aud controlled, aud the swamps thus be gradually sliced up above water level and converted into dry and rich ground. Anyone who knows of the conversion ol Napier South from a hopeless swamp to dry laud will understand the suggestion.

One day the visitor went up the Mauawatu River per launch for some 18 or 20 miles. He saw a fine, broad waterway of good working depth. But what opened his eyes and excited his admiration were the thousands of acres of richly fertile count! y that forms Foxton’s hinterland. Much of it is swamp, but anyone who knows what has been done in swamp reclamation in the Piako, Bay of Plenty, and other northern districts can easily realise the immense advantage that will follow a proper system of draining in the Foxton district. As a matter of fact, the work ol draining the Fo-C-m district would be far le-s difii nilt than in some of the northern dis tricts that have been successfully brought into profit. Here, I should judge, one doesn’t so much need to raise the land level. He needs, rather, to lower the water level. The firs! step in that is to deepen the outfall —the river entrance —which is another way of saying that, to get the greatest benefit, the harbour improvement and district drainage questions should be parts'ol one great scheme and should go together. The river, in short, should be the main drain. Many of the secondary arterial drains falling into the river could be made to serve the double purpose of drain and canal, thus considerably reducing theroadlug problem. I have no hesitation in saying that such schemes as outlined approach the dimensions of a national work, for the results would not only Immensely benefit Foxton, but a large portion 0! the Doraimon as well.

The fly in the ointment obtrudes itself disagreeably however. Near!) the whole of this splendid hinterlaud is iu the hands of a very few persons, and while that continues Foxton will not be as progressive as it should be, and the big schemes may as well be left undone. The Government has got to be stirred up to put an end to such flagrant land monopoly, and the Foxton public must stir it up by every meaus iu their power. Flax plays the leading part in Foxtou’s commercial life, and the flax industry wants reorganising, too, if not re-constituting altogether. It should be treated as was the sugar industry in Queensland. The old, shiftless method of letting nature grow the flax as she llsteth, while landowners, doing nothing to assist the growing, sit tight and pocket their royalties, should be swept away out of sight. The land should be subdivided into small or moderate areas for mixed farming. It should be settled by a class of labourer-farmer-owners. It should be a sine qua non, in order to preserve tbe flax industry, that a certain acreage of each farm should be put down to flax, the rest being occupied by other crops, orchards, dairying, market gardening, etc. Far seeing men have said, and with truth, that the day will coma when flax must be grown as is any other crop—the best varieties selected, and the flax planted, cultivated and harvested as any other crops. Not only that, but actual experiments on some of our State farms have shown that flax treated this way gives a bigger and more profitable yield than when grown a la nature. If anyone is inclined to scoff at the idea, tbe Agricultural Department will supply him with actual proof

of ils practicability. Such a system of flax producing will naturally be rotten for the “big” man, but it would be a splendid thing lor the “small” man. Under present conditions the man who cuts the flax works for what he gets, but the mau who draws the royalties does nothing, and yet gets paid for doing nothing. Under the system as suggested, the mao who cuts would not only be the harvester, but the actual producer, and would get paid for the full product of his labour. And under a mixed farming system, he would have something to “keep the pot boiling’ 9 while nothing was doing in flax. Moreover, where the industry now employs and supports only dozens, it would, under such a scheme as suggested, employ hundreds, perhaps thousands. And, better still, Such a scheme would allow of no 1 living on the work of others, it is exactly on these lines —small areas and owner - producer - labourer;;—that Queensland re-established its sugar industry, and put it ou a sound aud successful basis. The pro-ducer-labourer would sell his produce to lhe mill direct, and thus much labour unrest aud quarrel about wages and hours would be done away with. If the mills proved difficult to deal with, co-operative mills as iu Queensland would solve the difficulty. If the flax farmers could hot raise the necessary money to establish such mills—as iu some cases happened in Queensland the Government could advance the necessary money, repayable by instalments —as was also done iu Queensland. Or —as also sometimes happened iu Queensland —the Government could build mills and run them as State concerns. Of course, State or co-operative mills would not be necessary where existing private mills dealt satisfactorily with the producers. Application to the Queensland Agricultural Department, at Brisbane, will obtain any amount of useful information on this head.

Fringing the coast, north and south of Foxton is a sand belt of varying width, generally, though quite mistakenly, considered useless ior profit making. On this sand belt could be established another profitable national undertaking, viz., afforestation. The coasts of the Bay of Biscay in France, the German shore* of the Baltic, and various other places furnish examples of the success of so employing this class of laud. As to trees, it does not pay to plant forests of native timber, they take too long to grow to maturity. Conifers and eucalypts would give the best results. But details are not necessary here; publications of the N.Z. Department of Agriculture, especially those by Dr. Cockayne and the late Mr C. S. Mathews, will furnish a mass of information on the subject. In 30 or 40 years, a few miles of State forest, if properly planted and worked, would almost pay our national debt. They would give employment to hundreds. They would mean many factories and industries of all sorts, and of themselves would make prosperous a place two or three times the size of Foxlou.

Consider what the practical fruition of these suggestions would mean so far as circulation of money and volume of money are concerned —the sub-division and profitable occupation of thousands of acres now held by the monopolist, a re constituted flax industry under which the royallypocketer would be abolished and the labourer be the actual producer also, the small farmer covering the country by the hundred, the sandy wastes covered with useful forest, with mills and allied industries, and a decent harbour to take the bigger shipping trade that must follow ail this.

When the editor asked for the visitor’s impressions he may perhaps have meant impressions of the Foxton of to-day. But in the visitor’s mind these have produced other impressions those that the future holds. These changes won’t come in five years ; they may not come for a hundred. But the possibilities are all there, and some day I am convinced they will be realities. How long they are la arriving depends entirely on Foxton itself. One thing is certain, when they do arrive they will make Foxton 20 times and more its-present statute.