WANTED---A SQUARE DEAL

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXIV, 8 January 1931, Page 2

WANTED---A SQUARE DEAL

WHAT IS CINDERELLA GOING TO DO ? (To the Editor) Sir.—lt was most gratifying to read your report of the Progress League’s further action in calling a second special meeting and passing a much stronger resolution of protest against the Government’s incredible action of stopping construction on the Midland railway, and now apparently about to close down on all further construction by the removal of the building plant therefrom, though professedly only suspending operations.

It was also interesting to read that the member for Nelson was present at Monday afternoon’s meeting, though we are made no wiser as to his attitude and intentions regarding this blackest of all betrayals that is being imposed on Nelson by the Cabinet (of which he is such an illustrious member) except as a carrier of the meeting’s protest to l.is reactionary chief. It is an old axiom that it takes a lot to rouse Nelson, but that once roused it moves with irresistible force. Now is the time for rousing Nelson as never before, when as a sop to Mr Coates and his coterie of North Island Reform members, the present Acting-Prime Minister is selling Nelson’s heritage for reasons best known to himself.

It is to' be deeply regretted that the league, did not decide to organise a public open air demonstration at the Church Steps to strengthen its hands by the passing of resolutions of indignant protest against the action of the reactionists in the present Cabinet, which is so utterly at variance with the policy of the United Party, and on which it was placed in power. It is equally regrettable that no effort vvas made by the league meeting in the imperative direction of organising a deputation to wait upon our returning Prime Minister immediately on his arrival back in Wellington. Nelson has shown such sublime, and blind faith in its member, and the government, believing that they would honour the pledges on which they were elected, that no effort has been made to send a deputation of any kind to wait upon the Ministers regarding our railway, with the result that the most disastrous thing that could possibly happen, has come upon us like a thunderbolt from the blue, in the form of stopping work on our railway construction, and rumoured removal of the railway building plant, probably to the East Coast line, as the greatest act of irony ever imposed upon this province and its railway. In suggesting the organising of a public demonstration, and deputation for, and from Nelson in the writer’s previous letter which appeared in your columns last night, and again stressed in this letter, it is but the very minimum of efforts that are being made by the people of Gisborne as their means of protest pgainst the stoppage of work on their line, as indicated in the newspapers available to-day. It would undoubtedly have been the first effort by Marlborough and Canterbury had their East coast line been stopped. The Government is making the greatest economic blunder it could possibly make, in stopping railway construction, and casting men out of work by the thousand, close on 300 in our own case, instead of keeping them at work and by early completion provide, as in the case of our railway, a main line of communication that would set up the greatest development of Dominion resources ever experienced in New Zealand. What then is our Cinderella going to do besides merely sending resolutions of protest, of which it has no guarantee that the present acting Prune Minister will even peruse, or get past the W.P.B. of his chief officers? A face-to-face interview and a clear statement of the case is the first essential effort that should be organised, and a deputation should be sent over to see the present acting Prime Minister, Ayith a to secure a promise of holding final action over until the return of Mr Forbes, for it is very evident that Mr Ransom is adopting an obvious panicky _ haste to carry out the decision to a point before the arrival of Mr Forbes that will make it difficult if not impossible for the reaction to be stopped, or the mischief be undone. That Mr Forbes may prove the Prince Charming to our Cinderella, by his sense of justice and fairplay to Nelson, would seem now to be our last hope, of receiving A SQUARE DEAL. P.S. Was it not decided at the first of the two recent special meetings of the Progress League—to appeal to the other leagues of this island to support the continuance of Nelson’s railway construction? If so which if any of the various leagues have come forward with their support. It will be interesting to learn the attitude of Marlborough and Canterbury leagues to the S.O.S. call of Nelson now in dire distress, as a result of being scuttled by the political combination.—A. S. D. NELSON, 7th January.'