The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 1912. TELEPHONES FOR SETTLERS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIII, Issue 9, 8 May 1912, Page 4

The Stratford Evening Post. WITH WHICH IS INCORPORATED THE EGMONT SETTLER. WEDNESDAY, MAY 8, 1912. TELEPHONES FOR SETTLERS.

The question of telephones for settlers was recently discussed by the Secretary of the Auckland A. and P. Association, who told an interviewer that his Association had been collecting information for years with the object of inducing the Government to encourage the installation of rural telephone systems by giving more power to local bodies or local residents to undertake the work. From what he had seen in America, Canada, and England he had realised for a long time that New Zealand is somewhat behind in this matter. He considered that an adequate and inexpensive system would mean so much to the commercial and agricultural progress of a young country like New Zealand as well as to the convenience and comfort of those living in the backblocks. It was, he said, surely not too much to ask that the Government might do something to assist the farmers to provide them, either through the local bodies or by co-operative effort, as was being done 'successfully in other lands. The fight for the world’s market was becoming fiercer, and our primary producers,’ if they were to hold their own, ought to be placed on as good a footing in this respect as their rivals. Farmers could erect lines cheaper than any Government could possibly do. Any settler who could erect a wire fence could put up a telephone wire. Many fruitless journeys farmers would bo saved by an efficient house to house telephone system. A statement was made by Sir Joseph Ward to the effect that it was simply impossible for the Government to cope with the demand for country telephones, and that to grant all the telephone requests now made would cost £7,000,000. After reading this statement while crossing the Pacific, Mr Hall asked some fanners on the Mo an a how the difficulty was met in their countries. “In our country they have got them,” said a Manitoba farmer. The council in his district erected the system and provided farmers with telephones for £3 per annum. Of this sura £1 was paid to the Government to give the farmers the use of the long distance trunk lines without further charge, and they were putting them in everywhere. There was a regular network of thorn, A Texas 'settlor stated that the Bell Telephone Company was providing the farmers with telephones (worth 37s (id) for 6d per week (6 dollars a year). The snggstion has been made that the local bodies connected with the control of outlying districts should take concerted action in an endeavour to have some scheme provided for the establishment of rural telephone systems. One introduced at northern Wairoa has one hundred subscribers, and is said to be working most satisfactorily.