MR FREDRIC'S ATTITUDE.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 4, 5 January 1914, Page 5

MR FREDRIC'S ATTITUDE.

[To The Editor Stratford Post.]

Sir,—l would be pleased (per youi

columns) to place the attitude I take up over the extension of license to the Electric Supply Company before the ratepayers. Tlie Stratford Electrical Supply Company received from the ratepayers a concession to supply Stratford with electric light and power for 21 years. Now, when this concession is Hearing its end, the Company is attempting to take advantage of an Act if Parliament to extend its term for 42 years, and thus break faith with the ratepayers. The lighting of Stratford should belong to the ratepayers, not to a private company, who are out to make money, and 1 consider it a duty to use every means in my power to secure, at the end of tho Company's

term of 21 years, this valuable right of lighting their own town for the ratepayers, and I say that any person who

tries to force this extended term on to the ratepayers against their wishes, is morally guilty of attempting to take what belongs to the ratepayers. The •visition would have been correct had the Supply Company's directors waited on the Borough Council as they did on the County Council and got the Borough ratepayers' consent to the extension. But the Company instituted a different line of action. They sent Mr R. Masters, chairman,'and the solicitor to the Company, to Wellington, to urge on the Minister for Public Works that thi9 license be granted, In reference

o personalities that I used I am using , :hem again, and will continue to use hem to emphasise the fact that Mr Kirkwood and Mr Richards have, nothing to gain by opposing the 42 years extension, except the enmity of a few »f those persons interested in the Company, and that Mr R. Masters, together with the shareholders, are roing to benefit very largely at the sxpense of the ratepayers. In reference to the three anonymous letters attacking myself, T know who wrote two of these letters, and the paltry reasons that actuated tho writers. In furlev reply to "Business .Man," who rhinks that there was "more at the bottom of my letter" ; had he been an honourable man he would have found jmy name there.— I am, etc., J. PREDRIC. iStratford, January sth, 1914.