The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND THURSDAY, AUGUST 1, 1929 A BRIDGE OF OPTIMISM

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 730, 1 August 1929, Page 8

The Sun 42 WYNDHAM STREET, AUCKLAND THURSDAY, AUGUST 1, 1929 A BRIDGE OF OPTIMISM

IJEW places in California are much, better than Auckland for 1 natural attractiveness, hut every one of the most attractive Californian cities is centuries ahead of this eity in respect of courageous confidence, progressive enterprise and boosting which is an American synonym for boasting. And it was this quality of sunny optimism along the Pacific slope of the United States that made the deepest impression on the keen mind of Sir .James Gu n son during a three-months’ tom - of California. He had the same merit himself when, as Mayor of Auckland for a reeord time, he did more for the advancement of his native eity than all the other municipal leaders together had accomplished in half a century. But he was a bit too rapid for many laggards, and his retirement from office permitted them to slip into a municipal hog.

It may be observed, without making any invidious comparisons, that the spirit and stir of State and municipal progress which impressed Sir James Gunson to ardent admiration of America’s enterprising methods are not very much different from the study of things American that inspired Signor Mussolini to contribute a remarkable article to a Parisian journal on the manner and method with which the United States has won the international battle for industrial supremacy. From the viewpoint of the great Italian. America is now producing 60 per cent, of the world’s petrol, half of its iron and steel, nine-tenths of its motor-cars and fantastic proportions of its coal and cereals. And 11 Duc-e might have added, “and Heaven knows how much of the world’s supply of cinemas and saxophones.” The success of America’s fiscal and industrial methods, however, may he left to the consideration of our politicians, who yet, in spite of a chronic fecklessness, may learn some day that the country which does not hesitate to protect itself in commerce and industry gets on quickest and best. For the real secret of America’s prosperity and industrial supremacy is nothing more than the simple fact that America has divided the world into two parts: The United States first, and then the rest.

But the people of Auckland will he more interested in what one of its most progressive citizens has to say about municipal work and progress in a prosperous part of the United States. Doubtless there are American municipalities no better and probably a great deal worse than the principal loeal government body in Auckland and. indeed. New Zealand, hut it would he difficult to find any of fhe leading civic administrations in the United States slower than this city’s administration or similarly lacking in energy and bold enterprise. Apparently, everywhere Sir James Gunson went in California he found striking evidence of “the vast progress in public works being made by the State and municipalities.” And the most impressive proof of such progress was the manner in which Californian municipalities undertook, without hesitation, large schemes for the progressive development of their towns or cities. There is no nervousness there, no clogging drag of backward ideas, no fear at all of the future. One of the lessons brought home to Auckland by Sir Gunson is a suggestion that Auckland should slough its municipal stagnation, as a snake slips out of its old skin, and put into early practice the proposal to build a bridge across the Waitemata Harbour, and give access to a large and attractive area for residential and industrial expansion. This sort of progressive enterprise is, unfortunately, the sort of community go-aheadness which would make the present Government and the slow-moving City' Council shudder at the audacity of the proposal. Because of a lack of initiative among State and civic leaders in recent years the greatest centre of population in the Dominion falters in its pace or goes forward laboriously on crutches. Money has been and still is being stored away in the gilt-edged securities which frequently represent an over-indulgence of that dreadful malady -—middle-age cowardice—while enterprise moves on leaden feet. The community needs fanning with the breezes from the Sierras, and warming by the optimism of California—the product of sunshine and the best means for the production and distribution of success. Meanwhile, our State and municipalities blunder on in miserable hesitancy and poverty of ideas.