BACK-BLOCK DISABILITIES.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 59, 5 April 1907, Page 3

BACK-BLOCK DISABILITIES.

To the Editor. Sir,-Your wry inti-nfling letters from llii' baekblocks show the soundness of a theory of mine that tlic telephone is tlie true pioneer to keep outlying districts in touch with civilisation when roads are under the mud. If centres value the work of the settlers who push 011 in advance to the front, an effort should lie made in that direction, puttin;; confidence into the heart of a. man who has tiie pluck to take his family to where a home can he hewed out of the heart of the forest. A very cheap way of doing it would lie for the surveyors, when working out new lines of road, to put up a wire to every camp ov embryo township laid out, even when working in the InHi. l.ight polc.would not lie diilicult of Iran-port. Sour i'.ecou.it of the unfortunate n:an helplessly doomed to see his ele'd perish owing to the impossibility of getting a doctor ill time has been only too Ire - (pientlv paralleled 011 this coast, when bushfalling accidents occur, and men are carried by their comrades for hours, suffering agonies which might be much ameliorated could a doctor be summoned promptly. (iovermuent experts appear to ha.e an idea that if a telegraph post ia not brought from oversea, squared, njiokeshaved, etc., according to speeilication, and of adequate cosi, it is not lit to carry a telephone wire, but even common New- Zealand polos have been made to do duty at a pinch, ami if is to be hoped, when a little common sense is brought to bear, may do so again.--I am, etc., •■.UOXTYIDICKK."