TARANAKI'S FUTURE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 145, 16 July 1909, Page 4

TARANAKI'S FUTURE.

A HOPEFUL OUTLOOK. The following appcured in yesterday's Dominion:—The unemployed difficulty so keenly felt in many parts of New Zealand seems to have touched Taranaki lighter than the majority of provinces. The dairying industry, with its certain market and good prices, is probably the sheet anchor of Tanmaki's comfortable prosperity in the face of adverse times, but there are indications of other assets which lead to the opinion that the whole district will ■within a few years revel in prosperity. The Ktratford-Ongarue railway "work, employing at present some eight hundred men, is already contributing much to. the importance of the former town, but it seems as if the great gainer of the Taranaki towns is going to be New Plymouth. The Taranaki Harbor Board is now making arrangements in connection with the quarter of a million loan, which is to be spent "in transforming the New Plymouth breakwater so that it will accommodate ocean-going steamers. New Plymouth business people claim that the improvement of their harbor will put them twenty-two hours closer to Sydney than Auckland. Besides which farmers will save some .C 40.000 a year by the non-transhipment to Wellington of produce, which will be put direct here on to the Home ocean tramps. The prospects of the oil industry were never more bright than at present. One well at Moturoa. is actually turning out ten barrels of oil a day, which quantity pays working expenses. This has never lieen done before. Then there is the iron-sand industry, which some day must he a big thing for the district. The Stratford-Ongarue railway will open up thousands of acres of new lands, and tile same thing will happen farther north in tit - M»!>au when the Native areas arc properly settled. It will lie seen that with her great mineral and produce resources the Taranaki district should prove one of the wealthiest in New Zealand.