The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6, 1912. DEVELOPING THE COUNTRY.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 212, 6 March 1912, Page 4

The Daily News. WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6, 1912. DEVELOPING THE COUNTRY.

No cry was more persistently used at last election in order to oust Sir Joseph Ward from office than that the country was outrunning the constable in the matter of borrowing. The country was told that if the Premier continued in office and went on borrowing at the, rate it had for the past decade or so that we would soon find ourselves in the Bankruptcy Court. All the money, excepting that for the Dreadnought, however, has been used reproduotively, and without it, it is certain that the country would not be in the flourishing condition it is today. Imagine a farmer taking up ;i section of undeveloped land in Taranaki years ago and trying to break it in and stock it without borrowing! Where would he have been to-day? As with the individual, so with the country. If New Zealand is to be developed as it should be borrowing must continue. If we are to depend upon the savings from the Consolidated Revenue for the construction of railways, roads and bridges, our children's children might see the country resources done justice to. It is morally certain the present or the next generation never will. The croakers who are always predicting disaster to the country as a result of its alleged surfeit of borrowed money should read an article contrasting the development of Canada with that of Australia in the current issue of that excellent magazine, "Life." What applies to Australia applies (in lesser degree, of course) to New Zealand. The writer says:—"The Australian field must be opened up, not by the people in advance of railways, but by railways in.advance of the people. The potentialities of the 'frozen waste' and of mountains' of Canada were not disclosed to view until brought into contact directly with the people through the medium of railways. The vast American continent will also disclose itself similarly if the people are given a chance. The pioneer spirit of the early squatters of New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland will again be in evidence in the vast unexplored areas, and room will be made for the smaller men, by the areas vacated in the more closely settled districts along the frontage. Railway extension on a colossal scale, conjointly with water conservation and artesian boring, the bridging with steel rails north, south, east and west of the whole continent, is worth the risk, and until Australia produces *a leader or two of the calibre of Sir John A. Macdonald and Donald Smith (Lord Strathoona)—

the founders of modern Canada—to take hold of the Australian problem.in an equally masterly way, that sword of Damo'cles, those unoccupied spaces of the continent will continue to be a menace to its safety, and the field' of immigration will, continue to be circumscribed. The remedy appears to me to lie in the borrowing of another £50,000,000 at least, and the Government that is afraid to take the risk of this amount in railway development and water conservation in its unexplored areas, either docs not believe in the possibilities of the country, trust its people, or deserve to hold a continent, and should for ever be silent in its boastings as to greatness. To my mind, the Australian wool-clip jf the 100,000,000 sheep to-day might, in the life o* the present generation, be raised to five times the amount, the harvest quadrupled, and new fields of mining opened up which are at present undreamed of. If public ownership in railways quakes before such- a proposal, the sooner they abandon their dpg-irt-the-manger policy, and relegate tW task io private enterprise, the better it will be for the welfare and safety o£ the Commonwealth. Though, in every enterprise, ( either public or private, many errors of judgment and mistakes may occur, I conclude with a trite saying, 'The man who .never made a mistake never made anything.'" We are committed to State ownership of railways in New Zealand, but if the State is unable or unwilling to shoulder the responsibility for constructing a line like the proposed Opunake one it should certainly not take up a dog-in-the-manger attitude and prevent private enterprise from undertaking it. The State can always safeguard the interests of the people.