BACK BLOCKS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 60, 29 July 1912, Page 5

BACK BLOCKS.

THE ROADING TROUBLE. By Telegraph—Parliamentary Reporttf. Wellington, Last Night. "The roads are the trouble," says tha Minister for Public Works (the Hon. W. Fraser), who has just returned from an official visit to Northern Taranaki. The district roads, he said, were about at bad as they could be. Their state waa inconceivable to anybody who has never seen them. Within a reasonable distance* of To Kuiti unlimited quantities of limestone metal, the best kind of metal, could be obtained, but so far the roading problem remained unsolved. It was imperative that the Government, in co-opera-tion with the local bodies, should devise some better methods of roading; the country he had just visited, and,other settlements. Strenuous efforts must b* made to remedy the present state of the roads. The main thing, he continued, was to construct the arterial roads before money was spent on braneh roads. Take the ease of settlers who are placed thirty miles or more from Te KuitL What, he asked, was the Use of giving men so placed a few miles of metalled branch roads leading to a main highway, if they cannot travel on the highway when they get to it? In some parts of the district he had just visited farmers carried their cream on. the saddle over Borne miles of country to a point where the cream was collected, and from which it was carried on pack horses over a distance of fifteen miles to the next place, from which it could be sent by railway to the factory. "This," he added, "will give some idea of what these men have to do to enable them to earn enough money to pay for their land and to live."