PIONEER AND PRODUCER.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 37, 3 July 1914, Page 3

PIONEER AND PRODUCER.

A NEW ERA DAWNS. MR McCUTGIIAN'S UTTERANCE AT WHANGA.UOMONA.

Mr W. H. McCutchan, speaking at Whangamomona on Wednesday, remarked that that "was a preat day for all," marking the opening of the Whanga. section of the railway. It was about 25 years, lie continued, since the first wave of settlement broke over tlie hills of Whangamomona, and the v/ork of the pioneer seftlers began. He would like to lay stress on the pioneer—the pioneer and primary producer, the man and his work. The greatest factor in development all over the world, he conti'.iued, was work of the primary producer. Few people realised what the pioneer had done, and what he was doing. It was barely a hundred years since Napoleon liad stood on the shores of France, gazing across the Channel and cursing .his impotency to attack England, and he applied to her one of the most opprobrious epithets he could imagine when he classed the Englishmen as a "nation of shopkeepers." He wondered what the French thought now of the "nation of shopkeepers." In the days of Napoleon, France was an enemy, now she was our ally. And France had seen British pioneering and civilisation enwrap the whole globe with her commercial enterprise. Fleets of merchantmen had travelled out and developed what wtre thought to he the waste places of the earth, but which had become some of the most fertile spots on the earth's surface. They liad seen great navies built and sent to protest the great commerce that had sprang up. They had seen in that period great natural harbors perfected, and thousands of artificial harbors built, and we had just recently seen an ocean-going steamer berthed in our own port of New Plymouth (Applause). The German race, continued Mr. McCutchan, was supposed to be. our foe, but they were kindred to us. Let his hearers think of the great shipping combine effected in that country recently, and of the fact that their first vessels were to be sent to our shores. What did that mean to the primary producer! It meant breaking down the tariff harriers erected against the produce that we grew, and tliis should be a source of congratulation. Touching briefly on the privations of pioneers, he said it was good that, out . of all their difficulties, to-day a new era had dawned. Instead of Our produce ! searching for a market, the market was opening up for the produce of the land, and before the stuff was even produced, tlie market was ready. The last link in the chain of communication had Wn forged that day, and the primary producer of this Whangamomonii district had been put in touch with the consumer in the Old Land. But, he enjoined them, there must be no weakening of the natural fibre. There must be no race decay. They must put lOith every ounce that was in 'tliem to earn the full emolument that Was to be gained from those industries. Striking a sadder note. Mr McCutchan referred to those pioneers who had gone from their midst and crossed th» Great Divide; to others for whom the battle had been too fierce, causing them to go elsewhere, and there, under more favorable conditions, to meet a greater measure of success*