AUCKLAND AND TARANAKI.

Taranaki Daily News, 3 February 1922, Page 6

AUCKLAND AND TARANAKI.

RAIL COMMUNICATION A LONg' WAY OFF. The president of the Auckland Railway League, Mr. P. E. Cheal, said the Public Works Statement was most unsatisfactory so far as the Northern portion of the Dominion was concerned. The people in the North had been without main trunk lines between Auckland and Napier and Auckland and Taranaki for 50 years, and so far as could be judged by the Public Works Statement it would be another 50 years before adequate justice was done to the Northern districts. “Of course we realise,” said Mr. Cheal, “that the influence in Wellington is against us. ‘Not a mile of railway north of Napier or north of Stratford,’ is Wellington’s decree, and because we sit down and do nothing we get nothing. Sir Robert Stout expressed the opinion.the other day that ‘a few frosty days up North might awaken the people,’ but I think that what We want to make us jump, and jump to some purpose, is handfulls of snow let down our necks.”

Mr. Cheal went on to say that statistics showed conclusively that the North had been shamefully neglected in the past, and it was time some forcible statement was made as to the position. The population of the combined districts of Auckland, Hawke’s Bay, and Taranaki was 489,624; whereas that of the whole of the South Island was only 478,311. The gross valuation of the three northern districts was £202,208,415, and that of the South Island only £167,914,933.