RAILWAYS OR ROADS?

Taranaki Daily News, 3 May 1922, Page 2

RAILWAYS OR ROADS?

DEPLORABLE CONDITIONS. A MEMBER’S EXPERIENCES. Writes Mr. R. Masters, M.P. for Stratford, to the editor: Sir, —I am interested in the controversy that is taking place between your good self and the Manaia Witness as to whether the construction of the branch line from Kapuni to Manaia from the branch line from Te Roti and Opunake is warranted, either as a necessity or as a commercial proposition. For the moment I am not interested as to whether the line will pay or not. Most people have made up their mind on that point. Having just returned from a tour of the backblocks portion of my electorate, the question that is exercising my mind is as to whether-any Government is justified in spending money on any railways and leaving settlers living under the deplorable conditions in which I found them during my visit. These are settlers who took up their sections seventeen years ago and still have nine iniles of an alleged six-foot track, which is really in places not more than two feet, dug out of the side of the bank, while the Government is drawing £lOOO per annum rental from, this area; where the mothers have had to leave their homes and go to Whangamomona, and are compelled to keep another in order that their children may receive a primary education; where the wool has to be packed out on horseback in ordinary sacks for twelve miles, and put into bales at the end of the journey; where horses, cattle and sheep, while being driven on these tracks, are continually being lost ever the side into the gullies; where it costs 11s per bale of wool to be taken nine miles to the station, two miles of which is formed into a 12-foot road; where, to my knowledge, it took a father and mother, on horseback, with their five-weeks-old baby, nine hours to go through a sea of mud sixteen miles in length. Settlers living under these conditions are being driven desperate, and already many have given up in despair, hoping against hope for assistance and lost their capital and years of hard labor and sacrifice.

A short time ago the Taranaki Chamber of Commerce took a trip through what was called the backblocks. The chamber is to be commended for its interest in the district, but nobody can possibly see the real backblocks even in the summer-time in motor cars. It would be an education for business people to spend, a week on horseback on the tracks that lead to settlement in our backblock districts.

Again I say it. is not a question whether the Opunake railway line will pay, but rather would the money already spent (£110,615) and the amount that it will cost to complete. (£330,000) be better spent on providing railways going through settlers’ rich lands running parallel with tar-sealed roads, or giving access to hardworking. struggling men and women living under the conditions as I found them during my recent tour. The amount spent on the Opunake line, together with that to be spent, would give every settler in the Whangamomona County a metalled road to his door. I leave it to you, Mr. Editor, looking at the matter from a Dominion point of view: Where would the money be most profitably spent? .[There is but one answer.—Ed.]