THE PREMIER AT PAHIATUA.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 7951, 29 January 1906, Page 6

THE PREMIER AT PAHIATUA.

DEPUTATIONS FROM THE RACK BLOCKS. PAHIATUA, January 2G. When the Premier arrived here this afternoon, writes the Post's special reporter, be was met by a considerable number of people, including the Mayor, and the new member, Mr R. B. Ross. On arriving at his hotel he found that there was a vast crowd of anxious-looking settlers and others eagerly waiting the opportunity to bring under his notice the thousand and one needs of the district. Being summer time there will be no heartrending spectacles of impassable roads to bump and splash into the Premier's coueciousness that sense of true night mare existence of the back blocks which is very dim and vague when the settlers make a pilgrimage to Wellington in search of relief. This afternoon, however, ho was pied for a long time receiving' deputations, the hotel being pretty well blocked with settlers and residents. The subjects of the deputation were of purely local interest, but they were instructive. The first request was for a bridge over the Makuri River, and the deputation urued that the Government should come to the rescue. The cost would be £SOO, and five or six hundred people would be served. "I'll give ycu pound for pouDd," said the Premier. "You know we cannot break through our principle in respect to settled districts "When there are districts with no bridge at all." He pointed put that £250 at 4 per cent, was £lO a year, and that l even if there wore only one hundred settlers served that would merely mean a couple of shillings a head. The deputation said the trouble was which district should be rated, but the Premier closed down firmly. "You have heard what 1 said," be remarked "1 cannot recommend anything but a pound for pound subsidy." Then the supplicants for roads began to appear. A request was made for Government assistance to connect Pongaroa and Pahiatua by making five miles of road. Tales of the horrible mud of the road in the winter were related and the plight of Pongaroa was eloquently described, cut off as it is from Pahiatua' on one hand, Dannevirke on the other, and the sea. Numerous other deputations asked for other roads and the Premier could only reply that he would inform the Minister in charge of the roads. One curious little deputation then filed in, consising of awe-struck settlers from Rakaunui. To-morrow *ne Premier goes to Pongaroa, and it appears that arrangements have been made to go via Mangatiti on the main route. There Is another route through Rakaunui, a tiny settlement twelve " miles beyond Makuri. This deputation came to ask the Premier to go via Rakaunui. "Who objeots to my going the other way?" asked the Premier. It then became apparent that the Pahiatua Chamber of Commerce, which made the arrangements, was afraid that if the Premier went via Rakaunui the awful state of the road would lead him to neglect the main route. Mr W. Tosswill, the Chairman of the Chamber, arrived, and an argument ensued, the Rakaunui emissaries standing anxious, but grim in the background. Eventually it was arranged that the Premier will go one way and return the other, and the Rakaunui men retired full of thankfulness. One oan imagine the desperate straits of tbo forgotten' localities when it is necessary for men to ride thirty miJes to implore the Premier to see their misery, and to battle' hard to prevent some other forsaken wilderness from wiling him away. This same woe-begone and hungry rivalry was evidenced when another deputation, consisting of the Mayor and Councillors of Woodville came to ask; the Government to metal twenty chains of road between Woodville and Ballance. The 'Pahiatua County Council, it was explained, would not metal this road, and Woodville was in great distress. Mr Ross declared that in winter it is ajsea ofmud four feet deep. Riding on iiorseback one dabbled one's feet in the slußh. He explained that Woodville waots to secure the trade of Ballance, and Pahiatua is equally anxious in the same direction. "I am not going about the country strewing roads and bridges and road metal for local bodies," said the Premier. AH he could say was that be would inform the Minister for Roads, but it seemed to him these little works should be done by the local bodies. In any case, Ballance had done pretty well, and be cited a bridge recently erected. The Minis- 1 ter for Roads could compel the Pahiatua County Council to repair the road. A member of that Council interjected that the bridge was of no use to Pahiatua, ard that the Council had no money to spare. The Premier gloomily declared that if the bridge was of no use the Government had been taken in. "We were badgered and worried, and our lives were hot safe in Woodville till we granted the bridge, and now they say quite coolly that it is of no use. It is too much, too much," and he told the deputation to go away. . More deputations kept on arriving, all praying for roads, and if the Premier does not know about the road-hunger now he will learn all about it on the weary journey to Pongaroa to-morrow. Pongaroa obtains its supplies in summer, and is isolated all the winter. The sup plies are going in already.