THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, MARCH 24, 1908. SOLWAY SHOWGROUND PROPOSALS.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9047, 24 March 1908, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, MARCH 24, 1908. SOLWAY SHOWGROUND PROPOSALS.

Ever since the proposal was made by the Committee of the Masterton Agricultural and Pastoral Association to acquire a portion of the Snlway Estate for a Showground, efforts have been put forward in hostile quarters to "make the worse appear the better reason." The latest effort in this direction was by our local contemporary, which has endeavoured by a series of faked figurea to minimise prospective advantages, and wipe out altogether the accumulated profits of the past. As the general meeting of members of the Association takes place on Saturday next, it is desirable they should be seized of the true position of affairs, and that their minds should be disabused of false impressions which they may have absorbed through the medium we have indicated. Our contemporary in an article on ttie 17th inst., publishes a balance sheet of its own concoction in connection with the present position of the Association in which its figures vary very considerably from those published by the Committee. For instance it puts down the bank overdraft at £B3O, while the official statement shows the figures to be £6OO. Other of its figures are equally incorrect; but it generously allows a balance of assets over liabilities of £3,535, as against the official balance of £3,275. Having done so much our contemporary proceeds to manufacture a financial statement to show that the whole of the aisets und«>r the new scheme will be absolutely obliterated. The official figures are again ignored, and its own —from whence arising is not stated —substi-

tuted. Thus we have the 70 acres of land which the syndicate offers at cost price—£60 per acre—set down at £3O per acre, which of course knocks off £2,100 of the assets at one fell swoop. Yet in estimating the profits derivable, from the 15 acres which the committee of the Association considered in excess of its needs, but the profits from the sale of which over £6O per acre are to go to the Association, our contemporary inferentially fixes the value at £Bl- per acre, as it estimates the profit at £325. As a matter of fact the syndicate has received a straight-out offer of £BO per acre for the . land, which is only divided by a fence from the 70 acres sought for the Showground. To base the value at £3O, as our contemporary apparently does, upon the Government valuation is, under the circumstancas, an absurdity. The value of land is what it will fetch in the market, not what it is taxed at. Our contemporary further asserts that it is doubtful whether £2O per acre could be borrowed upon the land 1; from any bank or lending agency. We can dispel this illusion by stating authoritatively that £SO has already been advanced by a bank. So far from the assets of the old ground being s vept away in the new proposal, we may point out that, without reckoning the profit from the 15 acras, the official figures show assets in connection with the new ground at £1,775; but with the minimum profit expected from the 15 acres, the balance would be £2,075. The v?lue of the old Showground is set down, and it is not disputed, at £5,100—34 acres at £l5O per acre; but there is, we are assure 1, reasonable prospect of the land realising £2OO per acre, in which case the assets on the new ground would be added to by £1,700, which, added to tha £2,075, would make the total assets £3,775, or £240 over and above the assets which our contemporary allows for the old ground, and which it, by false figures, would,wipe out of existence. The financial aspect therefore appears to be substantial and and tfiere should he no hesitation in voting for the scheme on the score of finance.