LOOKING BACKWARD!

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9669, 17 December 1909, Page 7

LOOKING BACKWARD!

AFTER TWENTY-FIVE YEARS— A.D., 1935. THE MASTERTON OF A GENERATION AGO. A MARVELLOUS ADVANCE. FROM SLUGGARD TOWN TO VIRILE CITY. (No. 4. —Contributed.) "Then those influential people who could have improved matters had they shown any vitality at all were desperately slow to move themselves. They then boasted a "Chamber of Commerce,'' a sort of retailers' parliament, to which they seem to have delegated even their physical functions. This commercial body politic was possessed of a nervous system which took very little to disorganise it, and while the Chamber achieved a few trifling reforms, it fell many times short of what a town iu that state required. In the Chamber was', reflected the apathy of the towns- ' people, and when closer settlement, or back road development, or industrial projects were mooted the Chamber seemed to get a bad attack of "nerves" straight away, and matters commercial continued to drift. No one seemed to realise—or anyhow, seemed to want to realize —that in making Masterton a Mecca for a big out district, with the shortest and best roads possible to every available settlement on all sides, there was in that alone a great advance. They all seemed indifferent as i to whether that great railway line to | Pongaroa was ever put through or I not—tHat in which has since cesn a boon to thousands of settlers and assured Masterton's success. It was no one's concern that magnificeit material was right at hand for the [ many industries we now carry on. , A public meeting called in those | days having for its object the discussion of any scheme ot a progressive nature would have been well attended had the convenor and his inevitable chairman and the hall caretaker and his dog tamed up! Waß it any wonder that at the close of 19C9 a feeling commenced to be- ! come apparent that real business reform was needed in the town —reform in the general conduct of the town's business aa a whole! About the beginning of 1910 a" progress league quietly formed itself, and instead ot making a great noise and doing nothing, it did a great deal of good with a minimum of advertisement. It went firstly into the question of how best the town could be supplied with industries, and from that it extended its operations to advancing settlement on the near hinterland, and its ramifications then attacked the greater problems of railway development and the development of cnal and cement, and similar naturarresources adjacent to' Masterton. The progress league was only needed a few years It infused such vignur and confidence into the public of the place that it was not long before things went forward naturally and at an accelerating speed, all the while right down to the. present time." I fervently agreed with the party who narrated these facts to me, that Masterton sorely needed a revival of some kind at the period of my leav- , ing. Undoubtedly a live progress aa-sociatiorih-not a merely nominal co< cern—was just what was required. I felt that what he had said regarding the utter "helplessness," 1 might term it, of the business people was only too true. However, I, it was all past now, aud 1 am pleased to find that the once "drowsy" Masterton is now a fine city with'a splendid future in store. Next day I completed my tour of the town, a greater pare of this district, under the charge of my friend, the Oldest Inhabitant I visit ; eoal mines' to the westward,"'flqjjr. ; mills to the eastward, woolltn works to the south, and I take a run up the Pongaroa line as far as Short branch 'lines have rendered easy the task ot getting the many small farmers' wool out of the now populously setted valleys along the old Masterton-Castlepoint road. I learn of a lovely watering-place called "Whareama," the attractions of wheh I remember having been lauded even twenty-five years ago, and they tell me it now boasts a population of nearly two thousand people, and that it is called "The Brighton of New Zealand." ( It is a marvellous panorama that 1 view on the third day of my return as I scale a familiar hill to the eastward to recall a vision of olden time. The day is gorgeously fine, the sum - . mer sun ha 3 not yet seared the ver- I dant grass of a mild spring's nurturing, and across a foreground;, of cloaely nestling farms of the-old "ideal" area, I see in the perspective the town of my early hopes—the city of my realisation—aye, beyond. The only things which are the same are the immutable, rugged heights right over to westward, and how thankful I am that their environs have not been desecrated and their beauties despoiled to gratify even progress. Progress has come just the same, and a smiling district, has still its native charm. I am ndt L going back to feverish America. I am staying in progressive Masterton.