SMALL GRAZING RUNS

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10682, 31 July 1912, Page 5

SMALL GRAZING RUNS

A SETTLER'S PROTEST. M.r 'R. Jr.idd, settler, of Ihuraua Valfey, writer.' as follows to the Wairarapa Age:— "Having read the report of ai deputatioaii waiting on the Prime Minister re smal). grazing runs .at Ihu•ra.ua, I would like to make a few remarks concerning statement©, or rather mis-statements, made by Mr D. McGregor, Why he ishould go to Wellington and endeavour to injure a rich and fertile district beats my comprehensioaK Mr McGregor says he is intimat-'y acquainted with the hnving ridden through it froqiiG'ntly. In answer to a query from Mr Buchanan that you could not ride through much of it, he said, ."No,. tbisre is only a surveyor's track." This statement is utterly misleading, as there is a Rood metalled road within a mile of cither of the Ihuraua properties. He also stated that people wanting to go over tho line of road suggested by the Government, for the development of the district, at the present time, would have to swim for it. He was nob fair cmough to Gay that we were experiencing at the time one. of the heaviest floods known in the Wairarapa for twenty years, and that the same thing could be srid of scores of other roads, including some of the main roads. In reply to hie statement that not a single load of metal could be got ' ~io district for love or money, I may say that tjhere is « good metal pit within one mile of the nearest point of the property; hut in fairness I may state that it is 2J mile* from the end of the present metalllxl read, and about 3i miles from the land by road. He also stated that dairying had been tried in the district, and' hlad proved a •complete failure. Now, Sir, I was one of tho promoters of the dairying there, which we canned on for nine years, sueeensiful'iy to those of us who stuck to it, and so far as I know, only one supplied gave it up through 'bad roads. I say emphatically uhat it was not discontinued through dairying being a complete fa'ihiire, as Mr •MoGiregor would like to make out. If 'he had said that the settlers' had ■made sufficient [money, or in other 'words, had become so prosperous that they wouldn't be bothered with cows, 'he would have been nearer the-mark. It was also stated that these rune, twenty • miles from any centre. 'Now, I must apologfes, for not qm'te snowing what "cenW- tiieahs, as the ydiistance is about eight miles firom Manganxahoe railway station, and "twelve mi*>s from Eketahuna,, a thriving township with one ol tv>; e Des t equipped buttter lactone In New Zealand." :

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