KAIHU CLIPPINGS

Wairoa Bell, Volume V, Issue 206, 14 July 1893, Page 8

KAIHU CLIPPINGS

[By Old Kiihu.] The Gum Commission has been and gone and it strifes as very strange that none

of those ‘ oppressed ’ diggers that your contemporary tells us about came before it, and as very bad taste, to say the least of it, for two storekeeper., to come up and swear to anything and everything calculated to injure their trade rivals. Considering that Paddy the storekeeper had an hour at Sunday School on the day before the sitting of the Commission he made an awful mess of his evidence. It was highly diverting- to the spectators to see him look up to (that reporter) far a tip when fairly cornered by Dr. Giles. ITe was brought to curse and if he did not altogether bless he went very near it. I was fairly astonished when I saw the report of the last afternoon’s sitting of the Commission in a local paper, Tkeevidcuce is contorted, garbled and twisted to such an extent that it gives altogether a different impression to that produced by the witness. Anything that did not suit was carefully omitted —just compare these reports with those in the Herald or Star. One thing that may not be generally known is that the proprietor of your contemporary is also a Storekeeper and has letters a foot high over his door, ‘ Highest prices given for gum,’ and though he is so anxious to pose as the friend of the gumdiggers he is no favorite among them, as they say he has not bought ten pounds worth of gum for the past two months—hence his bitter hostility to his trade opponents ; in fact, for some weeks past he has given us a contemptible exhi bition of trade jealousy and personal spite. I see the bakers, too, have incurred the displeasure of a local paper. Well I must say bread is high, but it is not altogether the bakers’ fault—long credits and bad debts have to be made up, and people who do pay have to pay for those who don’t. Why “ they say ” a landlord in the district owes a large amount for bread and if the tenant stops the rent in part payment he is threatened with eviction. During the Gum 'inquiry they say a certain gentleman resident in the township “ went for” Mitchelson and Co. iu general and the Flaxmill Store in particular. The gentleman evidently has not forgotten that little affair in the Hall “ after drill.” A rumour was current in Kaihu last week that a local candidate for the Bay seat was about to withdraw from the contest. I don’t think it myself. Tie will go for that seat as a hull goes for the head light of a locomotive, and with about the same result (must have our little joke, you know).