The Waipa Post. PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY. TUESDAY, APRIL 25, 1911.

Waipa Post, Volume I, Issue 3, 25 April 1911, Page 2

The Waipa Post. PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY. TUESDAY, APRIL 25, 1911.

WE desire to compliment our contemporarjr the "Dominion " on its enterprise in publishing so complete and useful a supplement as that recently issued on "The progress and settlement along the Main Trunk line. No doubt much that is told there of the settlement and progress of the towns and villages along the line will be a revelation to many of the people in Wellington and peiv haps to some in Auckland. There can be no question, but that the progress made along the line of the railway, will read like a fairy tale to those who have hot personally come in contact with it. Even to those who have watched it from the beginning, the development has been simply astounding. And as we read of places like Te Kuiti and Taumarunui, that only the other day were nothing but tiny Maori villages, and now are hustling townships; spending their thousands of pounds in- drainage, water supply, and lighting facilities, we are surprised that such solid progress has\ been made, especially when we\remember the difficulties in the w'ay of advancement and settlement-T-hese, consist chiefly in ; the large blocks ,of land held by the Maoris, and the trouble in dealing with them, so that they may be brought into the market; and the roads —or rather want of them —that.make it so hard for the back blocks settler. When the historian of the 'future comes to"record the riseand progress of New Zealand, a very much larger space will need to be given to the heroic men and women who left civilization and went to carve out homes in the wilderness. But we are digressing. Our purpose was not to write a eulogy of the back blocks settler, much as he deserves it. We meant to call attention to the fact that even a well-informed paper like the "Dominion" may get woefully astray, and when in a supplement such as this, which is supposed to give a clear and impartial account of the progress and settlement along the Main Trunk line, we find that Te Awamutu is dismissed with barely a line; and then is grouped with Hairini and Kihi Kihi as being adjacent to Hamilton. We are more surprised that Te Awamutu has so long put up with this sort of thing, and we are compelled to ask that our city contemporaries should give us fair treatment. Any place whose property valuation has gone up to the extent of nearly £50,000 in the last eighteen months is deserving of more than a line in any adequate review of the district, and we venture to ask for something like a fair statement of fact in reference to the position we fill and the part v/e are playing in the progress of the Waikato. Te Awamutu deserves better treatment than it has received in the past. We have no complaint against the old settlers. They were and are good men and true, but they have been too easily satisfied, and they have not received for themselves nncl the district anything like the help they should have had. We hope that in the future clue regard will be paid to this district and its requirements, and we say it with' all modesty, it will not be through any fault of ours if the district does not receive fair treatment. We should not have drawn attention to the matter if this case had been an isolated

one, but it is not, and therefore we utter .our protest. We are perfectly satisfied that Te Awamutu and surrounding country is, without question, the garden of the Waikato, and in a few years' time will be exporting a much greater quantity of produce than it does to-day. All we desire is that the district should receive the consideration and help to which it is justly entitled, and if the cities desire to help us, as they say, we must neither be- despised nor ignored.