Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1938. AN ERRONEOUS DECISION.

Wairarapa Times-Age, 31 October 1938, Page 4

Wairarapa Times-Age MONDAY, OCTOBER 31, 1938. AN ERRONEOUS DECISION.

* WITH the rejection by the council of the Royal Agricultural Society of a proposal that the Royal Show should be centralised in a permanent home in Wellington, parochialism has triumphed for the time being over the interests of the Royal Show and over the much greater interests it is designed to serve. The contention advanced by opponents of the proposal that a Royal Show in Wellington each year would develop into a Wellington provincial fixture obviously runs counter to reason and e'ommon sense. There is no thought or question of attempting to establish in the Wellington metropolitan area a provincial exhibition of live stock. All the requirements of a show of that description are better and more conveniently met at other places than the capital city. If the Wellington provincial area alone had to be considered, the Royal Show might much more conveniently be located in the Manawatu, or in the Wairarapa, after the Rimutaka tunnel has been put through, than in the metropolitan, area. It is not from any parochial, standpoint, but because it is the geographical centre of New Zealand that the capital city ought to be selected as the permanent home of the Royal Show.

Anyone who looks at. the facts without prejudice will he bound to perceive that it is only by the most central location available for the Royal Show that the difficulties and the expense of organising and assembling a representative exhibition of the best Jive stock in the Dominion can be reduced to a minimum. It is true that with the Royal Show thus established, some permanent disability would be imposed on breeders in the southern part of the South Island and in the northern part of the North Island. That disability is lessened little, if at all, however, by making the Royal Show peripatetic. Under that policy, breeders in, for example, Southland and the Waikato are able periodically to have the Royal Show 7 in their own districts, but on other occasions they can be represented at the Royal Show only if they are prepared to bear the cost of having'their stock transported over nearly the whole length of Nev 7 Zealand. Moving the shohv about can reduce the costs and risks of transporting stoclc only in the extent to which it has the effect of discouraging 'entries, and thereby impairing the representative character of the Royal Show.

This last should he the commanding consideration. The w’hole object and purpose of the Royal Show 7 is to bring together representative examples of the best live stock the Dominion can produce and to point the way to Hie attainment of steadily improving standards of breeding in all districts. The show must be fully' representative if it is to serve a. national purpose. It cannot, in the nature of things, be fully representative if it is located at intervals at opposite ends of our long and narrow 7 country. There are- limits to the cost and inconvenience that most breeders are prepared to incur in sending stock to the Royal Show 7 , but if the fixture were located permanently at the geographical centre of the Dominion, its awards would come to represent a hallmark of quality which no really enterprising and successful breeder could afford to ignore.

Looking at the facts from a national standpoint and taking account of the interests of farmers and breeders in all parts of the Dominion, it is clear that the Royal Show 7 can never completely serve its intended purpose until it is established permanently in a central location. So long as it is allotted periodically 'to this or that provincial district, the standing and standards of the Royal Show’ must be lowered in some degree. The adverse vote of the council of the Royal Agricultural Society on this question plainly amounted to a refusal to move forward along the line of true and assured progress.