The Manawatu Daily Times. The Oldest Manawatu Journal. Published Every Morning. MONDAY, APRIL 20, 19... [kua rāpopototia]
Manawatu Times, Rōrahi XXVII, Putanga 7690, 20 Paengawhāwhā 1903, Page 2
Mō tēnei niupepa
The Manawatu Daily Times. The Oldest Manawatu Journal. Published Every Morning. MONDAY, APRIL 20, 1908.
In reference to a paragraph which appeared in our issue Government of Saturday, Mr W. R. Blackmail. Douglas, Inspector of Machinery, writes to say that he did inspect our gasengine on 12th ult., and that we were wrong in asserting that he had not done so. We very gladly put Mr Douglas right with the world in regard to this matter, but we should like to ask him if he does not think it would have been a courteous and proper thing for him to have sought the permission of some responsible person in this office before he entered upon our premises for any purpose whatsoever, There was a time when an Englishman's house was his castle,. but in these days-—when Government inspectors are so numerous that if they ■ were clothed in luminous paint one wouldn't know the night from the day—nothing is private apparently and nothing sacred. • The farcical capacity of an inspector of gas-engines is obvious, so obvious that it is no wonder that Mr Douglas merely peeped into our office, wrote down on a piece of paper "inspected" and then went away. The next thing we remember getting ia a bill for half-a-crown inspection fee. If it had been necessary to inspect our gas-engine, and if Mr Douglas had been in deadly earnest about the job, he would have called out all hands and put the dreadful motor into full-running order. Thus and thus only could he have ascertained whether she was in a safe and reliable condition or not. Instead qI that, he seems .to have cast a cold, perfunctory eye 'on the handy apparatus'which'helps us to enlighten humanity, and came avy&y to wean us from an all too infrequent tw;o-and-six. The other day when jfojs gas-engine Ayas in the tantrums and'tiusy breaking things, and was only just ,a shade off ghediling her fly-wheel into space, we observed' 119 ; Mr Douglas about the premises. : That >ya# & $ime when 'we might have made sqni£ use pf him and would not haye begrudged him the. price of thirty copies of the Manawatu Daily Times, and perhaps the
equivalent of a totalisator ticket to boot. But for him to come in at the tail of the hunt and charge the aforesaid sum for merely looking at what our very excellent friend Mr Martin had contrived in the way of mending ns, is merely to add aggravation to exasperation. We aro in a comparitivoly small way, and a few pounds a year for " inspections " of one kind or another can be—as our readers will observe—borne with chastened resignation. But when tho bulk of people realise that the larger a man's operations are the greater he is taxed to maintain an army of men who have no more serious employment than Mr Douglas, they will find no difficulty in realising what a great aid and impetus to the "promotion of industrial enterprises" in this colony the Seddon Government's policy is.
