KAIAPOI WORKING MEN'S CLUB.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 34, 17 March 1914, Page 4 (Supplement)

KAIAPOI WORKING MEN'S CLUB.

No account of Kaiapoi could be complete without a reference to its Working Men's Club and Mutual Society of Arts. It has no equal in New Zealand, and Englishmen say "that save in the very large towns it has few rivals there. The membership is somewhat over 600, and is growing steadily. Its garden is very bright with flowers, and old trees shelter its wellkept lawn. The buildings themselves are modern, of brick faced with stone, and include a fine circulating library of fiction, kept on the latest system of numbering each volume and a cabinet index; a billiard room with three tables; card rooms, social rooms, ap. up-to-date reading room, a miniature rifle range at the back, and a bowling green with plenty of room to spare being-prepared at the back. The whSle place is kept most scrupulously clean, and under the strictest of supervision. As figures usually convey some idea of relative prosperity, it may be stated that the last year's balancesheet sets down the assets at £3164 7/6. The borough's band rotunda is opposite the doors, and those who go to the town should make sure of seeing what seems to be its best-kept building.

river with a schooner called the "Pryden Lass," of Nelson, an 80-toh craft. And that was about 35 years ago. Mr Sims prospered, and there came the schooner Falcon, and the Jessie, a topsail schooner from the Thames —she was wrecked. Mr Sims went on to tell of the griev-

timber, all coming up the river. Not much coal was dealt with, as the bar will not allow of enough being carried at one time between the port of shipping on the West Coast and the home port to make the trade worth while. The sheep trade grows up stead-< 1 ily, and runs from 45,000 to 65,000