The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo. THURSDAY, MARCH 19, 1908. THE BAY OF PLENTY TRADE.

Auckland Star, Volume XXXIX, Issue 68, 19 March 1908, Page 4

The Auckland Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News and The Echo.

THURSDAY, MARCH 19, 1908. THE BAY OF PLENTY TRADE.

Tor the etuue that lodta ossictonee, For the wrong that needs reairtence. For the future in the distance, Asui the goatl that tea oaa do.

A certain amount of interest was roused recently in local shipping circles by the news that a line of steamers is to be put on by a Wellington firm to run between Taoxanga and Wellington, and to divert a portion of the Bay of Plenty trade to the South. The enterprising projectors of this scheme are Messxs. Keene and Reid of Wellington, who have lately secured the contract for the erection of gasworks at Tauranga; and their idea is that the steamers that will carry coal from the West Coast to the Bay of Plenty can take back the local exports on their return trip. The project of direct connection with Wellington seems to be very attractive to the people of Tauranga, for when the tenders for the local gasworks were submitted to the Borough Council, that body decided to ■reject an. Auckland: tender and to accept Messrs. Keene and Reid's, because, though less favourable to the town financially, the Wellington offer was coupled " with the proposal to start this new means of communication between the Bay o! Plenty and the South. Messrs. Keene and Reid are leaving for England this month to purchase their gas-making outfit, and also to secure two 800 or 900 ton steamers to open up the Tauranga-Well-ington trade. It will be necessary to collect cargo from a number of outlying ports, but the promoters have sufficient confidence in the future of the Bay country to believe that this enterprise will pay them, while at the same timo it will open a new outlet for the exports of one of the most fertile and productive districts in New Zealand.

So far as the development of the Bay of Plenty and the expansion of its trade are concerned, we welcome any and every attempt to facilitate communication and provide better means of transit between the isolated portions of Auckland and the large markets and centres of population in the South. But there is one remarkable feature about this scheme that deserves a little more attention than it seems to have received. Judging from the opinions expressed by members of the Tauranga Borough Council, when discussing this project, and from a letter recently addressed by a Tauranga resident to the "New Zealand Times," a very strong feeling of antagonism to Auckland appears to prevail in the town and district just now. Apparently the general impression among the good folk of Tauranga is that they have been neglected by Auckland, and that they have never enjoyed the facilities for trade and transport that ought to have been extended to them by the Northern metropolis. As to the comparative lack of communication between Tauranga and Auckland, there is one very obvious comment to be made, and it was made promptly and decisively as soon as ever tho new shipping line began to be talked about here. The manager of the Northern Steamship Company, the local manager of the Union Company, and the president of the Auckland Chamber of Commerce at once publicly stated that Tauranga already has as much communication with Auckland by sea as its trade requires, and that if sufficient inducement offered the local steamship companies would be very pleased to put on extra boats to meet a genuine demand.

It seems to us that this is an unanswerable reply to the complaints of Tauranga. The object of shipping companies is not pure philanthropy, but our experience of them is that they do not often neglect a chance of extending their business. The Union Company and the Northern Company may have no sentimental interest in the growth and progress of Tauranga, but we would be very much surprised to learn that their itinerary or their time-tables have been arranged with regard to anything but the strict requirements of trade. Yet this is precisely what the inhabitants of Tauranga appear to believe. Not only do the Borough Councillors and the leading men of the town speak bitterly of the neglect they have experienced at Auckland's hands, but the letter to the "New Zealand Times," to which we have already referred, deliberately charges the people of Auckland with having obstructed the growth of Tauranga, and denied it the trade facilities that it deserves, through sheer pettyminded parochial jealousy. It is difficult to believe that grown men will make or take an allegation of this sort seriously; and we can only imagine that prolonged brooding over fancied wrongs in the seclusion of that charming but isolated spot has to some extent unbalanced the judgment of our good friends "down the Bay."

We are obliged to the "New Zealand Times" for taking up the cudgels in our defence. Our Wellington contemporary is, of course, in favour of anything that will give Wellington a share of the Northern trade, but it points out that "it is a little unjust to charge Auckland with keeping Tauranga isolated," considering that the roads and railways ought to have been made not by Auckland, but by tha county councils and by Government. But as the"\.Z. Times" further remarks, "it is difficult to believe that Auckland is jealous of Tauranga's progress, and quite impossible to imagine t---t the larger town has ever desianru or aimed at the

smaller, town's destruction. It seems hardly worth our while to rebut so absurd a charge; but we venture to assure the people of Tauranga that if this is their, opinion of Auckland's attitude toward them, they have been grossly misled. It 13 manifestly to Auckland's interest to do anything that can be done to promote the growth of the Bay of Plenty trade, and if Messrs. Keene and Reid, with their 900 ton steamers, succeed in developing Tauranga into a rival able to compete with Auckland on equal terms, not even the ambitious, but supersensitive, inhabitants of "the -Bay" will be better pleased than ourselves.