WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Auckland Star, Issue LVII, 1 March 1926, Page 10

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

« BUSES AND TRAMS. 4

THE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE. (From Our Special Correspondent.) WELLINGTON, Saturday. The favourale weather of the last fortnight has enabled rapid progress to be made with the bitumen paving which is being laid down on several of the suburban roads running out of Wellington. It is too early yet to say what regulations will have to be enforced to restrict heavy traffic on these thoroughfares, but it is certain that the hard, smooth surfaces are going to substantially increase the large number of motor vehicles making use of them. The local authorities that happen to be concerned in trams and ferries are urging the Government to save their investments from destruction, and the Prime Minister, doubtless with a thought for the railways, seems disposed to help them to the best of his ability; but accumulating evidence brought from overseas suggests that the railless vehicle is winning its way to the front everywhere. Only yesterday Mr. H. W. Lawrence, of the Chemical Laboratory at Johnsonville, who has just returned from a trip abroad, in the course of an interview stated that motor buses were rapidly supplanting tram services in England, and that numbers of municipalities and companies there were actually tearing up their rails to make room for the new order. It looks as if the day were not far distant when Wellington will have to signal its submission to the inevitable in the same fashion. The Question of Sites. A visit to Palmerston North and Marton yesterday in the wake of the official party of inspection made it abundantly plain that while these two self-conscious cities are proclaiming their renunciation of all parochialism in the selection -of a site for the proposed Agricultural College, each is praying desperately that the favours of the gods may not fall upon the other. Palmerston North declares it does not care two straws, so far as it is concerned itself, whether the college is erected at its own back door or on the top of Mount Egmont; but on broad, national grounds it would be deeply grieved to see the institution established in the utterly unsuitable environment of Marton. Its spokesman shuddered at the mere possibility of such a catastrophe. Marton, on the other hand, while emulating the disinterested attitude of its neighbour and deprecating any sort of favour in connection with the matter, feels bound to let it be known that if the college were erected in the neighbourhood of Palmerston North the success of the scheme would be very gravely imperilled. In these circumstances it is not, surprising that the good people of Taihape are putting in a claim for the distinction which both Palmereton North and Marton are ready to renounce for themselves.

Dairy Board. At its meeting yesterday the Dairy Board adopted a statement of its policy in anticipation of its assumption of "absolute control" of exported dairy produce on August 1. This statement will have been distributed through the agency of the Press Association before this, but its first paragraph may be quoted as conveying, the tenor of the board's policy. "The board."' it runs, "has decided to exercise control of sales of all dairy produce exported to Great Britain and North America as from August 1 next. To do this satisfactorily it was necessary to assume absolute control under the terms of the Dairy Produce Export Control Board Act. A system of service is aimed at. not monopoly for priceraising purposes." This looks as if the board had spoken its last word on the question of control and that further protests from the opponents of the scheme would be futile. But the champions of free-marketing have declared their intention to continue their activities and there is plenty of evidence of increasing sympathy with their cause. It is being urged to-day that with dairy produce subject to absolute control any other product of the farmers' labour may be placed in the same position :in ( ] ultimately become the sheer plaything of a Communistic Government. So far the Prime Minister, upon whom the League relied, has made no move.