THE TELEPHONE IN THE COUNTRY.

Press, Volume LXII, Issue 12502, 25 May 1906, Page 6

THE TELEPHONE IN THE COUNTRY.

Mr Rider Haggard liae hit upon a use for the telephone which is practioally on tho line of suggestions made frequently in these columns. Speaking recently on the subject of rural depopulation in England, he eaid that when travelling through America as the British Government's Special Commissioner, he was told by the Secretary for Agriculture that in several districte the exodus from the country to the towns

had been successfully stopped by fixing ■a. telephone in every house. Mr Haggard, therefore, suggested that ft might be tvell to apply this system to English village and farm life, and thus help to do away with the isolation that is, no doubt, one of ite drawbacks in the eyes of many young people. It cannot be assumed that because the idea has worked well in America, it would be equally beneficial in England. The loneliness of life on a farm in one of the thinly-populated Western States is beyond anything that the average email farmer or labourer in England ever dreamed of, and the wider—not necessarily deeper—sympathies of the American probably make communication with his fellow-men a me.tter of greater importance to him than it ia to the English country-dweller. Anything, therefore, which assists to dispel the monotony, and enables a man to feel that he is not cut off from all communication with his neighbours, should tend to keep him on the land. This useful function can, in a degree, be fulfilled by the telephone. Here in New Zealand the same conditions operate to make life in the remote back country unendurable to anyone whose . interests are not wholly centred in his home and land. Bad roads, heavy bush, and rough mountainous country, to say nothing of dangerous rivers, may isolate a eettiler in New Zealand more effectually than leagues of snow-bound wastes in America, and it is this that prevents many a man striking out iato the back-blooks, and compels some of those who have experienced life beyond the borders of established settlement to return to the towns. It is difficult for Ohrisfchurch resident to regard the telephone at present with much pleasure. But to a man buried in the bush country, separated from the nearest settlement, perhaps from the nearest settler, by miles of impassable roads, the telephone must bo a boon indeed. It ie on this account that we nave repeatedly urged the Poet end Telegraph Department to reduce to a minimum the cost of telephonio communication, in these out-of-the-way parts. The charge for a Government line, is now prohibitive in numbers of oases where a cheaper line and lower charges would make it possible for an out-back settler to defy the isolating effecte of bad roads and distance. A good many cheap private lines axe being constructed in the North Island, and even the Maoris are erecting private telephone lines. But in the interest* of settlement the Government should take the matter up. Good roads are, of course, the prime necessity, but the cost of efficient "bush telephones" would be so trifling that it need not retard the completion of the more important work.