BLOCKING OUR FRONT GATE.

Evening Post, Volume LXXI, Issue 136, 9 June 1906, Page 9

BLOCKING OUR FRONT GATE.

TO THE EDITOB. Sir, — Who ordained that the- front gate of our great city should be blocked by a graving dock? We had a prison foisted on t.o that fine mound wher* should have stood a university. And now this other catastrophe. From tho destructor to Pipitea Point is our front door. Look ahead ten, fifteen, twenty years, and this front door will be all too small for our growing city. Congestion looms "large ahead. Yet with deliberation and* premeditated stupfdity or parochial wisdom some one has blocked lip one of tho^best entrances of our great gateway through which must pass i* ever-increasing volume our commerce with, the world — best in tho sense that it lends itself to direct communication ■Jrith. all the south city without calling upon, the already overfilled roadways between Willis-street and the sea. Why -was this site 6elected, why esteemed suitable? — unless, Indeed, proximity to existing ironworkers was deemed indispensab.e. Just as well throw the Government workshops into Lainbtonquay, where they would certainly be near their ironmongery supplies, and let the traffic find its way around somehow. It is an act of commercial slumming. The dock would have been quite near enough, at Kniwarra or Evans Bay, where room, could have been found in the fullest degree for extensions and all future developments. Now we have two good things spoilt, a great gateway and a. fine dock. There are at least sgvcral good far-seeing men on the Harbour Board. Let them cry halt to the work on thepresent site, and bring a big blessing to future Wellington. I write this from the HILLTOPS. Wellington, 4th Juno. '

Contrasting the life and prospect* of the seaman with thoso of the l.icdm-in, the Sydney Worker asks : "What chanco is there for an Australian mercantile marine? With his advantages iv city and bush, what youth will take, to thfi waters for a livelihood'/ What psucnt will not dissuade him from it if fk« liking reveal itself? It is the duty of those who wish Australia to develop v. 6ea arm as well as a land one to remove tho causes of this deep-seated aversion. Conditions of living at sea will always differ in many respects from conditions on land. But they should not differ, or be allowed to differ, in matters of comfort, decency, and health. They should not be allowed to differ in m*u*rg. of bgitfpsgt~