The Gisborne Times. PUBLISHED DAILY SATURDAY. REMEMBER 3, 1927.

Gisborne Times, Volume LXVI, Issue 10450, 3 December 1927, Page 8

The Gisborne Times. PUBLISHED DAILY SATURDAY. REMEMBER 3, 1927.

THE FARMER, AND THE MAIN HIGHWAY. -) ’

It is generally supposed that the farming class was intended to gain most as a result of the decision to swell the Main Highways Fund by tho bulk of the receipts from the new petrol tax. The Christchurch Press, however, doubts if the farmer will laid himself' under any .debt to The Government in the matter. “There is,” it says, “no very definite indication that the farmer, directly or indirectly, is going to reap more advantage than anyone else. For the main highway is far less the former’s road than is the local highway, good or bad> as. it. may be.” What that journal is getting at is tiiis: that there is no guarantee that the new tax will lie. of much assistance in providing further funds for secondary highways. That, of course, will be a matter for the Main Highways Board. It is no doubt true that good local roads benefit farmers to a much larger extent than good main highways in most districts, but, on the other hand, the farmer cannot do without good main highways in districts which lack railway facilities any more than he can do without good secondary roads. The farmer cannot possibly lose by the imposition of the petrol tax. In fact, lie should prove a distinct gainer. If motor traffic had not br-eu called, upon to pay more towards the upkeep of the main, highways, it would assuredly have meant that county councils (or, in other words, the farmers) would soon have felt in, much greater degree the increasing burden of. their share of the cost of improving and maintaining .actions or suc-h thoroughfares within their Boundaries. Whilst the farmer will not, therefore, be the chief gainer as a user of main highways the new tax should eventually assist to.lighten the demands noon his pocket for funds to keep such thoroughfares in a high state of repair. Whether or not a further contention by our southern contemporary is. correct, that too much inonev i-s being expended on main highways and not enough on the secondary roads of tin's Dominion, is quite another point. It says that the polity of '■•oncentrathig on the development of main highways is beginning to he modified in the United States, and that organisations are springing up for the purpose of. re-directing attention to the national importance of the secondary roads and other,s ! 'of much lower rank in that great country. That may well he the case in the United States, but in (this Dominion both main and secondary highways are badly needed and, if the main users in each instance are compelled to do most in the direction of footing the hill, no serious complaint can justifiably arise.