A HOPEFUL INVENTOR.
MAYOR'S AID SOUGHT. FULLY STOCKED FARM WANTED. The ingenuous tone of a tetter addressed to the Mayor caused some amusement at a meeting of the Newmarket Borough Council last evening. . The letter dealt with the erection of a safety device at railway crossings, but the writer did not come directly to the point. "You will no doubt think it rather strange." he began, "that I am a farm worker, just keeping from starvation and, feeding three children and a wife o?j £3 , a week, paying lOd per lb. for meat, and living on a dairy farm and paying Is lid for butter, and so on, not mentioning six. and a-lialf days' work a week—l 4 hours - a day—and scrambling a garden on tho other half day." , Tho writer now turned to tho real sub-. ject of his letter, stating that he had a , device for automatically closing and open- -• ing crossing gates while a train passed. "As you appear to bo a man like my- ~ self with no friends in Parliament, you might help," he added. He explained th*c his reason for writing to the Mayor was -, that he had previously submitted a device for preventing trains from running into slips to the Railway Department, - and after being referred to tho "everlasting committee" had been informed that: the device would be too costly to erect. It was the concluding portion of the. letter that caused most amusement. "If . the device worked, it read, "I would want paying in a lump sum. I only want enough to get a farm of my own, and a few pounds to have at the back of me. If the Government gives me a farm fully stocked, and, of course, a little ready cash, they could take the patent and use it where thev liked." The letter was received.
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Bibliographic details
New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19101, 20 August 1925, Page 10
Word Count
307A HOPEFUL INVENTOR. New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 19101, 20 August 1925, Page 10
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