AN AUCKLAND GROWL.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXVI, Issue 5199, 13 February 1904, Page 7

AN AUCKLAND GROWL.

Dr B. H. Bakewell writes:—Was it Horace or Virgil who said to the husbandmen of his day: “0 fortunati uimiium! sua si,bona uorintt?” Anyhow, it is clear that the wiitor never farmed in the “roadless North” of New Zealand. But I would apply the same remark to yon WoKingbomaiis. You have a gloriouls climate, but you don’t know when you aro well off. \ou are going to have electric trams; do you know what that means? It means a most luncomfort aliio, dangerous, ndiSy caravan on wheels, flying through the streets at the rate of twenty to forty miles an hour, with a hideous noise, and raising a cloud of dust. It me oils tlimb you have no room to fiffc, and that when you want to get out or got into 0110 of tho cars, you have to squeeze through a wilderness of legs, sticks and umbrellas. It means that when, once the brake fails, as it did in tho Kingland accident, or tho driver loses Ins head, you must go down the hills at a rate of speed which is increased with every yard yep travel, and must end in a catastrophe. You have horse cars now. Why not be contented with improving thorn? They are queer little things, evidently natives of Now Zealand, and rock like a baby’s cradle, or a ship in a heavy sea. In fact, when I travel in one I am always expecting to hear a. feeble voice crying, “Bring me a basin, steward.” Bub "you might have other cars like the Auckland horse cars. Why 'go in for electric trams P You displace an Indtasbry which employs local labour, for one which has all its cars and its machinery, and tho chief parts of its workers imported from America. When the electric cars were introduced, all the large livery 6tables in Auckland sold off their horses, and now, what with bicycles and tramcars and motorcars, you hardly see auyoiie on horseback, except tho butchers’ hoys. If you had the experience I have had during the past eighteen months of noisy cars running from 7 a.m. to 11 or 12 p.m. ,and all Sunday, too, except during two or three hours, you would never give up tho quiet of your streets to' tho thrice accursed electric tram. As this letter, if published, must roach Auckland, you must pardon me for finishing it up in a proper Auckland stylo, by saying that your city, fattening like a leech on tho blood it sucks from the whollo colony, is improving every time 1 visit it. But its soil is watered by tho tears of the oppressed and 1 down-trodden thousands who contribute out of their bard-won earnings to the luxurious palaces in which their tyrants are lodged.