BEGINNINGS OF AN INDUSTRY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 13836, 25 February 1907, Page 4

BEGINNINGS OF AN INDUSTRY.

The most permanently interesting feature of the speech which, instinct with affection for the lute Mr Thomas Brydono and with appreciation of his ifrorth, was' delivered by Mr John Roberts on Saturday on tlie occasion of the unveiling of the memorial cairn at Totara was certainly contained in the reference to the part Mr lirydoiio'took in tlio initiation of the frozen meat industry in New Zealand. Theve have been those other than Mr Brydone for whom the distinction of having set afoot this industry, which has grown to he 0110 of enormous valuo to the co'loity, lias been claimed. But Mr Roberts, Whoso knowledge of tlio matter is certainly not inferior to that possessed by any other living'witness, unhesitatingly endorses Hie view, which lias been that most generally accepted, that Mr Brydone was the one? individual entitled to the credit of having taken the initial stops tiiiit led to Hio establishment jit New Zealand of the export trade in frozen liieat. ' Mr Brydono wits not absolutely a pioiietr in the trade, for, successful shipments of beef and mutton had been .made .from Australian ports, and Mr Roberts assigns to the late Mr T. S. Mort, of Sydney, the honour of actually founding the frozen meat business. But the difficulties connected with the transport of perishable cargoes halfway across the World were much greater in New Zealand twenty-five years ago than tliey werfe in Australia. Those were the clays in'which the biilk of the trade betwiieii New Zealand and Great Britain was c'arried' in" sailing vessels, aiid it was by, a..sailing, vessel that the first shipment of frozeii meat ftorii Nfew Zealand was despatched from Port Chalmers almost exactly a quarter of a century ago. The directors of the New Zealand and Australian Land Company, sitting in their offices in the Mother Country, 'showed a spirited enterprise in the support which they "gave to Mi' Brydbne's far-seeing .scheme for the transportation of carcases of sheep and lambs iii insulated chambers to the English market, and the Albion Shipping Company and the proprietors "of" the Bell-Coleman refrigerating machinery also deserve to ho remembered in cOiiiiefctlon with the initiation of the industry. But it is certaiil that •-it-was ,to Mr Brydone's enthusiastic belief ill tile potehtialitied of the scheme he advocated and to the persuasiveness and insistence with which lie urged the practicability alid the value of the project uppn his principals at Home that the''establishment of the industry was really due. The service Mr Brydone rendered in this cohrifectihii alone in itself' fuiMiishes a strong reason why Ills name should be held in respectful remenihraiice in New Zealand, inore particularly o.n the part, of the pastoral conimtitlity, but, as air Roberts showed on Saturday, Mr Biydohe was a man of varied interests and of maiiy ideas, whose mark has been indelibly left on more than one important industry in tlio colony..