South Canterbury Times. SATURDAY, MAY 30, 1885

South Canterbury Times, Issue 3790, 30 May 1885, Page 2

South Canterbury Times. SATURDAY, MAY 30, 1885

The best way out of the gas difficulty is assuredly that proposed by Or Sutter, viz., a forced sale of the plant to the Council. We are perfectly weary, as everyone must be, of proposals to try to obtain from the Gas Company any concession whatever. The company see their way to pocket a fat dividend at every annual meeting so long as things remain as they are, and it is too much to expect that for the sake of the community they will forego these advantages. In short, the company will not lower either the price of their commodity, or the rate of supply to the town. It has been mentioned that the company snaps its fingers at the Corporation, and says it would do even better without the patronage of the latter than with it. Be it so. We do not attach much importance to braggadocio like this. We would suggest that the Council forthwith offer the Company a price for supplying the town. Should the Company refuse, it would be for the Council a self-protective course, whether to adopt Or Sutter’s suggestion and compel the company to sell, to erect a Corporation gasworks, or to light the town with kerosene. That the Council and the ratepayers should continue any longer to be subject to the company is intolerable, and for the Council to appeal to the Company time after time is lowering to its own dignity and entirely ineffective.

We are pleased to see that the Government and the Chambers of Commerce of this colony are taking the South Sea Island trade question vigorously in hand. When Sir J Vogel picked the subject out of the oblivion into which it bad fallen, and where it was sinking out of sight altogether, of course the knowing ones,of whom there were several in the House, made merry at his expense, and cracked what they thought wonderful jukes about his scheme, while a number of other persons predicted that the sanguine ideas of the Colonial Treasurer would never be rea-

Used. There was nothing in the islands to attract trade, they said. Now all this is going to be seen. We can assure these gentlemen that the idea of opening np a profitable trade with these islands is by no means a new one. All who have visited the islands, examined them and become acquainted with their actual resources—years ago have predicted for them asplendid future. If these obsevers are not all wrong in their judgment, that future is now dawning ; and, thanks to' the enterprise of the Treasurer, New Zealand is the first of the Australasian communities to establish direct mail communication with them, and thus virtually to take the lead and acquire paramount influence among them. We trust the mercantile cornmnnity nil over the colony will enter into this matter and combine and strengthen the bands of the Government. This brings to our mind the declining state of some Chambers of Commerce. In Auckland, Christchurch, and Dunedin these bodies are active and are becoming powerful. We, in Timaru, in the darkest days, have never lost faith in the future of the place, but our Chamber of Commerce, which ought to lend the way in enterprise, keep up the mercantile heart of the cornmnnity and keep the place well before the world's eye—is a phantom. It exists only in name. Nobody ever goes to meetings and hardly anybody ever pays bis subscription, and the thing is practically moribund. We respectfully commend these truths to the consideration of all whom it may concern.