TAUPO TOTARA TIMBER CO.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXI, Issue 37, 28 September 1911, Page 6

TAUPO TOTARA TIMBER CO.

(Per Press Association.) Wellington, ’.September 2S. t The Parliamentary Committee sot up to enquire into the petition of the Tuupo Totara 'timber Company for an Order-in-Council to purchase and 'occupy a largo area of native land, and eventually selling it to the Government, resumed to-day. The president of the Rotorua Chamber of Commerce was emphatically of opinion that the ambitions ot tho company v.ere opposed to the interests of the State as well as the district ,concerned. Tho creation oJ such a monopoly as proposed—to buy thirty-ono square miles of land from the natives without competition—was, lie considered, against tile country’s interest.Ho had no objection to the company as such, hut if tho company could /soli its lino with the advantages of the large areas oi land proposed to bo acquired, also the control of hotels and accommodation houses, and means ol transit by land and water, ns well as the actual possession of tho active thermal sights of tho district,- they would no longer he dealing with the company, but with a body of capitalists with a huge monopoly. If the Government agreed to ttio'proposal it would bo a oar tv to side-tracking Rotorua. It was not true that Rotorua opposed tho company’s suggestion on account of the competition of Taupo and Waivaki.