DROVE COMMERCE TRAIN

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 509, 12 November 1928, Page 13

DROVE COMMERCE TRAIN

PRESIDENT’S EXPERIENCE FUTURE OF THE NORTH Though he enjoyed the sensation j of controlling 80 tons of pulsating ] steel when he drove the Commerce Train, the president of the Chamber of Commerce, Mr. H. T. Merritt, shut his eyes and tried j to imagine he was somewhere else . when the locomotive entered a tunnel. He confessed this at tho Rotary Club's luncheon to-day. The idea of the trip, he said, had been suggested by Mr. Collins, secretary of the Department of Industries and Commerce. Officers of the Railway Department had gone out of their way to make the trip a great success. One of the sights of the journey was Arapuni, which seemed to be the most magnificent spectacle of moving waters in the world. Mr. Merritt’s own opinion was that the dam was perfectly safe, and after an investigation he got an impression that not even an earthquake would shift it. Mr. Furkert had pointed out that no one paid much attention to the man who said the world was coming to an end. In the engineer’s opinion, the prophet of tho fall of Arapuni was in much the same position as the other one. FUTURE OF NORTH Tho tremendous hospitality received all along the route, and the excellent service of the railway people, had made the trip one of the most pleasant he had ever had. “After touring the North I felt that one of these days it is going to carry the greatest population of any part of New Zealand,” he said. There was no doubt that closer settlement was necessary; some farms were falling back simply because the Holders were unable to cultivate all the land. Mr. Merritt said he saw very little evidence of the “bankrupt farmer” he had been hearing so much about, and he did not suppose the number of failures was greater in the country than in the city. There seemed to be greater signs of distress in the city than in the country.