THORPE-BATON BRIDGE.

Colonist, Volume XLIX, Issue 12016, 17 August 1907, Page 2

THORPE-BATON BRIDGE.

Sir,— My excuse for not answering "Boxer's" letter before this is, that I live away back. He says that the bridge -will benefit ten settleis, What a lot for the £1600 required to build it ! He gives us to understand that the store carts will be a weekly joy to the Baton settlers, instead of as formerly a monthly joy ; also that it will be good for the Baton mail which was often detained on accoupt of the flooded state of the river. This is all flap-doodle, as it would never pay a store cart to run once a week to. the Baton, and if tne old punt had been kept in a proper state of repair the mail would not have been detained more than four times during the course of a year. As for the travelling public he so proudly boasts, about, well, I suppose he means a few pic-nickers, for r.o travellers go to the Baton this way. As to the Crown land at the back that will be so readily taken up, it is a mass of gloomy gorges and gullies that a man would hardly take as a gift.? "Boxer" goes on to say that I am the man to do the coaxiog . business, and : that I might drjve Sir Joseph Ward to the Wangapeka and get £1000 placed on the Estimates, for a bridge there. Yes, and he might have added that a petition sighed mostly by school children and non-residents would have helped me a" lot, as it did others. When he says that settlers should not condemn public money being spent whether they are interested or not, ho is touching a very big question. I think that all settlers should protest against public money being squandered. Experience has taught some settlers that in the long run those who don't seem at all interested have gotj to pay the piper. — I am, etc, . - ' BOLTER.