WAKE UP SOUTH CANTERBURY!

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20927, 5 January 1938, Page 5

WAKE UP SOUTH CANTERBURY!

To the Editor of “ The Timaru Herald Sir,—ln your columns of a day

two ago you published a stirring letter from one writer signing himself “Resident.” I wish to congratulate him on his foresight. But I would go one further than that and say: "Wake Up South Canterbury.” All the preliminaries have been attended to, and the stage is set for the great day, Tuesday next at Temuka, when the cream suppliers of South Canterbury meet the Agricultural Commission. With the request that their district be re-zoned and that the cream suppliers of our district be given a chance to manage their own affairs without the aid of Mid-Canterbury. “Resident,” in his letter has striven to point out that this matter really concerns all residents and ratepayers of South Canterbury. Soon ratepayers will be asked to back the bill for extensive harbour improvements. These are very necessary, because often for lack of depth of water, vessels cannot call at our port to load and, and then produce for overseas has to be railed past our port to Lyttelton, with the loss of revenue to our port. When the harbour improvements become an accomplished fact, then we will need all the produce possible loaded here, to keep down the harbour rate. So it is a case of "wake up South Canterbury.” We must try to produce more exportable stuff and so make our port more important, and if the dairy industry is encouraged, in this line alone, our output of butter and cheese could be doubled or even trebled. On the other hand, if the present unsatisfactory state of affairs is allowed to continue, the butter output of our district will dwindle to half its present tonnage. Dairymen must be encouraged to produce more. They will never do this unless they arc brought back to a contented, satisfied state of mind. They are British, therefore they object to be forced or driven like so many sheep or cattle. They must be given an intelligent interest in their own affairs, and the dairy industry in our midst will not go back. To return to the meeting at Temuka. this should be the greatest day in South Canterbury’s history, since that great day many years ago, when Mr Burnett organised a great meeting at Tekapo. At that meeting South Canterbury was given the right to develop its own electricity. True, small minds crushed the scheme to the ever lasting loss cf our district. What a different tale would be told to-day had that fine scheme gone through. Now we are tied up to an enormous white elephant Waitaki, 50 years before its time, and the price of juice is too dear to be useful. I sincerely hope that all local bodies in South Canterbury will be represented at Tuesday’s meeting, and thus help us to get our rightful license to manufacture butter in the district from Waitaki to the Rangitata. Once the Commission grants our request T am satisfied the cream suppliers of South Canterbury are wide enough awake to-day, to back their own factory in Timaru. But it is every resident’s business to back us up. So. wake up South Canterbury, and we will pull it through.—l am, etc., C. W. MARKHAM, Fairview, January 3.