OUR OYSTER BEDS.

Observer, Volume XVI, Issue 948, 27 February 1897, Page 3

OUR OYSTER BEDS.

Fortunes for Syndicates.

The roving eye of the syndicate-promoter has lighted upon our oyster beds. His patriotic eoul is filled with grief and dismay as he reckons up the wealth that is going to waste there for want of his assistance to divert it into proper channels. At present, the vast unlicensed public are free to help themselves, and the State derives no benefit. But the public don't value what they may have for nothing, and without a State revenue there will be no State regulation of a promising industry.

Ail this can be changed in the twinkling of an eye. And it need not cost the State a single farthing to do it. The philanthropist is here who will undertake the job — never thinking of himself at all. He merely wants a lease of the oyster-beds, and he will pay the Government handsomely for the privilege. Then, having secured this little monopoly — purely for the public benefit, of course — he will approach his friend the foreign capitalist, and money will flow in to employ hundreds of men in exploiting the New Zealand oyster-beds, and to make oysters one of the staple exports of the land.

Of course, there will be an end to free oysterß along the foreshore for picnicking and yachting parties. The oyster beds will have to be fenced in, men will have to be employed to take care of them and keep off intruders, and offendera will have to be prosecuted with the utmost rigour of the law. Equaliy, of course, the public must be prepared to pay a higher price for the succulent bivalve, but that is all in the way of encouraging the enterprise of the syn-dicate-promoter and his friend the foreign capitalist. As for the men who now eke out a living by gathering oysters and bringing them to market — well, they can betake themselves to gathering mussels, pipis, or cockles instead. It may not pay them quite so well, but that's their look-out. The chief consideration is that it will pay handsomely the syndicate-promoter and the capitalist, and that the monopoly in time may pan out into millions for them.

But the project will require to be very skilfnlly and cautiously engineered before it will reach the haven of snccess. There are difficulties in the way — vulgar prejudices and "notions to be overcome for instance. The people have got the idea into their heads that New Zealand belongs to them and not to the syndicates. They have been foolishly taught to believe that they have as much right to the fish in their seas and the oysters on their rocks a3 they have to air and sunshine. In fact, they look upon fish and oysters as forming part of their food supply.

Now, if Buch pestilent notions are not knocked on the head at once, the roseate dreams of the Oyster Syndicate* will be rudely dispelled. The first essential, therefore, to success is to keep the public in the dirk, and the next is to persuade the Government what a fine source of revenue they may develop by leasing the oysterbeds. Once. the scheme is fixed up and the lease has been signed and sealed, the public may scream and howl till they are black in the face. In the meantime, mnm'a the. word.