THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, MARCH 21, 1925. RURAL ADVERTISING.

Wairarapa Age, 21 March 1925, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, MARCH 21, 1925. RURAL ADVERTISING.

At the conference of Motor Unions on Tuesday a resolution was passed asking the affiliated Associations to request firms advertising on rural roads to. take away their advertisements, and suggesting that motorists and the public should not support those firms which persist in spoiling the rural landscape. It is possible that there is no other method of controlling the scenery-spoiler than the practical disapproval recommended by the Motor Unions, but the “Press” suggests that if the recommendations were generally acted upon self-interest would probably lead the advertisers to do what consideration for the proprieties will not. In England the public can appeal to the law; the latest English newspapers record the successful prosecution of various people who had erected hoardings on one of the prospects on the Sussex Downs. But the purification of the rural areas is only part of the problem. In fte English prosecution it was apparently found necessary to bring in evidence to establish that the defiled prospect was a landscape. Ugliness in a city is as repellent as ugliness in the countryside, and that this is net generally recognised here is due to the persistence of the old notien that natural beauty is something which the busy city-dweller can find only in rnral remoteness, among the mountains, by tHb rivers, or in the forests. As long ago as 1903 the Municipal Corporations Amendment Act gave power to Councils to regulate, control or prohibit advertising of the kind now so frequently condemned. The action of the Motor Unions encourages the hope that the matter will now be attended to.