OPEN LETTER.

Waipawa Mail, Volume XXXVII, Issue 7923, 25 August 1917, Page 3

OPEN LETTER.

TO OTANE TOWN BOARD. To Chairman and Members of Otane Town Board: Dear venerable and most respected fathers, —I would beg to remind ypu once again, after a lapse of years, that in the year 1 B.W. (before the war) a petition was presented to you by local shopkeepers, asking you in your great wisdom to place a poll-tax on the hawkers from Napier who were coming here selling their goods, in some cases on Wednesday afternoon, when we were forced to close. We received a reply that a by-law to that effect would be brought forward. We heard that.by-laws from Dunedin, Wellington, Auckland, and divers other cities were procured and handed to each individual councillor, who was to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them, and that a meeting would be called to have the same printed, etc., and then—Oh! fathers, a dead silence for three years. As our worthy chairman is unfortunately a shopkeeper he must keep silent or be accused of furthering his own interests. Now geneltmen, Buck up! Wake up! and give us a fair deal. We placed you in your positions to look after the interests of the town. Are you doing it ? Is it to the interest of the town that £IOO goes out every quarter, as one of the Napier hawkers told a certain individual here.—Yours respectfully, in hope, faith, hut uncertainty, WALTER MALENOIR, Otane, August 25th, 1917.