A Good Time Ahead

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 18900, 22 December 1923, Page 24 (Supplement)

A Good Time Ahead

Inter-Dependence of Town and Country | Civic Patriotism Essential. j By \v. BROWN, President of the Wanganui Chamber of Commerce. . The recent wool sales have fully established ■ [ the fact that our crossbred wools are now in great demand, and with the call for cheaper clothing in the consuming centres the tendency is to ensure more stable prices. Dairy produce is still commanding high and Meat, whilst not up to the rates paid at the opening of last season, is such as to ensure good return io growers. All those factors together with the apparent plentitude of money to be found in the Dominion for all legitimate enterprises, arc themselves indicative of • A GOOD TIME AHEAD and wo ran look forward io the coming year with more than ordinary expectations. Aller years of thought and work, our Harbour Board is now approaching its objective. I and we stand, as it were, on the brink of the J biggest development Wanganui has yet exj pericneed, one that 1 am afraid many of our j business people do not fully realise, or we I should see them taking much more interest in the many matters bearing on this particular phrase of our civic life. We need now to take to heart the advice given to us many years ago, by the late Mr Seddon, when referring to the lack of road facilities, he said we had been standing with • our faces where our backs ought to have been, land we must now turn rounfl and see that our back country is properly roaded, and I that we make our main consideration every ' thing conducive to the well-being of our farmers, for as a town we are altogether dependent on our country products. We must ■ concentrate on the completion of the Parapara Road, and dispose of this long-standing i work, and so make the big area of country i i in the Waimarino district accessible, and en- I i able this volume of trade to be brought to its natural outlet, the Port of Wanganui. We I need to be ever alert to HELP OUR BACK COUNTRY SETTLERS in the many hardships they have to encounter. ! I in any reading schemes they have on hand, ■ (and let them have our sympathetic assistance i in any movement making for their greater 1 , comfort. We are so interdependent that ■anything making for their greater prosperity : lis speedily reflected in our town life. There ’ ■is nothing wanting, but our own lack of I initiative and concentration on these matters, ; I to prevent us from making Wanganui one of . | the big business centres of the Dominion. ■' With all this, let us ever remember “that a ! cold mat rialist ic, aim in business and indus-! : try and nothing more will always lead to . trouble, for it means the setting up of a very ' j low standard of morality, which in time would i • affect everybody. As long as industrial life I was expressed in terms of material values, '• then a community would not get very far in ■ solving any of the social and economic probI lems. A community could only be weighed ! up in terms of the standard of its people, and ( not in terms of material values, although such i were significant and important.’ 1