A NEW LICENSE GRANTED.

New Zealand Illustrated Sporting & Dramatic Review, Volume XVI, Issue 957, 9 July 1908, Page 21

A NEW LICENSE GRANTED.

At the adjourned meeting of the Westland Licensing Committee last week, an application for a new hotel called the Dominion was granted on the casting vote of the chairman. According to applicant’s counsel, the hotel is up-to-date in every respects. The application was adjourned from the annual meeting for the presence of an absent member, and on that occasion the Magistrate refused to adjudicate owing to certain allegations appearing in local newspapers, charging him with being an interested party. In delivering judgment the Magistrate reviewed the position at length, and stated that having traced the source of the allegations against him he could afford to ignore them, and now redord v his vote, and > thus give effect to the wishes of the large majority of electors who at the -last local option poll voted for continuance of the existing number of licenses. Granting the application means

that Hokitika, with a population of 2240, now has eighteen licensed houses. It is probable some objectors will apply to the Supreme Court to quash the decision. * * * *

HOP-GROWERS GO TO NEW ZEALAND.

Mr John James Bates, one of the best-known hop-growers in Kent, told a Press representative in April last why he is emigrating to New Zealand after trying for 33 years to make hop-growing pay. “ Like many other experienced growers,’ ’he said, “ I have been living on hopes for a good many years. I cannot live on hopes any longer; so I am going to try sheep farming in New Zealand.

“ If I give a good report of that, I know at least seven other families at Kent who will follow me there. You can depend on it that if we do well, the eight families will be followed by a great many more.” Mr Bates is a typical Kent farmer, of stalwart build, and, considering his long experience, he is still comparatively a young man. He was the first to grow in the Cranbrook district, the best part of the Weald of ent.

My farm included twenty acres of hops. Fruit and some pasture lands are the only things that have paid. Hops, the most important of all, have proved an absolute failure, owing entirely to the unrestricted imports of the foreign article.

“ During the last twenty-five years I have only had three profitable crops of hops, and you cannot live on a paying year once in every eight.

“ You cannot properly grow and pick hops under £4 5 to £5O an acre. We aim here at a crop of a ton to the acre, and generally get less. Supposing we get a ton, and have to sell at 40s per hundred-weight, that gives us £4O an acre.

“ Such a crop would cost quite £5O an acre. Therefore with such an excellent crop we lose £lO an acre, and that is why I am thoroughly tired of it.

“ I am taking my family to New Zealand to start work afresh. A local auctioneer has just realised my plant, and I leave England in a few months. I had to sell 14,000 hop poles at 2s a hundred. They cost

me £1 a hundred, and are worth 10s to 12s secondhand. My plant is worth at least £3OO, and it realised about £lOO. That shows how anxious growers are to buy plant.”