It will be evident from the figures I have given that the district must ho at least £56,000 a year better off by having its own “extravagance” at its own door. The consideration of all the figures which have come under my notice since I became connected with the Harbour Board, and the working out of the problem suggested by Mr Hoare’s remarks, have brought vividly to my mind the conclusion that few if any of our producing friends in the country have realised the benefit that the harbour works have been to them.
Looking hack upon the low prices and other drawbacks to crops during the last four or five years, had it not been for the shipping facilities —such as they were— there could not have been any possibility of producing grain to pay the cost of raising, and, practically speaking, the district would have raised nothing but wool and sheep. It is to the breakwater that the farming class owes its survival during the years we have passed through. There would have been no flour mills, no oatmeal mills, no nothing, had not the experimental breakwater survived all its scientific opponents and local backbiters. The completion of the present scheme does not seem far off, and it is to be hoped that the present Board will keep up the prestige which the first board’s enterprise and pluck has had the good fortune to inaugurate for succeeding boards to follow.
In concluding, I must not do so with out- thanking Mr Tennent, the board’s secretary, to whose courtesy I am in debted for compiling the figures I have used, and which I have no doubt he will be glad to show to any interested in the subject. I am, &c., W. Moody. Timaru, 22nd August, 1887.
