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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 65

Factories

Factories.

With regard to factories in the County, I of course regard that subject as one of supreme moment. There is no reason why Bruce should not, in addition to its corn and cattle and coal, become a manufacturing County. The County in many things might supply at the least its own wants. We hear sometimes a good deal about the centralising tendencies of railways. That a railway draws people to its neighbourhood is certain. People like to live near a railway and a good road, for by these they are supplied with commodities and conveniences. But that a railway should necessarily cause the massing of a population in towns on the sea-coast of this Colony is not so clear. That men are prone to be collected in these masses in these large towns, and that also in the Australian Colonies, which have no foreign trade, is page 157 admitted; but it is of their own foolishness, and not because of railways. With great manufacturing industries, the results being exported, and a great export trade, we can understand a population being in centres on the coast. But with us this is not so—and indeed, railways can as well draw out of, as draw into, towns. It would be well if they were made the means of doing this more than they do. Great cities have great sorrows. It is better and stronger to fight in line than in column. With a railway in front there is no reason why in Milt in there should not be a pottery and a woollen factory; in Waihola, a boot and shoe factory; a paper mill at Kaitangata, &c.