The Hawaiian gazette., 1889-01-08
THE pUNCHBowL ROAD AGAIN.

/ une keeping IN SOod repair CI 81 I'LL
portant thoroughfare as Beretania
street should take precedence of the
road up Punchbowl. We presume
that the Beretania street work is al
ready provided for. That street is
now in as good condition as its aver
age state for the past five years.
With the large amount of traffic upon
it, it can never be kept in good con-
dition by the use of soft stone. 1t
requires the same hard macadam
which King street is now receiving
as fast as the little engine can haul
it. We do not know the Govern
ment's intentions, but judging from
the many miles of finished road it
has newly created in this district
during the past year, we presume
that Beretania street will receive
similar attention as soon as the re-
quisite material can be supplied.
That is question of time and not of
money. The same remarks apply to
other public work of similar char
acter.
We think the Bulletin would hard
ly be willing to carry out to its logi-
cal results, the assumption that all
necessaries must be satisfied before
luxuries are INDUCED in. Neither
this Government nor our private
citizens ever have or ever can post
pone all luxuries until necessaries
are supplied If they did, no luxur-
les would ever be supplied. What is
the Band but a luxury? The lofty,
spacious rooms of the Government
house are largely luxuries. The
Palace is a luxury that cost some
100000, and ever so much more to
keep up. Kapiolani Park, Thomas
Square and Emma Square are pure
luxuries, costing more annually to
maintain than the entire cost of the
road up Punchbowl Meantime the
town has plenty of disreputable
sidewalks, unopened streets, and
streets to be widened, graded and
macadamized. 1t always will have
more or less of them. There will al
ways be large number of things
crying for money, of the sort which
the Bulletin calls necessaries. We
shall never see the time when there
are no roads which need macadam-
izing, or bridges to be built or re-
paired for the convenience and safety
of business traffic, or school houses,
court houses and jails to be con-
structed, or rotting wharves to be
renewed. So to carry out logically
the Bulletins position, all expendi-
lures on Band, Palace, Squares and
fifty other matters of luxury, should
be cut off, and kept cut of.
Now this kind of talk is not rea-
sonable or tenable. We have got to
use common sense, and allow our
selves a great many things that con-
tribute to the cheer of body and
mind, even though we are under no
absolute or even urgent necessity for
possessing them. In fact, outside of
very narrow limits, this matter of ne
cessity is mainly relative. A tele
phone is a necessity to US now; it |
was once a luxury we hardly felt jus
titled in indulging in. Four-ffths
of our water supply is really for pur |
poses of luxury. Nobody actually |
needs to keep up spacious green
lawn. But it is a very nice thing to
have, and we should all cry out upon
the Government if it did not keep |
twenty Or thirty thousand |
dollars every year or two to enlarge
our luxurious water works.
Now we ask the small expenditure
Of $1,000 for a road to a tract of one
hundred acres of lovely park in the
heart of the city, which is now a
great deal more inaccessible than if
it was an island outside the bell
buoy. In the center of the city, and
no road to it! Think of
it ! One hundred acres of delightful
area, environed by twenty-five hun
1red more of rocky ridge and slope,
and we are told that road just to
open up this great central tract is
luxury, and must not be thought of
at present. Why, if there were an
other twenty acres within mile of
5he Post Office, without a street
any part of it, we think the
Bulletin would cry out against
that did. not supply