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he insisted, met all local needs. (He was described as ‘the finest auctioneer of horses of all time in New Zealand’.^[1]) Under the circumstances, therefore, Friedlanders’ opening of a horse mart in the following month bore all the marks of retaliation.

The two leading men in the community whose public life obliged them to co-operate continually and to spend a good deal of time in one another’s company, made no attempt to disguise the keenness, even bitterness, of their business rivalry. During January 1895 a violent eruption revealed the heat which lay beneath their outwardly amicable relations. It took the form of ten letters, each a column long, in the Ashburton Guardian. Thomas began by attacking Friedlander for trying to secure a monopoly of business in binder-twine and at the same time reducing the price. His motive was not easy to discern as he declared that, acting with Zander and Orr, he had defeated this nefarious scheme. Friedlander replied, at column length, that the outburst was the result of Thomas’s disgust at having ‘his little game’ spoilt of ‘forming a ring to keep up the prices’. For good measure, in his first letter, Thomas accused the Guardian of favouring Friedlander, first by giving him free advertisements in the form of local news, secondly, by misreporting the number of bales offered at the wool sales. Friedlander commented that he had 2583 bales catalogued, Thomas 2355. From that point the correspondence dealt principally with details of the struggle between the two firms to secure ‘by underhand business practices’ a greater proportion of farmers’ custom. It finally descended to personalities, Friedlander accusing his rival of ‘utter conceit, impudence, pompousness, thorough cowardice, contemptible meanness, lamentable insincerity and shuffling . . . and many falsehoods’.^[2] He sneered at the church and public positions which Thomas held.

As has been shown, the year 1895 was a particularly difficult one for those in trade. Possibly the explanation of Hugo Friedlander’s contribution to an eye-opening discussion of current business practice might be found in the difficulties which led to his bankruptcy two months later. But the usually jovial Thomas gave proof, even after he had had the last word in the correspondence, that he too was feeling the strain of the times. By contrast, the new building programme which both men set in train two years later was the best local evidence of the beginning of better economic conditions.

In 1901 Thomas left on a trip to Britain. Before his departure