Page 18 Advertisements Column 3

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20491, 9 March 1932, Page 18

AUCTIONS. H. AIATSON AND CO. ROYAL COMMISSIONS ARE SO CONVENIENT. (Overseas "Daily Mail," January 16th, 1932.) {By a Social Observer.) a 'WO years' talk. £20,000 cost. Two hundred page report. Twenty proposed tew restrictions. Two dava' wonder. Two thousand years' oblivion. That, in brief, i 3 likely to be the history of the Drink Commission, whose report has just appeared. But, tor all that, its existence need not necessarily have been entirely in vain. If it suffices to convince Governments that reference to a committee or commission can no longer bo tolerated as an excuse for indecision, the nation may yet have occasion to bless its name. It 13 the crowning folly of an absurd system. During its term of office the late Socialist Government appointed 7.5 commissions and committees to enquire into any and subject upon which Ministers were 100 feebla to make up their own minda. Their investigations ranged from food to folk museums and from the dole to dust in cotton card rooms. THE BEST ADVISERS. Without exception almost, there waa_ not one upon which the Government, if it liked, could not have got immediate information and the most competont advice from its own Civil Servants, who, at the best, are the best of advisers, and know more about any problems of government than all the commissions and committees who ever sat. But the snag in that was that the Civil Servants could have given their answers at once, and that was the last thing Ministers wanted. Faoed by an urgent problem, their first demand was an excuse for dt'ay in the hope that the public might forget, and from this cowardice arose the whole system oi "Parsed on to you, pleaee" on a large scale, which goes either by the name of a Royal Commission or a Departmental Committee. Of this the Royal Commission on Licensing (England and Wales) —to give it its full title was a notorious example. There was even a precedent for this behaviour in the history of the last previous Royal Commission on Licensing, which was appointed in *IBOS. That body eat for three years, examined 250 witnesses, and presented a variety of reports of which nobody has ever taken the slightest notice since. The present Drink Commission only falls short of that record in one iespect: it took two i'ears instead of three. But it did its beat. On its own showing it completed the hearing of evidence in January, 1931, and occupied a whole year in writing its report. But for psychologists there is this amazing problem, 80 constantly recurring in public 'life: Why is it that a body of citizens, admirable and tolerant individuals in private fife, hardly ever meet together as a committee without discovering that the rest of us are not merely in need of more restrictions but actually pining for them? That, indeed, is what no man can understand. It is probably one of thoee deep, dark things in the human consciousness that reach back to immemorial days when the Diuids eat round Stonehenge and meditated on the fate of the man who objected to being a human sacrifice. We should have had more pity for members of this Commission, thus shown to be the victims of a system, if they had had the courage to resist the promptings of thi» ancient instinct. But they did not, and it is for the rest of us to take warning. The wisdom of the wise is constantly engaged in undoing the folly of the good. It is time the wise were up and doing. If you arc a Land Holder and you want to sell, or you want to buy, entrust your realisation to IT. MATSON arid CO. ' WHY FARMING DOES NOT PAY. The rut 3 aro in tho dairy eating all the cheese, The pigs are in tho paddock eating all tho peas, The horse's in tho stable eating all tho hay, And Dad and Mum have bought 4 car and gone, to town to-day. The fowls are in the garden and the geeso have, flown away, The ducks are growing feathers and they'll be off some day. And when Dad and Mum come back again you're bound to hear them eay We aro going to live in the city now, 'cauie farming does not pay. 1 Tl'bso cunning little Clynamen, they lore their bit of ground; Where the Aussie's make a shilling, the Chinese make a pound. With their cabbages and caulifiowerß and pumpkins in galore, They send them out in cartloads and then come back for moio. Some people often wonder how the Chinese make a do; But remembor they have ham and eggs just the same as you. They love their bit of poultry and anything that's nice, They like their drop of whisky and a basin full of rice. Now wo go back to Dad and Mum and the day they left for town, 'Twas then that they had plenty, now they haven't got a brown. The baker's got the motor-car, the butcher's got tho pup; The bailiff's got tho furniture, 'twas hard to srive is up. If you want to know the real value of your Property, or any property upon which you have a mortgage, entrust tho same to: H. MATSON and CO. MILLIONS GOING A-BEGGING. In these hard-up times it seems incredible that dividends amounting to hundreds of thousands of pounds a year are going 8-begging for want of claimants (says the Sheffield "Weekly Telegraph"). And yet, if you were to examine the books and balancesheets of a thousand companies, you would find scarcely one without its records of dividends unpaid ; —in some cases the total sum thus unclaimed may be only a few pounds; but in others it exceeds 20, 30, or 40 thousand. . To what huge proportions these ownerless dividends can grow is proved by the statement that the books of the Bank of England alone show dormant funds—many of them untouched for generations—amounting' in the aggregate to nearly £8,000,000. The accounts which show these unclaimed riches pumber just under ll,0t)0, and tho amounts range from a few pounds to one colossal sum of £187,000 odd. And so it is everywhere; and the irony of it all is that not a few of the people who are —though they do not know it—entitled to these belated dividends and dormant capital are at the moment in a state of absolute poverty. The causes responsible for these millions of ownrerless dividends aro countless. In the eighteenth century, when speculation in shares was considered' quite a sin, it was- a common practice for men to invest under assumed names, and, in this way, in many cases, comfortable fortunes were lost to posterity. Even in our own time this practice is not at all unusual. In other cases people, incrediblo as it may seem, will not take the trouble to claim their dividends, but allow them to accumulate year after year. But tho causes responsible for this state of things are too many to give—such as loss of memory, aa investor dying abroad among strangers, investments made secretly for different purposes, and so on. These and a hundred others aro the causes why millions of pounds never come to the hands of their rightful owners. _ WHEAT, OATS, CLOVER. Let us handle your crop. Prompt Delivery. H. MATSON and CO., Grain Department. ' _J INTERNAL PARASITES. RIVERINA LAMBS AFFECTED. Reporting on the condition of sheep in the Riverina, a New South Wales Departmental veterinary officer states; — "Lambs which were dropped in the autumn and winter pre now weaners. They were illnourished owing to the failure of the ewes to milk well, and then became an easy prey to worms. They have never reached a stage of health which would render them able to assume the ascendancy over the constant menace of infestation. Then with the coming of the summer they were further harassed by the abnormal amount of grass seed, and to some extent by ophthalmia. Continual drenching has been necessary to keep them alive. Ewes which were infested have responded to treatment. In addition to drenching, the sheep require to be supplied with an appropriate mineral lick. "In the west, heavy mortalities from internal parasites in sheep have also been.reported. "The need for supplying in-lamb ewes with a mineral lick and feeding them as well as possible prior to lambing is obvious in order that they may produce strong lambs, and have plenty of milk. "The weakly lamb has no resistance to parasitic infestation, and succumbs quickly. There is need for early treatment to prevent gross infestation."' ' M 6628