NOTES OF THE DAY.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 2207, 21 July 1914, Page 4

NOTES OF THE DAY.

It is impossible to redd the utterances of the Attorney-General re-, spocting the Public Service Act without realising how very real and sincere his desire is to see the-Public Service of the country placed on a footing of the highest efficiency, an* its members treated .justly and liberally. The subject is one to Mr. Hbrdnan, _ and the country and tho Service itself are under' great obligations to him for 'the determined and able manner in- which he has faced/the heavy task of freeing Stato' servants from the demoralising effects of political party iiw jhience. In his address at the opening of the annual conference of tho executive of the Public Scrvico Association he spoke with a frankness and freedom that must have convinced the delegates present of : the earnestness of his desire for tho wellbeing of tho Service; and the public equally cannot fail to recognise that the Minister was equally alive to his responsibilities on Micir behalf. "There is one thing-to think of in j your deliberations, he remarked to the delegates, "do not expect ; too much. 1 Wo can only do what we think is fair." That has been the keynote of his attitude throughout. There, arc defects in the Act no doubt. ,vhich require to be remedied, although for no great a change as has been established, the smoothness with whjch it has been brought about is retnorkablo, Tho conference now sitting should be able to make use.;

ful suggestions for the assistance of the Commissioners and Parliament in .repairing any deficiencies which may have been 1 - found to exist, and their deliberations are of importance not only to the members of the Service, but to the public generally, who are called on to provide the salaries of the servants of the State.

The growing prosperity of tho American negro is bringing to the fore new aspects of the race problem I in the United States. To-day we are told that the citizens of Louisville, one.of the chief centres in the South, •are forbidding negroes to reside in the fashionable portions of the city,which their increasing affluence has enabled them to invade. The material progress of the American negro in the half century since the abolition of slavery has been remarkable.In 1863 the four million slaves in the United States received their freedom; two years ea-rlier the Russian serfs had been emancipated. Fifty years afterwards it- was found that fourteen millions of the Russian peasants had accumulated wealtli to the extent of £7 as. por capita. In their fifty years of freed6m the negroes were shown by the census returns to have increased in number to ,te'n millions, and to have accumulated property to the value of £14 per head. They own farms to the extent of twenty million acres, equal to nearly three-quarters of the North Island, There are 50,000 of them in the professions, they own over a hundred insurance companies, and there are sixty.-four negro banks. The welUo-do negrpes as a body are stated to show little - desire to share the social life of the whites. As one recent Mvriter jiuts it, they do not want to ride in the white people's cars on the railways, but _ they do want the railways to provide clean and comfortable, oars, for their coloured passengers, from whom they demand tho same fayes as from whites. It is very largely in the educative work of the prosperous' and more intelligent negroes that the best hope of their race lies.

It may be taken as one of the evidences of the country's development and increasing prosperity that the farmers of the Oroua an'cl West Coast district have felt themselves justified, in''embarking on so importaijt an enterprise as the establishment of meat freezing works at Feilding. Yesterday the Oroua and West Coast Meat Freezing Company was registered, with a 'subscription considerably over the minimum fixed, and the directors state that, at the present rate of application for shares they will be. ink position to .proceed with the erection "of the works at a very early date. Feilding is the centre of a large and important farming .district, and the demand for the present undertaking is the outcome of the solid progress that has been made. The new' company is a purely local enterprise, and its provisional directorate consists, .of welliknown farmers residing in the district. It is claimed that the direct .saving to the district by.'th'o opening, .of the works at Feilding will be considerable, as the loss through shrinkage of weight and damage to carcass in taking stock over. long distances, will be avoided, The'area to be served has a radius of many"miles,, and some idea of- its size may be gained-from the fact that in Rsingi? tikei County alone there are just on a million sheep. There : has been a wide desire among the sheep-fai'mers for'years past that; the . freezing jjhquld be done on "the spot,-and it now seems that this ambition is about to bo realised.,

The turning of the first sod of .the Martinborough branch! railway _ is an event of great moment to the districtcUrectly intereste.d,.-and. ofmoro than passing interest to the city, for the construction of the lino will undoubtedly lead to the closer settlement of a larfje area of' excellent country. The district has made great progress of recent years,, despite the heavy rate for the cartage of produce, and, as, one of the spoolers, at yesterday's, function remarked, the increased traffic'which the branch wiir bring will make the deviation of; the Rimvb taka a .more, urgent necessity than ever. The line is not much of an undertaking frpm .an engineering point of view, and its cost is put at about .-590,000. Its length will.bo between ten and eleven miles, it will traverse very easy country, and the chief items of expenditure' will bo the building' of two bridges. The; need for the branch has long been recognised, but, it is largely due to the pertinacity of Sir . Walter Buchanan that it has received attention among the many diverse proposals that are continually being brought before Cabinet. Martinborough and its Railway League are to be congratulated on yesterday's ceremony, and it is to be hoped that now that a start has been made on the work it will be pushed to completion as speedily as possible. ,