NOTES OF THE DAY.

Dominion, Volume 7, Issue 2210, 24 July 1914, Page 6

NOTES OF THE DAY.

The _ opponents of Legislative Council reform will view with dismay the manner in which the second reading' of the Bill to make the Upper' House elective was carried yesterday. Instead of a desperate struggle and anxious counting of heads tnc second reading of the measure was agreed to by 24' votes to 8. Those people who have been seeking to cast doubts on the good faith of tho Government in respect of Legislative Council reform will now require to revise their opinions. With so large a majority in its favour, the Bill should experience little 'difficulty in passing the Legislative Council. Its passage in the House of Representatives may be less smooth, but it must not bo forgotten that the Lower Chamber has already endorsed the elective principle,

The Harbour Board_ is to he congratulated on its decision to convert the Wool Jetty into a wharf for the Wellington-Lyttelto'n ferry steamers. The new berth will not be quite so close to the centre of the city as the present ones at the Queen's Wharf, but it will be infinitely more convenient than the original plan of building a special ferry wharf on the reclamation frontage down towards the Thorndon Baths. ' The ferry boats undeiythe proposed arrangement will lie just across the road from the sito of the central railway station, and the tramways will be, enabled; to serve both the station, the Lyttelton steamers, and the harbour ferries simultaneously. The conversion, of, the Wool Jetty into a ferry wharf, moreover, will be much more economical than Wilding a new structure, and will not involve the same delay. _ There is some doubt whether it will ever be desirable to run trains on to the ferry wharf, as the passenger traffic from the south is not concentrated upon any particular mail _ train. It is pointed out that if railway connection is wanted the: rails are already down on the .Railway Wharf adjoining, and could be; readily extended along the breastwork and on to the ferry wharf. The municipal authorities will now.have an addi-'i tional incentive for laying out, the streets surrounding tho new railway station in such a way as. _to bo worthy of the future of the city, for it is here.that the daily stream of travellers by land and sea will make their first acquaintance with Wellington;;'),,lt , ; is, to be hoped transference of the. ferry steamers,'. long advocated in The. Dominion, will be brought about as speedily as possible. • •

While the Opposition, in its efforts to oapture the affections of the members of the Native race,, has to rely upon the declaration of a fanciful old chief that the Reform Government brought the smallpox epidemic and other dire evils in its train, the Government is able to point to more substantial tokens of the esteem in which it is held by the Maori citizens of the Dominion. Yesterday, for instance, the members of a- representative Native Conference waited upon the Prime Minister to submit tne name of .a candidate to contest the Eastern Maori electorate in the Reform interest.-against the sitting member, Mr. Ngata. HeteKIA: te Kani. Pere is said to be an ■able and popular representative of his race, who has good prospects of winning the seat. Arrangements are being made to put forward Reform candidates in the other Maori electorates at present represented by Oppositionists, and there is good reason to believe that the members of the Native race are alive to the fact that their interests are identified with thoso of the progressive Government whioh now holds office.

The only remarkable feature of the rambling debate on. unemployment which was heard in the House of Representatives yesterday afternoon was the total absence of anything _in .the shape of helpful suggestions from the members who so loudly expressed their humanitarian aspirations. Vigorous language was used in accusing the Minister of Public Works and some of his colleagues of callous indifference, but no corresponding vigour of thought was displayed in propounding suggestions for the relief of the unemployed. The whole; attack of tho Opposition members condensed into an assertion that since' men had been unemployed during the winter months the Government must.be to blame. The Hon. W. Fraser was' able to state that he had found some work in the cities for unemployed men, and a great deal more in the country. Like every other Minister of Public Works he has b,eon, and is,, faced by the difficulty that a large proportion of the men who are out of work , in the cities are unable or unwilling to go to tho country to get work. This is not a problem of the moment, and the Opposition members who sought yesterday to fix responsibility upon the Government in tho matter wcro simply attempting to_ distort tho facts of a serious national problem and turn them to their own petty and self-seeking ends. If they had been honest in their treatment of the subject-they would have admitted that the Government had done a great deal to promote a permanent solution of tho problem of unemployment by expediting small settlement and in other ways, and that-even tho smallest measure of progress ou these lines is of infinitely more importance as a contribution towards the creation of stable industrial conditions than any amount of sounding talk about humanitarian ideals.