NOTES OF THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 13, Issue 90, 10 January 1920, Page 6

NOTES OF THE DAY

The Bailways .Department housing scheme which is outlined to-day has features which might bo incorporated with all possible, advantage in a national housing enterprise. In providing dwellings for its employees, the Department proposes to draw on one of its own forests for timber, which is to be cut in standard lengths and sizes. Some parts, such as plates and studs, are to be dispatched from the mill all ready to be placed in position. In addition, joinery is to be made at a large central factory. Carried out on efficient lines these measures will lead to an 'important saving, and considerably cheapen the cost of dwellings. The Department is fortuoato not only in possessing a considerable amount of the machinery it requires, but in being able to draw upon a large staff of skilled workmen and expert supervisors in manning its new factory. Its enterprise is, of course, commendable, all the more so sinec many of its' employees experience exceptional difficulty in securing suitable and conveniently located dwellings. Such a lead given by a Department in the interests of its employees, however, will naturally quicken the demand for equal enterprise in promoting a national housing scheme. The standard production of joinery and other parts contemplated by the Ea.ihva.vs Department ought long ago to have been applied generally to the construction of dwellings in this country. The Government will take the right course if it adopts similar methods not only in housing schemes under its own direct, control, but in order to make the advantages of standardised manufacture available in connection with similar schemes, undertaken bv local bodies. No doubt something definite will be heard about these matters when the experts, for whom applications were called some time ago, have been appointed.

On" the figures of the national licensing poll as they are now presented, it is clear that prohibition has been defeated by a'margin of votes that in the circumstances must be called remarkably narrow. Probably on the final count, unless errors •ire discovered in the totals now supplied, the aggregate votes cast for continuance and State control will exceed those cast for prohibition by, .a little over three thousand. Thus a turnover of fifteen or sixteen hundred of the votes cast either for continuance or State control would have carried prohibition. Since prohibition received nearly thirty thousand more votes than continuance, and only 32,000 votes were cast for State control, it may be claimed that the presence of the latter issue on the voting paper accounts for the defeat of prohibition. It cannot be doubted that in a straight-out contest a proportion of the votes cast/on this occasion for State control would have been cast for prohibition. ' In all likelihood prohibition in these conditions would have received the measure of support required to make it the law of the land.

There 'is an interesting comparison to be drawn between the demands in support of which the New Zealand coal miners have been practising the "go-slow" policy during the last (four months and those recently put forward by coal workers in the United States. The New Zealand miners demanded, amongst other things, and besides the abolition of the contract system, a fiveday week, with an immediate reduction of the working day to seven hours, "bank to bank," and a further reduction on January 1, 1921, to six hours "bank to bank." In America tho United Mine Workers demanded a six-hour day, "front to front" (the American equivalent of "bank to bank"), and a five-day week, together with a sixty per cent, increase in wages. In the United States these demands were scouted from the outset as merely "a hook for hanging up a compromise," and almost at once were considerably modified by the miners, notably i'-, their offer to accept a day of seven hours of actual work at the face. But tho point of interest is in the. circumstances in which the original demands wore put forward. According lo Mn. Gregory Mason, a New York Outlook corrcsnondcnt of high repute, such large claims would not have been made even as an "nskincr price" but for a factional dismite rm.ong the United Min" Workers.' The ins'de story, as Mr. Mason tells it, is that

John L. Lewis, who is now only tlio acting-president of the United * ilino Workers, hones io. lie elected regular president at tile election next (this) year, frank Fnirineton, leader of the Illinois miners, lias the same ambition, Farrington is a radical. Lewis heard that Farrington w.as goin? to make his campaign for president on a platform callins' for a six-hour (lay and a five-day week. On this platform Lewis thought that Farrington would cut a big- swath anions? the discontented miners. Therefore, Lewjs stole Farrington's thunder. ITe had 'hardly done so when he began to feel uncomfortable, for Lewis lias always been a conservative, and lie knows that the Farrington programme is impossible.

The tcVms radical and conservative arc, of course, used by Me. Mason in the American sense, and with a meaning corresponding to our local terms of extremist and moderate. One of the most material points made by Mis. Mason is that employment, in the coal-mining industry in the United States fluctuates heavily with the seasons. In asking for the six-hour day and the five-day week, he observed, the miners claimed that they were really asking for the privilege of working morn time rather than less time, than they had been working. \ It is thus clear that the American miners put forward their initial demands in circumstances very much less favourable than those, enjoyed by the miners in this country, who are offered steady and unbroken employment all the year round, .liven so. the American miners heavily modified these initial demands. Tn the course of negotiation they offered to accept a working da-v of seven hours~.it the face, with a half-holiday on Saturday. <As a standard of comparison with thattaken up by the miners in this country thnir attitude is decidedly instructive.

Tiie Moivitinn nf the fanners' ca onerafive n-seoniati'we «f Koiv Zealand, and South Africa is n t.iinelv vnnyo I'h'S it P '!»•.• nf orifrnit.ic combinations in >--? 1 *1 >inp-, fip. aneo, nnrl onninieiTo <ro"n<--11v. TT,,. locs the ln'iinavv n"n'l"e'"'s of tlv> Roviiieo a"" ni'pD.nrocl f" lie around linlvreep fhi- .1101101' and tile nether Oii'Mono': tlie must niwiniw fbnni solves on °ncb a snnld to innl-o i m . rinscjMe tbei" rnnlinnons '"'nln'fal.imi h" Ihe shinninr and ntbev inlevc.'K' concerned [n Uv, marketi'lf nf Ui"ir livnrliice. Til" vmnrlcn'de c'lcew which h.r; attended the fanners' co-onernt.ive movements in the D.ist-. and with which the more recent developments arc meeting,

augurs well for llic success of the new undertaking. If the Canadian farmers can later be brought into tile scliemc a most formidable organisation will have been created. Backed by the State shipping enterprises of Australia and Canada, the farmers should before long be in ;t_ position to scetirc much less onesided terms than has been the case ill the past.

The exceedingly virulent campaign of the Northcli.ffe Press against Mit. "Pussyfoot" Johnson has proved in the upshot to have been badly overdone. Mit. Johnson arrived in England from America early last year to assist the United Kingdom Alliance in its prohibition .campaign. He was at once attacked by the DniUj Hail. Hvcniny Jews, and other Norlhcliffc organs as a dangerous person manoeuvring against English liberties by sinister and underground methods. PceniiKiof his taste for mole-like in the dark be had, it was alleged, long been known to his countrymen a°. "PiiEsvfoot." After nine months of the Daily Mail on "The Pussyfoot Peril,' a party of London University students raided one of Mb. Johnson's meetings, and in the subsequent melee that gentleman lon the sight of an eye. .The students had expected, they declared, to find a. shy young man of thirty, but instead discovered Mr. Johnson to be an old sportsman approaching sixty, who took their "rougli house''' wail the utmost good humour, and bore no malice for 'Ms injury, which he declared to be a pure accident. The students were profusely apologetic, and the King and many leading people, including the Licensed Victuallers' Association, expressed their sympathy and regret for what had occurred. Finally, to cap all, it appeared that "Pussyfoot" had gaihed his nickname thirty years back by going, singlehanded and unarmed, and bailing up in his own bar with his own gun a Pocky Mountain publican who had declared that he would shoot him dead if ever he showed his nose in the town in his campaign to suppress the liquor traffic with the Red Indians. A. very large pinch of salt is evidently a necessary adjunct to a diet of Northcliff c journalism.

With the news that Mr. Lloyd George has gone to Paris to attend an inter-Allied Conference "which will really amount to a second Peace Conference, dealing with the most momentous questions," it is reported that some sections in Germany are taking up a defiant attitude, particularly in regard to the surrender of war criminals, which is an essential feature of the settlement. Berlin in this connection is forming a'"save your honour" league. Most people woulcfsay that Germany's honour is past saving, but the optimists behind this enterprise arc proceeding evidently on the view that the German nation will redeem its honour by supporting the criminals who have done most to make its. name infamous. The German Government, it is also stated, is being urged to defy the Allies and tell them to come and fetch the guilty parties, and. if the Allies do "surprises are promised." The suggested invitation is perhaps unlikely to be extended, but if it were Germany might be the most surprised party to the proceedings. When it was reported early last month that Field-Marshal Wilson had gone to Paris "to consult Marshal l'ocit in connection with the Peace Treaty," some references were made by Brit: ish and other newspapers to a plan for action against Germany which was prepared with an ■ eye to the contingency that her delegates might refuse to sign tho Treaty of Versailles. This plan contemplated a rapid advance into, Germany from the occupied .zone by the British, French, and American Armies. According to_the New York Evrnintj I'osl a drive of from forty to sixty miles in depth all along the Allied line was contemplated. "Cavalry," tho same paper adds, "was to have been employed, together with armoured cars, to protect the infantry, who were to have been_ rushc'l forwaru in motor trucks in a dash that I would, it was predicted, have broken all records for a rapid military advance." Presumably the Allies are still prepared to act oil these lines should the need arise, and it therefore seems likely that the kind of talk current at the moment in Germany will soon evaporate. The outbreak of pncunionie influenza at Tirau, couplcd with the further cases from the Patcena, indicates that New Zealand has not yet seen the la,st of this scourge. In Britain and many other countries the epidemic came in a series of waves of varying intensity, and in view of this fact the public will be well advised to run no unnecessary risks of infection. Two dcallis have already occurred «,t Tirau, and in Nelson a patient died on Boxing Dav fifteen hours after admission to hospital. The cases are stated to be of a mild type, but it is better to be safe than sorry. Tirau is a station on the Frankton-.Rotorua railway, a line at) present carrying probably the heaviest holiday traffic in the Dominion. The local medical arrangements there do not seem to have been equal to the emergency at the outset. These facts all point to the need for vigilance.