NOTES OF THE DAY

Dominion, Volume 14, Issue 310, 24 September 1921, Page 6

NOTES OF THE DAY

New York’s Tammany ring, which decent people of nil parties ere once more Uniting to fight, is as old as tho United States itself. In its beginning in 1789 the Tammany Club, adopting th© name of the Indian Chief and organising itself with tribes and sachems, had a certain moral atmosphere. As late as 1817 it was deploring the spreadof- tile- foreign game of billiards among the upper classes. It began to go rapidly, to the bad when the franchise was extended and it learnt the possibilities of profit that lay in organising the streams of illiterate foreign voters swarming into the city. Its first Mayor, Fernando Wood, was a gentleman who. arrived in New York as the .leg" of an artificial elephant in a travelling show. In 1850, when Boss Tweed appeared, the board of aldermen were known as the Forty Thieves. Fortunes were made by the aldermen out of civic improvements—they did not commence their schemes until they had bought up tho properties affected, and then they resold them to ■ the' city at fabulous profits. Everything was for sale, including police protection for criminals. New York, from time to time, has violent fits of repentance, but Tammany takes killing and the cat with its proverbial nine lives is a circumstance to tho vitality of this corrupt organisation. In Mr. Curran, the Opposition Coalition has this year a strong candidate. Mr. Hylan is universally denounced as thoroughly incompetent. He is stated to have levied taxes for which he had no lawful authority, and to have exceeded his debt authorisations by more than 100,000,000 dollars. About six million people in New York are under Tammany rule to-day, and the question is whether they can be brought to combine to fight it, or whether they will be too greatly divided by jealousies, petty ambitions, and falsa issues.

It is an ill wind that blows nobody good, and the appalling disaster at Oppau ie relieved by tho prompt co-opera-tion of the French and Germans in relief work. Such an appeal to our common human nature as a tragedy like this makes cuts deeper than racial and political antagonisms. Many a person who has met with accident or mischance has been left with an abiding memory of tho surprising amount of kindness there is in the world, .and the present incident should not be without some effect in making both Germans and French think more of one another, as human brings and less as implacable enemies. Colonel House, the well-known American, sardonically summed up the situation tho other day by saying that 'all Germans looked alike to a Frenchman, and the only good ones were those that wero dead. It is a state of mind that is all too common on both sides of the frontier, and it is a poor foundation for a lasting pSTCa.

A third death in Queensland, and the discovery of plague-infected rats in Sydney give further ground for alertness in the Dominion Bubonic is a dirt disease, and under modern sanitary conditions devastating outbreaks are improbable; but nevertheless stringent measures against possible infection are desirable. Tho reduction in tho volume of shipping across tho Tasman Sea makes the risk smaller than it would lie in normal limes, and simplifies the problem. A campaign against ia'ts has been initiated by the City Council, a.nd is a good ihing at any time, as whate.ver value these animals have had as seavangers in bygone periods has long since disappeared. Tho place where the rutcnlchmg campaign is most needed is, of course, on vessels trading between here and Australia- and in the vicinity of the w'alerfronl. generally; and finally a little care in all parte to that transit

between ship and shore extremely difficult, if not impossible, for -rats would not be misplaced.

It-is reported that the British Minister of Labour (Dr. Macnamara) has appointed a committee under the chairmanship of Lord Cave to recommend reforms in tho system of trade boards —bodies which now regulate the wages of three million workers in the United Kingdom. The report and recommendations of the committee, when they are available, ought to throw valuable light o t the whole question of wags regulation. Since they were first instituted under an Act which came into force at the beginning of. 1910, the British trade boards have been tested, on an extensive scale and under varied industrial conditions. Tho system is rather complex, but in its main features it provides for the creation in each trade io which the Act is applied of a central trade 'board, consisting of representatives of the workers and employers in equal proportions, together with three expert paid official members, and also of district trade committees. These last consist of representatives of workers and employers, together with some members of the central trade board, including at least one of its official members. Broadly speaking, the system provides for the determination of minimum wage rates by negotiation between the parties, subject to the approval of tho central trade board. During the last three years trade boards have multiplied rapidly. At the period of the armistice there were only 13, but at the beginning of last month there were 62—43 for Great Britain, or parts of Great Britain, and 19 for Ireland. Each of thesa G2 boards is the central wage-regulating authority for a whole trade in Britain, or in Ireland, as the case may bo, and is. the parent body of many district trade committees.' As already stated, three million wage-earn-ers are now working under this system. .Another indication of the extenjt to which peaceful methods of regulating industry are gaining favour in Britain appears in a recent statement by Dr Macnamara that there are now in the United Kingdom 71 joint industrial councils on which three and a half millions of workpeople are represented.

, For the first time on record, so far as is known, a conjuring, trick was performed before a British Parliamentary Committee last, month. The committee was hearing evidence on the Bill under which it is proposed to prohibit the exhibition of performing animals. One of the witnesses, was Mr, Carl Hertz, whose entertainments have been seen several times in Wellington, in bygone years. Mr. Hertz, who makes rabbits, canaries, and similar small game appear and disappear at will, showed a canary in a cage, and distracting the attention of the committee for a moment, made canary, cage, and nil vanish ihto space. He declared that it. was perfectly untrue that he killed Jjho canary on each occasion, and going behind a screen for a few seconds he produced it back in the cage, and seemingly as cheerful as ever. Mr. James Sanger, the famous circus proprietor, said tho. chargos of cruelty which had been made would not stand against any responsible trainer. If the animal turns wore taken out the circus business would bo killed completely, for nearlf all tho other turns and clowning were merely padding between such things as the performing sea lions, which was what ’ the people really came to see. If a trainer ill-treated' a lion it would get even with him, even if it did not see him again for years. An elephant had been performing with the Sangar Circus for sixty years, but had not been killed yet. Future generations if deprived of the amusement of tho circus, Mr. Sangar finally declared, would regard it as an infringement of their liberties. Whether or not the British Parliament will incline to this view has yet to. be seen.

An English business man who has been touring Germany was quoted recently as stating that the best informed industrial and commercial leaders in that country are convinced that she will either make tremendous commercial progress oi- become "Bolshevik commercially" through tho workers 'becoming uncontrollable. The views of these German industrial and political leaders look more like stock political propaganda than a sincere \attempt to estimate the outlook. Plenty of evidence is' available to show that Bolshevism has taken no real hold on Germany. The Red upheavals which occurred during the early post-Armistic© period in Bavaria and elsewhere wero on a. comparatively minor scale and appear in some cases at.least to have amounted to little more than a popular protest against reactionary plots. Germans who raise the bogey of Bolshevism are able to point to the fact that a section of the Independent Socialists acceded some time ago front the main body and joined the Communist Party. Even with this reinforcement, however, the Communists aro one of the smallest of the various groups in the Reichstag, and the real significance of tho incident is that the remaining Independent Socialists are now as definitely committed to a moderate policy as the Majority Socialists. The failure of Bolshevism in Germany is easily understood when it is considered that the. German organised workers arc conveniently placed to obtain reliable news of what is happening in Russia. There is probably a much greater danger of German trade magnates obtaining a hold over Russia which would involve dangers to tho rest of the world than of Germany becoming a prey to Bolshevism.