LOCAL AND GENERAL NEWS.

Franklin Times, Volume 9, Issue 604, 1 February 1921, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL NEWS.

The Borough Council meets tomorrow night.

The usual sitting of the S.M Court will take place on Thursday.

It should be distinctly understood that small casual advertisements, such as wanted, lost and found, etc., for insertion in the “Times” are charged for at the rate of 16 words for one shilling for one insertion if the cash is paid over at the time of ordering. A booking fee of sixpence per insertion will positively be charged those who do not pay cash.

There has been a rapid fall lately in the prices offered by curers for bacon pigs. Farmers who formerly sold their baconers at prices ranging from 9d to lid per lb are now asked to accept (id per lb. No explanation of the sudden change in the market is given, and farmers generally are complaining of the position, particularly as they state that there has not been a commensurate reduction in the retail price of bacon, although we believe it has been reduced by 3d per lb. Hams and bacon are accordirg’y .realising much lower prices than they were just before Christmas.

The New Zealand Bacon and Meat Packing Company, intimate that after Thursday next they will receive bacon pigs up to 1501bs as usual.

A final reminder is given all concerned that the Technical High School will be opened on Thursday at 1.30 p.m. by the Premier.

The public school opens to-day and crowds of youngsters, sunburnt after their long vacation, are starting on another year’s school work. A new tea room in a central position is an acquistion in Pukekohe. Misses Hall have opened the Arcadia tea rooms in just that required position—the centre of King Street Home-made scones and cakes will be a great feature.

It is expected there will be a very large attendance of the general public from Pukekohe and surrounding districts on Thursday at the opening of the fine new Technical and High School at Pukekohe by the Prime Minister.

Readers around Runciman will be pleased to note that by advertisement to-day Mr. W. J. Bycroft announces that he has started business as a motor engineer at Karaka, Runciman, and undertakes all kinds of engineering work.

For some considerable time it has been customary for the “Times” office to be closed from 12. to 1 daily, but arrangements have now’ been made to keep the office open continuously until 5 p.m. Clients may thus transact business during the day with the assurance of being' attended to.

The Dominion Executive of the N.Z. Farmers’ Union has resolved “ That the executive considers the principle governing the butter subsidy is economically wrong, and that the policy of the Government, after March 31, should be the abolition of ail control in respect to prices of primary products.”

A man weighing 11 stone has in him enough fat to make 51b of candles and enough phosphorus to put heads on 2200 matches. He has iron, sufficient to make a one-inch nail, and lime enough to make whitewash to cover a small shed. As for carbon —black lead—there is in his body an amount equal to filling over a thousand pencils. There is also a spoonful of . sugar, a pinch or so of salt, and nine and a-half gallons of water.

Complaints frequently reach us from readers who claim that their “Times” has not been delivered on such and such an evening. The newsboys generally insist that their part of the work has been carried out. It has frequently happened that after the paper has been thrown over a fence it has been blown away. A local gentleman states that he noticed an ingenious home-made device for the prevention of this in Te Awamutu. An ordinary 3 inch drain pipe was placed close to the gate post with just the flanged end showing from the street. The newspapers were placed in these receptacles at each house and were sheltered from both wind and rain.

. “I was impressed very much wflth the way you treated your soldiers during the war, and with the high percentage of men you sent to the front,” remarked to a Times reporter Mr. W. D. Boyce, the Chicago newspaper man,, who is at present touring New Zealand. “To send over 100,000 men across the seas out of a population of a million and a-quarter, makes it the largest percentage that any country sent to the war. You have also treated the men who returned from the war better than any other country that I know of. I am very much interested in that, because we in the States have been trying to get our Congress to treat our returned soldiers decently; and I am ashamed to say that up to date Con-; gress has not done it.” j

Australia’s trade in butter is not confined to the United Kingdom.' Eastern connections are maintained, as the following exports from Victoria during December will show. These amounted to 5,960,2561 b, as against 6,817,5021 b for November. The bulk of the shipments went to the United Kingdom, which took 5,630,2721 b; Java received 211,7741 b; China, 27,3191 b; Ceylon, 16,2661 b; the Philippines, 13,0001 b; Sumatra, 11,7171 b; Manchuria, 10,9761 b; Mauritius 90001 b; Hongkong, 57891 b; South Africa, 40001 b; Burma, 48671 b; Egypt, 43341 b; Celebes, 39971 b; and the balance to other countries.

Supersonics is not a new disease, but one of those strange new sciences that seem to spring up every day. We are discovering new things with surprising swiftness, you know, and supersonics really means wave transmission. They have been condusting experiments .'t the Admiralty. Professor R. W. Boyle, of Alberta, had charge during the war, and it is in some way owirg to him that the Admiralty has perfected devices by which submarines and submerged wrecks can he detected, sHps m’d ’and may be located in fog or at right, icebergs avoided, and so on. rri e t : me is not fa 1 ’ d;sturt, it seme. w' r> n collisions *”-d rii-v-r’irffg \\j'■ ’ 1 be things of tlie past, for be received cry t s' i’w either und'r w'b'"' or 0 „ r-,-. Bnt th n t if. ’-rf o-r 1 . ~ arc to ~rnr>erev'’!p.>d — 1 engineering dckpre 11PV N y' x ‘•••e.-i F- V'-mts are row : '* nlam in Eng 1 and.

The ordinary monthly meeting of the Franklin County Council takes place on Thursday.

A terse reply to complaints about cost of living was made recently by Mr. W. M. Hughes, Australian Federal Prime Minister. '‘The difficult times ahead,” he said at a conference, “can be met because Australia is singularly fortunate and favoured by Providence. We live in a country where there is an abundance of food. People in this country do not know how well off they are, and this ap* plies to the rich man as well as to the worker. The rich man who complains about taxation is, by comparison with the Englishman, very well off, and if the worker who complains about cost of living were to go to England he would very quickly abandon all these other prayers on which he is in the habit of spending hours and repeat one short and fervent petition to the Almighty to bring him back to Australia.”

Although, according to the figures of the Commonwealth Statistician, there has been a serious decline in the birth-rate in Australia in recent years, the monthly returns showing the claims, made for the maternity allowance continue to reveal a steady increase. The explanation (says the Melbourne Age) will probably be found in the fact that almost all parents now apply for the bonus of £5, whereas a few years ago claims were not so general, applications being limited to those who were in need of the money. That, of course, was the idea which inspired the adoption of the scheme, but it has developed into a subsidy claimed by all, rich and poor alike. In the six months ended December 31, 73,850 bonuses were paid in the Commonwealth. Compared with a total of 62,758 for the same period in the previous year, this suggests a welcome increase in the birthrate, but more reliable figures are required before that conclusion is justified. In the last six months reviewed 19,380 bonuses w r ere paid in Victoria, 30,062 in New South Wales, 10,759 in Queensland, 6300 In South Australia, 4168 in Western Australia, and 3181 in-Tas-mania.