GENERAL NEWS.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 11 April 1901, Page 3

GENERAL NEWS.

Dengue fever is reported to he very prevalent in New Caledonia. The Wesleyan General Conference is to he held in Brisbane on 17th May. The Chief Justice of South Australia has completed 25 years of service on the Supremo Court Bench. The Typographical Society of West Australia is moving to make £3 a week the standard rate of wage throughout the trade. The total value of metals and minerals exported from South Australia during the year 1900 was £431,289. Copper represented £371,920, silver and lead £17,520, and gold £14,494. The Anglican Diocese of Adelaide has appointed a committee and organised a movement to raise during the next three years a 20th century fund amounting to £20,000. Considerable promises have been received. The fine -return from the Mokoia dredge and the steady returns from the Buller Junction are breaking down the

prejudices so long entertained against gold dredging in the Buller River. The Rocklands should also reach her ground shortly, and report good progress. The Government (says the Wairarapa Star) has wisely determined that cooperative labour should not be employed in the making of roads, for which grants have been placed on the estimates. The co-operative system is very good for large works, where miles of road have to ho made, but in small undertakings it is worse than useless. It has been found

that local authorities can expend small grants more expeditiously, and with greater economy than under the cooperative system. The Post says:—Mr Jas. A. Clark, the newly-appointed secretary to the Wellington Racing Club, entered upon his duties on Saturday last, and has been kept hard at it since “ getting his house in order.” During the early part of the week he was busy receiving nominations for the Autumn Meeting. His present room in the old Times office is inconveniently small, and the stewards are on the look-out for permanent offices in a convenient locality. Mr Clark has made a very favourable impression, and is likely to become popular with the racing public. He has laid out a well-defined course of action which will doubtless merit the confidence of both the club’s patrons and the outside racing community. The Inspector-General of Police, Chairman of the Board for the Protec-

tion of Aboriginals, N.S.W., states that the number of full-blooded aborigines in that State in 1899 was 3203, and the number of half-castes 3689; total, 6892.” Brother A. J. Peacock (Victorian State Premier) has been re-elected G.M. of the United Grand Lodge of Victorian Freemasons. He will be installed on the 15th May, in the presence of distinguished Masons from all parts of Australia. An American, Mr Frank G. Carpenter, who recently passed through New Zealand, interviewed Mr Seddon at Wellington, and the Chicago Times-Herald has four columns of an interview from his pen. Here is the introduction:—“The head of this Government is the Hon. Richard Seddon. He is more its President than McKinley is President of the United States. He is the leader of the House, and he almost controls Parliament. He can to a certain extent make his own laws, and lie i§ pushing forward new schemes of all kinds without regard to precedent or history. It is he who for years has been at the head of the socialistic movements in New Zealand. He is the man behind the new laws which relate 'to labor and capital, and at the head of the party which is now cutting up the large, unproducive land holdings of the rich, and dividing them at the lowest possible rates of ownership requirement among the poor.”