LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXII, Issue 4310, 29 August 1921, Page 2

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

The Waihou and Ohinemuri Rivers Commission is due to reshme proceedings at Paeroa on Thursday at 11 a.m.

Messrs F, J. Wells and, Sons’ premises will he closed on Wednesday next a ; t 11 o’clock, on account of the football match at Hamilton on that day.’*

A house in Palmerston North that cost £l7OO to erect two yeais ago was offered for sale last week for £1590. A sharp decline in the price of house property has been caused by the reduction in the cost of. build’:ig.

The ordinary monthly meeting of ■the Ohinemuri County Council will not be held, in consequence of the illness of both the chairman and county, engineer. A meeting of the Finance Committee to pass the necessary accounts will, however, be held as usual.

, A Palmerston North grocer states that a well-known New Zealand firm of jam manufacturers is at present charging 10s per dozen for jams which, before the ,war„ cc uld be purchased for 4s &d per i>ozen, and yet the Government puts an embargo on imported jams.

The cost of bringing the Springboks (South African footballers) .to New Zealand to play about twenty matches is* estimated at between £12,000 and £14,000. It is interesting to compare this with the cost of the All Black tour of the United Kingdom, France, and America in ,1905. The total receipts outside New Zealand and Australia were £6063. Thirty-three matches were played in the United Kingdom and in France.

We have to hand .the 31st annual report and balance-sheet of the Jubilee Institute for the Blind, dealing with the past year’s operations. The report sets out that the voluntary contributions amount to £2397 10s. 7d, which constitutes a record, and represents 4329 individual contributors of 5s and upwards. At the end of March last there were 11 women, 20 boys, and 16 girls in. the house and school, and 10 journeymen, 15 inmates, and 4 day pupils at the technical and industrial department. This institute is the only one for the blind in the Dominion, and application for admissions from any part of the country are considered. Excellent work is being done by this Institute, which is worthy of the public support it receives.

The healthiest occupation one can adopt, according to a list made by the United States Department of Labour, after investigating causes jf death in nearly 200,000 cases in 20 different occupations’, is that of the farmer or farm labourer. ..The average age at time bf death among farmers is given as 58.5 years. The most hazardous occupation is that of bookkeeper or office assistant—average age of death only 36.5 years. Railway engine men and train men live only 37.4 years ; plumbers and gasfit.ters, 39.8 years ; compositors and printers, 40.2 years. Accident makes.the life of the railway man short, while the greatest enemy of the bookkeeper, plumber, and printer is tuberculosis.

A representative of the “Gazette” who paid a visit to Auckland last week was struck by the cautious attitude of .commercial men in the. Queen City. They all seem doubtful as to just what is going to happen within the. next six months in respect co trade and commerce. They realise .that the dairying industry is the bulwark of the country, and are looking forward to tlie payments for dairy produce easing the financial situation. Nearly all of them are hardpressed for finance, and are not in a position to give credit on anything like the terms they commonly gave ayear ago. Economy is being studied in a more intense way .than has been the case for many a year.

Characteristically, the Rev. Jasper Calder gave ,a humorous skit entitled "Church Bells” as an item at his Auckland concert in aid of the* Girls’ Friendly Society. Realising that something original was coming, a “Gazette” representative who had the pleasure of being at the excellent entertainment took ..a few notes., His reverence said he was walking down the street one Sunday morning, listening to the Church bells ringing, and trying to divine what they were saying. It seemed to him that the bells of St. Peters. Roman Catholic, said, “We are the only .true Church” ; St. Paul’s, Anglican, “No, you’re not' : the ‘Scotchbytefian,” “Collection, collection I” the Methodist, “Prohibition, prohibition I” “the bells of a little church in Suburbia,” where the select and wealthy few worshipped, "We are . going to heaven” ; Canon MacMurray’s Church, “Immersion, immersion I” “and the church where I used to preach,” “Out you go, Jasper! Out you go, Jasper l ”

A curious story, which sheds a remarkable light on certain aspects of present-day German mentality, reaches me from Berlin (says a writer in the London “Daily Telegraph”). It would appear that a little while back a German scientist discovered what promised to be an effective cure for the tropical form of sleeping sickness (otherwise known as beri-beri), and for the bovine diseases caused by the sting of the tsetse fly. Upon learning of this discovery informal! oveitures were made by certain authorised persons of Allied nationality with a view to securing the benefits of this important discovery for their own colonies. Their requests, however, were met in one instance, with, the extraordinary retort that there was no reason why “poor” Germany, who had been deprived of all her colonies, should help to enrich those who had taken them! On the matter being carried through diplomatic channels to the highest quarters at Berlin, however, a. tentative agreement was at once arrived at with the German Government. By virtue of this agreement experiments with the new rem edy are to take place very shortly in a-British tropical colony. For Bronchial Coughs, take Woods’ -Great Peppermint Cure.