AUCKLAND HAPPENINGS.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 30 January 1919, Page 3

AUCKLAND HAPPENINGS.

JFkom Ou* Own Correspondent]

TIME COMING

Auckland business people appear to think that 1919 is going to be an alright year for trade. Firstly, there will be the peace celebrations — some time in March or April, probably, when for three or four days the city jnll hold a sort of carnival. Queen Street will be gay with flags and bunting by day, and illuminations by night, and I suppose there will be firework displays into the bargain, and such crowds as usually assemble on Christmas Eve and New 3Tear Eve. We shall do well to mark the occasion in some extraordinary way for never within the life-time of anyone now living, it is safe to say, will any event so momentous as the conclusion of a triumphant peace after more than four years of warfare be likely to occur. Depend upon it tens of thousands of people resident in the country will flock to Auckland for "Peace week." And after all the excitement arising from the peace celebrations is over we shall be looking forward to the arrival of the Prince of Wales. Ah, well, its all good for business and will no doubt set much money in circulation in this pleasant old " Queen City " of ours.

GRASS-SEEDING.

Some of our suburban roads — notably those about Onehunga— are full of golden possibilities just now for those enterprising enough to take advantage of them. Seedsmen are now offering a shilling per pound for cocksfoot seed, and there's any quantity of it going begging. Any man or woman, boy or girl who is anxious to make a. bit of money now has an opportunity to do so. Before Wilhelm the Infamous set out to conquer the world cocksfoot seed was only worth fourpence per lb, and even at that pr?.ce some people made what is called " good money " by collecting the seed from the wayside. To-day the market price is a shilling per lb, and I am assured that even a boy or a girl can make from 10s to £1 per day at the game. ' The work is not very strenuous, and is healthy and agreeable. I have heard of a party of young ladies who are spending a pleasant holiday near Auckland in seeking for grassseed and who are having a good tliiie and making a good cheque while they are having it. They camp out, and have a small tent of their own.

UNFORTUNATE MISTAKE.

The other afternoon Mathew Bradley stopped a total stranger in Queen Street, and asked him for twopence. Most unfortunately for Mashew the stranger turned out to be a constable in plain clothes, and it is perhaps superfluous to say that he didn't "part." Immediately aftewards Mat met a friend, and was apparently so delighted to see him that he dragged him into a nearby hotel and shouted for him. Meantime the constable in plain clothes had been shadowing the pair, and as a result Mathew made the acquaintance of the presiding Magistrate at the Auckland Police Court next day, who sent him to Rotoroa Island for 12 months, As he is 79 years of age the probability is that he has seen the last of Auckland. A forgotten, but once popular music-hall song invited all and sundry to " ask a policeman." Mathew Bradley's experience seems to show that it doesn't always do!

THE "MAKURA" APPLES.

And so the apples which arrived in Auckland by the Makura at the end of November, and were (owing to the epidemic then raging) carried on to SydneyV. are coming back to us, and qjj^be on the local market befoi*e^fts paragraph gets into type. Why these unfortunate apples were parried' away to Sydney when the Makura got out of quarantine at Auckland nobody seems to know, Had the authorities permitted this fruit to be landed when it originally arrived here it would have been a^G-odsend to thousands of sick people. Now, of course, it must compete with our own Aucklandgrown apples —and growers must stand to drop money. There are 14,350 cases of the Canadian apples altogether, aboard the Makura, and it is pronosse] to ]and f^e }qc lii Aucldarjd, qs i^is r-eckonsd that they' want keep much longer after 10 weeks in pool store, So we ought to fraye ft glut of apples in this city for-

the next two or three weeks. And yet, somehow, there is very rarely a glut of anything in this market. How's that, umpire? Perhaps the Destructor could say —if it could only speak.

GH PRICES

The Auckland drapers are practically unanimous in saying that the prices of soft goods will never again be v what they were before the war. And a similar prediction is made by traders in other lines of business. It is all but certain that household furniture, footwear, men's clothing, books, stationery, drugs, and numbers of other things in every day demand will remain comparatively high in price—" it may be for years and it may be for ever." Time was, and not so very long ago, when a young fellow earning his £5 or £4 a week in New Zealand was not afraid to ''pop the question," and, meeting with a favourable answer, married and settled down. I think a man who married on such an income to" day would exhibit more pluck than prudence.

DEFAULTERS AT LARGE

Where are the chaps that dodged military service—and bolted sooner than face the music ? Do you know that nearly 1300 of these men are still at large ? Some are said to be hiding in the bush, others are "swaggers" tramping the roads, and taking care never to remain long in one place. One or two have actually ventured to come back, being under the impression that the end of the war wiped off old scores, and they were no longer liable. They never made a greater mistake in their lives — as they have since discovered. All defaulters of this kind are '"wanted," and will always be "wanted." They are liable to arrest anywhere and at any time.

WHAT'S WRONG?

Thus my Wellington colleague : " The state of things revealed by the N.Z. military authorities as the result of the medical examination of about 250,000 men called up for military service, is not exactly encouraging. It appears that about one half the men drawn in the ballots were classed C 2 (unfit for active service) by the doctors. It was formerly supposed that New Zealand was one of the healthiest countries in the world, and that the proportion of the physically fit was extraordinarily large. The returns prepared by the recruiting branch of the Defence Department do not confirm this impression, and the fact that 50 per cent of the men who went up for military duty were

turned down ' is proof positive that the health of our young men and that of our men of early middle age is not what it ought to be. The number of men found to be suffering from some form of heart trouble was astonishing, and there was a marked prevalence of goitre and of varicocele also. How is it ? My own impression is that the heart trouble so many young fellows are suffering from is largely due to the enormous consumption of cigarettes. Don't run away with the idea that I am a non-smoker, and disposed to condemn smoking on that aocount. I have been a smoker for many years, But I do not believe in cigarettes,''