PASSING COMMENT.

Matamata Record, Volume III, Issue 162, 1 December 1919, Page 4

PASSING COMMENT.

Now that the political leaders have started electioneering it will be seen that though belonging to different camps there are many points of similarity. Both express the conviction that party shibboleths should be forgotten: the hatchet should be buried; party politics dropped. The same ideal seems to beacceptedby both—-that the best men in the country should be gathered to govern the country. So say all of us. But it doesn’t seem as if this desirable state of affairs will come to pass as a result of the general election. What the average electordesires to see in a politician is some evidence of his sincerity. He may be a man with notions, but he is respected it' he is sincere. Both political leaders will be subjected to searching scrutiny to see if they sincerely desire the sinking of party difference. But circumstances suggest that we do not make the searchlight too bright, for the Reform party have a man opposing Sir Joseph Ward and the Liberals are trying to put one of their own crowd in the place of W. F. Massey. So different from things as they should be are things as they are.

Almost every speech delivered by Sir Joseph Ward since he withdrew from the National Government has had for a preface an explanation regarding that action of his. At his first public meeting in his own electorate he opened with the explanation and backed it by reading the agreement entered into by the party leaders when the National Government was formed. Evidently Sir Joseph feels that he is on his defence. 01 course, as he says,'he didn’t break the agreement, and only acted within his rights. But Sir Joseph certainly knows that no agreement is a matter of words only, it also has a spirit. The fact that he apologises so often is evidence that he has a lurking suspicion that'he’didn't keep the agreement in both letter and spirit. Quite a number of people possessing impartialminds hold to the opinion that Sir Joseph showed unseemly haste in withdrawing from the Government, and to say the least, the way he sprung his manifesto on the country wasn’t altogether “ sporting.”

During the last 12 months Brer Rabbit has been forced to the front to claim the attention given to all things by which money is made. Otago has been enriched by threequarters of a million sterling by one year’s export of rabbit-skins. The prices offered for Mr Rabbit’s winter coat have made the rabbit more profitable than the sheep. From being a is fast becoming a payable property. Not bad property either, for it is calculated that in ten years a pair of rabbits will produce five millions of the species, and need no looking after. As long as the high prices rule the professional trapper is reaping a golden harvest. Even amateurs at trapping are said to have made as much money in a week as most of us make in six months. Most of this is, of course, romance. But shorn of its romance, rabbit-trapping has brought big cheques to some of the trappers of Otago and Southland. jßrer Rabbit has become a profit in his own country —a profit-' that is not without appreciation.

Sometimes it happens that shopkeepers unintentionally give their customers an indication of the considerable rise which has taken place in the prices of their goods, by being so careless as to forget to rub out the old prices marked on the goods which were in stock before the rise took place. Instances are known where a lady went into a Southern shop to buy some material to make some-children’s clothing. The price quoted was 2s 6d per yard, but unfortunately for the shopkeeper he had forgotten to remove a ticket which marked the material at Is lid. In another case a father sent his son a pair of boots for which he paid £l. On the sole of one of the boots the son was able to see the former price, which was 13s fid. Thus we are reminded of a talk which a profiteer had with a friend of his, “All I did,” said the profiteer, “was to take advantage of an opportunity.” “That’s all that Captain Kidd did,” replied his friend. It certainly behoves shopkeepers to be careful, because no respectable human likes to be used as an opportunity.