NEWS AND NOTES.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXIV, Issue 1063, 29 June 1912, Page 4

NEWS AND NOTES.

When is a heifer not a heifer ? This is a problem which took some elucidating at the Eketahuna Magistrate’s Court. One wituess contended a heifer was a heifer until she was dried off after the first milking. Another stated the generally accepted term was that a heiter remained a heifer until alter the second calving, and another that a three-years beast' rightly came within the category ot heifer. The S.M. quoted “Webster,” whose definition of a heiter was a young cow. And the problem remained unsolved.

Out of evil, however, good often results, and so the Waihi strike may after all be a blessing in disguise, says the OhinemuriGazette. It will open people’s eyes to the menace to the country of the Federation of Labour methods. Talk about the tyranny of some employers ! Why, that is as nothing compared with the tyranny we would have if the syndicalists had their way. Fancy the whole of the industry of the country being liable to be stopped at < the whim ot a few irresponsible individuals who, if they had their own way, would absolutely control every means of production. The Waihi strike will yet be fully justified, but not in the way that is iutended by those who caused it. It will be the means of breaking the body that has attempted to force its ridiculous demands, and will make people realise that the strike method is obsolete and out of date. By all means let labour organise, but let the demands made be fair and reasonable, and when an agreement is made let it be such that it is binding on all parlies to it.

Here is a most emphatic realisation of the inner working of a great ocean liner, such as was the Titaniclastly, when I had supposed myselt to be at the rockbottom of the steamer, I had been instructed to descend in earnest, and I went down and down steel ladders, and emerged into an enormous, an incredible cavern, where a hundred and ninety gigantic furnaces were being led every teu minutes by hundreds of tiny black dolls called firemen. I, too, was a doll as I looked up at the high, white-hot mouth of a furnace, and along the endless

vista of mouths. . . . Imagine hell with the addition of electric lights, and you have it! . . . And upstairs, far above on the surface of the water, confectioners were making fancy cakes, and the elevator boy was doing his work ! . . . Yes ; the inferno was the most thrilling part of the ship ; and no other part of the ship could hold a candle to it. And I remained of this conviction even when I sat in the captain’s own room, smoking his august cigars and turning over his books. Ino longer thought, every revolution of the propellers brings me nearer to that shore,” I thought, “Every shovelful flung into those white-hot mouths brings me nearer.” —Arnold Bennett, in April Harper’s.