The Manawatu Herald. Saturday, December 13, 1913. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1184, 13 December 1913, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Saturday, December 13, 1913. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

A special meeting of the local Borough Council will be held on Monday evening to discuss the report on water and drainage drawn up by Mr Suggate. The report will deal with two schemes, i.e., water from the hills behind Shannon, and from a local artesian source. The Council already has in its possession details of Mr Climie’s artesian scheme, to cost ,£20,000, which was submitted to a poll of the ratepayers on March 18th, 1910, and rejected by 150 to 90. There were then 422 ratepayers on the roll, of whom 246 recorded their votes. It will be remembered that those who led the opposition against the above raised the cry of the Shannon scheme. Whether such objection was genuine or merely subterfuge will be apparent at an early date. Almost everyone agrees that water and drainage is essential to the health of the community, and if the franchise in respect to the loan was not restricted to the property vote, the loan of 1910 would have been sanctioned by a thumping majority. We have urged, time and again, that an amendment is needed in the Municipal Corporations Act making it compulsory for municipalities with a population of a thousand and upward to instal water and drainage independent ot the wishes of property owners. The health of a community is of paramount importance, and it is outrageous to think that a minority of ratepayers have the power to compel tne inhabitants to continue a sanitary system which is not an improvement on the methods adopted by the Children of Israel during their sojourn in the wilderness. We don’t know what Mr Suggate’s schemes are to cost, or whether his artesian scheme is an improvement on that submitted by Mr Climie. We hope the Council however, will give the matter full consideration in open Council, and that a scheme within the means of the borough will be finally sanctioned by the ratepayers

A most important judgment affecting the funds of unions registered under the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act, and not under the Trades’ Union Act as to whether a union so registered can give part of its funds for the aid of the families of men who are on strike, the men nut being coworkers in any sense in the same industry as that of the union that is registered, was decided by the Chief Justice at Wellington yesterday. The union concerned was the Wellington Typographical Union, which, some time ago, made a vole of ,£IOO to the waterside workers’ strike fund. The question at issue was answered by the Chief Justice as follows :

(a) It is not lawful for defendant union to apply any of its funds for the purpose of assisting the unions mentioned in the proceedings or their dependents

while members of rival unions

are engaged in a strike. (b) The union cannot make levies

on its members for that purpose. In the course of judgment, his Honour, after citing the rules of the union, said the union must be one for the purpose of protecting; or furthering the interests of workers iu connection with the special industry of printing. It was not a benevolent society, and it was not formed for the purpose of aiding workers in other industries, It might be that it could assist even those on strike if they were printers, or engaged in some branch ot the printing industry, as rule 15 provided, but, iu bis Honour’s opinion, there was nothing iu the Statute enabling a union to assist workers on strike, at all events, outside of the industry to which members of the union belong. It could not be implied that it had that power.