LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXVIV, Issue 36, 18 January 1916, Page 8

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

The sales of curiosities at Stevens's Rooms, Covent Garden, have lately been well attended, and bidding has been brisk (writes the London correspondent of the Associated Press on December 8). Last week saw several lots of South Pacific interest. A New Caledonian devil worshipper's ceremonial mask made £6 10s, an idol and a teiripie house door £l3 10s, and £l2 10s respectively. An Australian mummy of a child, preserved with fat and red ochre, bound up with cane, realised £24. A reconstructed New Guinea chief's head, shell eyes, made £l2; New Zealand dried head of a chief, the hair and teeth heing exceedingly tine, £l7 6s 6d; a somewhat similar lot going for 1.1 guineas.

j The installation of oil-burning locomotives [Oti the mountain section of the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway has now been completed. These locomotives are of the most modern type, and were placed on service for passenger traffic for the first time on July 30. They are operating from Jasper to Prince Rupert, over 719 miles of main line. Special interest attaches to the installation of this class of motive power, as it marks the first use of oilburners on an extensive scale in Canada. Large oil storage tanks have been erected at various points along the line for supplying the locomotives with the necessary fuel. The section of the line on which', these locomotives are being used passes through some, of the finest scenic territory in the-Canadian roekies.

The Government Hotel strike at Darwin (reports the Sydney Daily Telegraph), ended on Monday inst), at noon, when all hotels opened again for business. The re-opening was the signal for a wild burst of drinking, and all the hotels did a roaring trade. The settlement is subject to arbitration, and the provisional terms appear no better than were available to the union ten weeks ago. The strike has been a miserable fiasco. To uring in the Minister on side issues of the main struggle, trains were held

up, and a 5000-ton steamer delayed. For ten weeks hotel boarders took meals in primitive, and not over inviting, restaurants, while the hotels kept closed doors and preserved a funereal appearance. The only redeeming feature of the strike has been the voluntary abstinence from intoxicants by union members, which was later made compulsory by the absolute closing of the bars. This abstinence is calculated to. have meant a saving of to the pockets of the workers, and considerable gain to employers of labor by increased efficiency. Government and union officials alike bear testimony to the remarkable beneiits accruing from the state of prohibition, and many a hardened drinker expressed the hope that the hotels would never again open. The movement for prohibition was dropped, however, on the grounds that it was felt that a referendum on the question could not be carried. What many wanted was for the Government to make the old experiment of making this a dry State, and there is little doubt that over the , period of railway construction and the construction of the meat-works such a step would have proved a great economic success,