FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 129, 22 August 1927, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By “THE LOOK-OUT MAN" STREET COLLECTIONS Auckland is not the only city where "we are getting into a state of chaos” over street collections. Even London is perturbed about them. In the Empire metropolis, Rose Day, Lifeboat Day and Armistice Day are considered the only three “days” which are not a nuisance. Years ago sellers occasionally went light-headed when a £ 10-note was dropped into their boxes. Nowadays they are lucky to get 10 pence. HOVE ALONG, PLEASE ! A professor in England has estimated that the population limit of the human race, with everj' possible inch of land cultivated, is round about 5,000,000,000. The Look-Out Man mentioned this interesting theory to an Auckland tram-conductor last evening. He scoffed at the idea of absorption point having been attained at a mere 8,000,000,000 of population. “Leave it to me and half a dozen of my pals,” he said, with a wistful look in his eye. “and we’ll crowd in another couple of hundred millions for the professor. There must be plenty of room in front!” A TRAGIC RACE It is curious to note how tragedy has followed the Dole Prize air race, even from the time of its early preparation. Three lives were lost before the race started, and hope has almost been given up for seven more fliers now missing. In a trial flight on August 10. Lieutenants George Covell and R. W. Waggener, officers of the United States Navy, were killed through their machine crashing at San Diego. Two days later. Lieutenant Arthur Rogers, a St. Louis airman. was killed at Los Angeles, while on his wav to Oakland to try for the £ 5.000 prize in the race from Oakland to Honolulu. On the same day. Captain James Giffin and Mr. Theodore Lundgren. also competitors for the prize, fell into San Francisco Bay. Their plane was wrecked, but the airmen swam ashore. PPI?S TST ENT FATE That was bad enough, but disaster still followed. At the start of the race lash Tuesday another plane, the Elencanto, was wrecked, but without loss of life. Of the four planes which set out on Tuesday, two are missing —the Miss Doran (carrying Miss Mildred Doran, with J. A. Peddlar and Lieutenant Vilas Kuope), and the Golden Eagle (with Jack Frost as pilot and Gordon Scott as navigator). Now comes the news—again of tragedy—that Captain William Erwin and Navigator A. H. Eichwaldt, who set out in the Dallas Spirit to search for the missing five, had trouble through tail-spinning, and it is thought that their machine plunged into the Pacific from an altitude of 2,000 feet. Steamers and airplanes are on their way, in haste hut in despair, to the spot. Truly misfortune and death have dogged this race at every turn.

ARBITRATION LAW The report that the Government purposes the introduction of drastic alterations to the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act this session of Parliament recalls the fact that New Zealand at one time was the envy of the world for progressive democratic legislation. Time has changed Parliamentary reputation to the opposite—New Zealand does not now lead, but has to be driven, a dull laggard politically, to follow more progressive countries. Perhaps this is not altogether surprising. It was a merry party of Liberals that, in 1594, embarked lightly on the great adventure of industrial legislation. Historians tell us that the Parliament of that day was “mildly interested, rather amused, very doubtful,” when it passed the Industrial Conciliation and Arbitration Act. Where is that merry party now? It has a solitary representative in the 'House, Sir Joseph Ward, the greatest Liberal of them all, the only Liberal with an inflexible loyalty to true Liberalism. And what has happened to the arbitration law? In the eyes of many employers and workers alike it has become as battered as the old Liberal Party. It offers a rare opportunity to the Reform Party to prove that "the party’s name, which once meant something worth while, is not a mockery in politics to-day. NEW LIGHT : It is reported that Assyrian writing tablets dating back to 7000 B.C. have been unearthed. It may yet be possible to decide the antiquity of some of our choicest vaudeville jokes on the subjects of mother-in-laws and money