FROM THE WATCH TOWER

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 227, 14 December 1927, Page 8

FROM THE WATCH TOWER

By "THt LOOK-OUT MAN” HASN'T TIL;EX HERE A Rotarian of Greenville, U.S.A., has written to Mr. W. J. Holdswortb, stating that Aucklanders are "infants in arms” when compared with Americans, in regard to the division of responsibility aud authority in matters municipal. But the Greenville man has never been to Auckland. Apparently he bases his opinion on wi'itten infoj'mation. Not even the most gifted writer could adequately convey to the people of another country a pen-pic-ture of Auckland’s municipal muddle. -THE OCTOPUS"

The City Council has at various times been called various things, but one does not recall the term "octopus” being applied to it before. It was left to the Mount Roskill Road Board to thus describe Auckland’s.chief local authority. Mount Roskill is resentful at having to pay the City Council Is a 1,000 gallons for water. It asked the council to reduce the charge to lOd, but the request was refused, although the city engineer, in evidence before the Water Commission, had admitted that the charge of Is would •stand reduction. “Now the work of the commission is over, and the position of the City Council is assured, this octopus refuses to give the matter consideration,” said Mr. L. A. Tozer, when the question was before the Mount Roskill Road Board. The board is to continue to protest against the higher rate, however. Meanwhile, the City Council is threatening to prohibit the use of hoses in the city being faced with a shortage of water from the reservoir system, which is supposed to be adequate to meet ail requirements for years to come. Still, it is some little comfort to note that the council’s management of the water supply is not quite as bad as its management of the tramways. * « * THE GIRL NAVVY

British civilisation is quite equal to that of the savage. In “the home of the brave and the free” there are any number of women who do the work that in other nations is undertaken by men with the mistaken idea that :is is not right to allow the “weaker sex” to do hard toil. The report of the Board of Industrial Research makes mention of 40 girls, residing in Glasgow, who work barefooted in a chemical factory for 10 full hours a day. They show remarkable health aiid physique (just like the Kaffir woman!), and one of them shovels from 20 to 25 tons of material a day. Women of the Midlands labour in brickworks, and wheel 4Jcwt barrows 70 to 80 yards all day. What excellent, wives they must make. Probably the only holidays they take is when they go home to have children. And what capabilities for making of a spare-time gardener in a woman who can shift 25 tons of material in a day and is handy with the wheelbarrow! Some New Zealand farmers could do with women like these for wives. In between milking the cows and cooking the meals, they .would think nothing of turning over an acre of soil a day. Representations should be made to the immigration authorities mi this connection, so that the burden of the man on the land could be eased in the manner suggested.

NATURE'S GREAT ADAPTABILITY Wonderful how Nature contrives to mould humanity to circumstances. It was found that 25 per cent, ot the youths intended for Australia’s citizen army did not come up to the new standard of height and chest measurement. That is Nature’s way of preparing for mechanised warfare. You can squeeze more undersized men than six-footers into tanks —those horrors which are now “perfected”—and feathei'-weights are best for airplanes. Small men can work machine-guns and drop bombs just as murderously as large men. “Ain’t Natcher grand?” as The Sentimental Bloke observed. THE BOSTON LAMPLIGHTER Even the lamplighter has his sense of importance. William Ryan who lights the lamps of Dorchester, a suburb of Boston, seeks to enlighten the world. Styling hiipself the “Organiser and President of the World League of Cities,” he has issued invitations to 7,300 countries. States and municipalities to participate in Boston’s tercentenary celebrations in 1930. He says he was born in Boston and has a right to invite whom he pleases to his native city. His activities were only discovered when it was in Moscow that the Soviet (which apparently did not know that William wri merely a Boston lamplighter) had accepted the Invitation and would send representatives to the celebrations. William says he rejoices at the Soviet’s acceptance; but this rejoicing is not shared by the Boston officials, who disclaim William’s action and particularly emphasises that when official invitations are issued the Soviet will not be included.