The Daily News TUESDAY, JANUARY 3, 1905. NOTE AND COMMENT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 7702, 3 January 1905, Page 2

The Daily News TUESDAY, JANUARY 3, 1905. NOTE AND COMMENT.

The Ota-go Daily Times, in an article on the decision of the A FAILUHE. Government to close the Inebriates' Home at Waitati, says :—The experiment, which was undertaken with the most praiseworthy motives, has, it is recognised, "( y t been a suecess. As we now know, it had not at any time the elements of success in it. The majority of the inmates have been described as irredeemable drunkards, who do no : i recognise, and cannot be brought to recognise, adequately the gravity of their condition or the misery it entails' on their families, are not anxious to reform, or to be reformed, and decidcdl'c resent being compelled to forego their freedom for a time in order to give themselves a chance of restoration to physical aad moral health. The average period for which they have been addicted to excessive drinking has been ascertained to be over 12 years. As the best .authorities are agreed that a?iy form of treatment without the sanction and help of the patient is virtually hopeless, the material upon which the managers of the home at Waitati had to operate was, it must be realised, of the mos A t distinctly unpromising kind. In reformatory cases in England, such as correspond more or less closely to the cases that form the bulk of those treated at Waitati, a generous estimate of recoveries would be 5 per cent.-- under conditions under which the average term of detention would be eighteen months. Upon this basis the cost to the State of every person cured of inebriety at Waitati would be considerably over £2OOO, and at this rate the fitness of the application by Dr. MacGr*?gor of the epithet "costly" to the experiment can scarcely be questioned. No notion is more generally entertained in the I'nitACKOSS THE ed States than that ATLANTIC, the cost of living is considerably lower in England than it is on the other side of the Atlantic. Nine Americans out of ten regard this as a fact not to be questioned, but according to arc official report from Marshall llnl-stea-d, Tinted Sta-tes Consul at Uirmingham, England, under date of September 30th, 1901, the notion in question appears to be more of a fallacy than a fact. At any rate, it does not appear to be based on the experience of those Americans who have lived in England or those Englishmen who have gone to America to live whom Mr Halstead quotes in Iris report. One letter written by an Englishman who is a commercial traveller, and who, after fourteen years of work at his culling in England, came to America, and is now travelling in the United States and Canaha, throws much light upon the mutter. This writer says :—'Contentment reigns everywhere. It is nonsense to say that the American works harcier than the Englishman, that he has more brains, that the circumstances are different. I find a great amount of sameness. The only difference I find is that it is ten times easier to make a living here than at Home. The people arc doing well, consequently they are better buyers. No man here, if he is worth his salt, will work for a bare living. I used to hear, to refute all this, tlia't in America living was so expensive that it neutralised all this high wage benefit. I contend that this is wrong. Such necessities of life as bread and meat are cheaper. Fuel is dearer, so is clothing, but not much. Anyhow, the great point is this : The American artisan is a far better dressed man, better fed, and more extravagant than his English confrere ; his children are given a free and better education ; he is more thought of. The snobs have not as yet coine to look down upon a man w'ho works, but honour him for it, and consequently give him more respect for himself." Most of the Americans interviewed agree that while the English working man lives cheaper it is because he stints himself, and that if he indulged himself and his family to the same extent that the generality of American working men do he would (iiwl the cost of living slightly higher here than it is in America. One American travelling man who went to England under the generally prevailing impression that living is cheaper there than in the Vnited Slates sn-id he found out that it costs more to live in England in the same way than it does in this country. Meat, bread, flour, vegetables, and fruits are dearer, clothing is about the some—underclothing he found to be dearer than in the United States — coal is about the same price, and rents are a trifle lower ; but he adds. that workmen lira in better houses in this country" than they could afford to live in in England. In conclusion, he says that he knows "for a met that several foremen in some of the leading engineering works in England received only 3(5 shillings a week ; that some of them had charge of over forty mmr, while those doing the same class of work in the United States would receive from 28s to £2 per day, and in sonic cases more."

Mrs Edith Searlc Grossman has a column - long arNEW ZEALAND tick- in the ExANI) ENGLISH press on the differ- • LADIES, once between the ways of New Zealand and English ladies, as both have come under her notice. She says :—"The first difficulty a colonial encounters in England is the rigid distinction made between one class and another. There is no such thing as a universal society of men and women who can meet 071 the broii'd platform of a common humanity. .Society is all broken up into circles, each with its own manners and set of ideas, looking up or down on every other set. English people think it either very snobbish or .very vulgar to want to get out 1 of your own set ure take a good view around. This is quite bewildering to a colonial woman, who is accustomed to pass from one class to another with perfect ease, to sit at tabic with shearers, and lake tea with prospectors and Maori settlers, to kiss her maidservants and exchange photographs with them when parting, and, in the intervals of helping with washing, and cooking, and' minding the baby, to attend university and vice-regal functions and the Ministerial crushes witlt impartiality. She must notqilo that sort of thing in England.' Her- inwould msult, hcr«Mgfcher_jiii^

elicited very strong adverse "comments on the part of some New Zealand ladies now in England, 1 who absolutely disclaim the alleged i practice on the part of colonial mis- < tresses of shower ing kisses on their ; maidservants. And Mrs Searlc ; Grossman proceeds 1o assert that an , English lady "must not even intro- , duce social reforms that lie outside j of the experience of any particular , class she happens to be in. It is !, almost an impropriety to admit the',, possibility of arranging one's meal i' hours or domestic habits differently , Iran those of (he people you are'] with. In 'polite society' oven the most indcittndcnt colonial visitor to England would not venture 1o men- ! tion 'apartments,' or ts suggest that she could by any possibility dine at mid-day instead of at half-past seven or eight o'clock. On the other hand a hostess in a middle-class set, who kept but one general servant, would make you feel that you had written ' yourself down a snob if you referred to butlers or late dinners. The collonial who does succeed in fitting into any English; class lives henceforth in plaster-of-Paris. The one who does not succeed is politely pulverised. In the colonics you can do and say what you like, and that is ; particularly the case in the country ; whereas in England the country people seem mare conventional than Londoners."