The Daily News. THURSDAY, JANUARY 17. CURRENT COMMENT.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVIII, Issue 81916, 17 January 1907, Page 2

The Daily News. THURSDAY, JANUARY 17. CURRENT COMMENT.

At tin* conclusion of the South Afri- 1 can war Now /calenders left their mi- 1 tivo land in large numbers for South Africa, which loomed in their eyes as ' the Kldorado of the future. How mistaken and disappointed the vision proved, wc all know. Few made any headway, and many returned poorer bub wiser, and more would have"ssha ken the S'outh African dust from their feet but for want of the passage money. Similarly:, when Sail Francisco was overwhelmed, a great number of our young men caught the first steamer for the Golden Gate, bent oa seeing the chance of ''making a rise. 5 ' if accounts of t/ie position of thing's in 'Frisco can be believed, the alluring pictures conjured up of the future of tlk* town are hardly likely to be realised. As aw afUumath to her ordeal of earthquake and lire, the unfortim ate town seeni's to be afflicted with a plague of greed and corruption. The shock of her first catastrophe ea led forth so conspicuously the civic and huniaMuirian virtues of he'r citizens that more than one paper proclaimed San .Francisco in ruin's "nobler iflnd dearer than San Francisco in the full tide of prosperity." Uut ''the period of high motives/'' assert the Pacific Churchman, a paper of that city, ''has been succeeded by an area of seHishand given!, W\itli "itA 1 estimate fruit of vice ami crime." Her second apparently, is a crisis of graft. Indications of her di'.-.tress. says the "Lkcrary Digest of New York." reached tiie East in rumours of welching insurance companies, of the mulcting of the city by the industrial corporations, and of shameless and defiant graft on the part of mein prominent in the control of municipal affairs.

Finally conies word of the apparently systematic looting of the relict fund, of whicfi about one million dol'ars is said to bo unaccounted for, and of the indictment of .Mayor Eugene. Schir.it z and Abraham Kucf on charges of blackmail aiiid extortion. It is said I hat Hie tapping of the relief fund will he made the subject of a Federal investigation, since it appears Unit a portion"of ..lie leakage occurred through the post. ollico. "There is no politics in the present outbreak of popular feeling," asserts the San Francisco Chronicle. "It is a simple question as to whether the oilieiuls of the city are honest men or thieves." The Philadelphian Press comments: "Six men wore shot in their tracks in San Francisco in the days immediately following the earthquake and fire, for looting 'Hie bodies of the dead and plundering the ruined homes of victims of the disaster. These wretches robbed the dead; but how much more abhorrent is the picture that has been presented in tin- last few weeks iti the revelation concerning the piracy and graft of certain men and politicians who have been systematically robbing the destitute living in tlm't stricken c.lv!"