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Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 60, 31 August 1907, Page 3

The searchlights to be fitted to His Majesty's battleships now being built on the Clyde are of extraordinary power. The Glasgow Evening News says it would be possible to read a newspaper by the light of one at a distance of about 18 miles. The projector of the wonderful lights is no less than 48in in diameter, and the illiuuinant is Die electric arc. The apparatus is directed by means of electric motors instead of, as previously arranged, by hand. One curious fact about tlK'Se and similar projectors Is that a man standing quite close in front of the lense is not dazzled by the light, whereas one standing 20ft away is so blinded that he would be unable to see that the first man was standing in the light at all. Th? nearer man, however, would lind his position untenable, as the heat from the projector is intense. Mr. Koosevelt's campaign against railroad scandals will evidently be vigorously pursued by Mr. TY.ft if he attains Presidential rank. ''The aim of the National Government," said Mr. Pioosevclt a few weeks ago, "is quite as much to favour and protest holiest corporations, honest business men of wealth, as to bring to justice those individuals and corporations representing dishonest methods. Most certainly there will be no relaxation Hy the Government authorities in the effort to get at any great railroad wrecker—any man who, by clever swindling devices, robs investors, oppresses wage-workers, and does injustice to the general public. 1 ask for full power to be given the Federal Government, because no single State can, by legislation, effectively cope with these powerful corporations engaged in inter-State commerce. The conditions of railroad activity, the conditions of our immense inter-State commerce, are such as to make the central Government alone competent to exercise full supervision and control. There are blackmailers in public life, and the citizen who is honest will war against the man who tries to blackmail a railroad or a big corporation with the same stern determination to punish him as against the man who corruptly favours such corporation. But let the railroad man remember that to purchase humanity in wrongdoing, ov to defeat blackmail by bribery, is tile worst and most short-sighted of policies. The man who oil occasion will corruptly do what is wrong in the interests of a hi" corporation is the very man eager to blackmail that corporation as the opportunity arises. Hunt such a man out of public life. Hunt him out as remorselessly if he is a blackmailer as if he stands corruptly for special privilege. Demand honesty absolute unflinching honesty—together with courage and common sense in public servant and in business man alike."

A Ixiok ranvasser went into a barber's shop and asked the proprietor if he could lell him an encyclopaedia. '•What's that?" asked the barber. "It's a book that contains information on every subject in the world." There was a victim in the chair, and he put in feebly: "He doesn't ne«4 it." * ■<?