AMERICA UP TO DATE.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 204, 2 October 1909, Page 4

AMERICA UP TO DATE.

JOHN FOSTER EBASEIt. Mr. dob* Foster leaser gave the tii'sr, of a series of lectures in Sydney lately. A few of his observations on America were: — "Everybody who goes to New York ;a impressed by the huge skyscrapers. I was shown the highest building in Sydney—nine stories high. Why, I have smoked a cigar on the twenty-ninth storv of a building in New York, and i wasn't at the top of it either." "If the men folk want bifurcated garments and the manufacturer can't sew them together at the price—well, they s»Jue them together/' "They have very fine department stoics in America, where you get served ivit.'iout wasting any time. They give you a card when you go hi, and the price of each thing you buy is put on it as you go from department to department, unt i you reach the exit, wliero you pay for your purchases all at once." ••'The finest on earth.' That's a phrasw i haven't heard in Australia."

'"ln one department store 1 was shown •eventeeii of the fiir est tilings on earth n seventeen minutes." 1 "In America everything is the linest • (?n earth, My guide in the st"r:* told me how many times the string thev used would go around the earth, ami how maiiv Dreadnoughts could l>e floated in the ink they used." | The tall buildings furnished Mr. Knner with no much food for comment or jest is the tall talk. All tin- tjme the lecture was proceeding pictures were thrown on the screen w'hich illustrated the descriptions in well-managed sequence. They were rattled through, some of them without any particular reference being uade to them, but they were an excelout illustration of what was being told, some of the views were particularly striking. There wus, for instance, while .he lecturer was on buildings and the making of them, a'.series of the famous 'flat-iron" buildings on one of Broadway's corners. "The most aquiline building I have ever met," the lecturer said, lie spoke of the seething life within them, of the express lifts—or, as the Americans call them, "elevators"—and it was mentioned that the American never uses a short word where he can set a long one. That by the way. These lifts, he went on to say, carried some of Lhe business men of New York and Chicago at a tremendous fipeed as near heaven as some of them have any right ever to expect to be. This freak of a 'building sometimes nways in the wind, being but a steel frame with an envelope of masonry. The pictures showed how in the system by which houses are built by engineers, instead of bv stonemason* ind bricklayers, the masonry is commenced anywhere while the frame 5# tzoing up. "Long before the top isi I reached with lhe stonework, why, people are in the offices below, and 60mc of them have been turned out for not paying their rent." All this pleaHimtry was. of course, but the silver side of American life. like i pall there came across the screen one if th n greatest blots of that country's 'ace—a more than blot, in fact, for it is i hideout- cunerr. It was when a picture >f Tanpniinv Hull—the building used its headquarters—was shown, followed by a lowering, dissolute, hangdog-looking individual who was held up as ontf of Tammany's supporters,

Thence the slorv was carried 031 down in tho Bowery with all its squalor and 'ilth and degradation. It was the seamy .'Me of one city of America with a venge--1 nee. and one with which Mr. Kraser had nide Irmself us well acquainted ns the other. 11c N thorough in his travels, and dots not he*il»ile to examine both sides of (he question.

Still, there was a tremendous amount 'i? favor of the land on the othr-r side of, 'lie Pacific. Mr. Vraser seemed to glo-v with enthusiastic admiration as he spoke :>f the commercial education and of tho marvellous monuments of industry anft enterprise. He had much to tell on this score, and toht it well. He had seen, and h'.» knew. Mighty masses of machinery veic shown and explained. Yet there ilways came up the note of fear, of horror, or of dread. "Where 'are vo<\r Old men?" he asked one of his guides, ind the answer from that philosopher was that they wore practically to be seen 'n the cemetery. He had 110 rccomme?v laf'on to give to a young man to leave \u*tralia a ad go to America, for all the mpreciation of the young heads that prevails there. His opinion was that the vouth of the nation is paying too dearly for what it gets. He described the Baldwin' engine works, and dwelt for some time on the railway svstem'Of the Tufted States. With all the-talk of fast travelling on the railroads, he declared that Ule average *peed is about 35 miles an hour. "They ivill tell von they travel at 70 miles an hour." he remarked. "Well, so they do—for half a mile—downhill."