CURRENT TOPICS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 67, 28 June 1910, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS

BEAUTIFICATION. "If beauty draws lis by a single hair," it may also draw us by a single flower, the curve of a roadway, a perfect sunset, the waving of the grass, or the song of the imported small bird nest. The world left to itself is perfectly beautiful. The moods of Nature, the absence of sameness, the variety of every step taken in Nature's garden, are. full of nameless joy. We moderns are so matter-of-fact that we plug home along the Carrington or Avenue road without a thought of "the mountain"; we avoid the Pukekura Park, and think of figures and davbooks and the squalor of breadwinning; but, all the same, gloom would nail on the most unromantic person. Take a beauty-fed New Plymouth man to the wastes of the Waimarino plains, rob him of the things lie has forgotten to he proud of. and you miike him more sour. J Notice the common fern growing in a , dark stable. It reaches out to the faint ray of lisrht it sees through the crack ill the ceiling. The imprisoned miner reaches for the little ray of 'light and for the infinite beauty of the world above ground. Nature, in her prodigious • .disparities, groups her.beauties, and man, insensibly loving all Nature's loveliness, brings art to bear to help Na-

tare to collect Iter benefices. In New Plymouth, therefore, it is possible not only to display the indigena, but to give the favored people a glimpse of what the earth mother bears in far sundered places. And any people who assiduously endeavor to train their kind in an appreciation of natural beauty are preaching sermons that can never be forgotten. So one thariks the local Beautifying Association, because it could never have become such an association without the natural love of the work. New .Plymouth is specially lucky in having many unspoiled people. There are people here who reverence the unthinkable marvels Nature performs with her rain and her sunshine, her glorious soil, and her neverfailing productiveness. Throughout the Dominion there are shocking vandals, but we sincerely hope that the sort of nationalists who compose our association' wilt yet wield sufficient influence to preserve the splendors of our native trees and shrubs. It is gratifying to the lover of the beautiful to observe the special regard many people of this town have for native plants, and to see that in several cases men are assiduously propagating them. No temperate country has such a wealth of magnificent indigenous plants, and .no country has an easier task in 'beautifying places that are not already beautiful. Mr. Blow, UnderSecretary for Worts, during a recent rush through Queensland noted the absence of beauty round the homes of the selectors. The average Queensland selector has no more chance of beautifying his homestead tlian he has of getting cool in December. It is just a matter of water and the benefice of (Nature. New Plymouth does not need to worry about lack of water or the vagaries of Nature. We are very glad that the local association intend to extend the •work they have already done. A community which lives in the lap of loveliness must necessarily imbibe its influence, and this particular community has a better opportunity than most others of luxuriating- •in all the .prospects that please.

•ABOUT FOOD.. If half the population of Taranaki came to live in New Plymouth, anfl engaged in town occupations, the price of eatables would "increase vastly. The people who left the country to enter the town would have ceased to .become food producers, and whatever town occupation they happened to undertake they would ;be food consumers only. We cannot make food toy turning a handle. We make only the money, which has no value until it is exchanged. Nothing is so valuable as food. The Waihi mine output wouldn't be any good to anybody a hundred miles in the Sahara desert. In fact, reasoned broadly, the concentration of people in towns is a weakness in any country. The country that has its population welt spread, that has no great towns, but many small ones, each a depot for the food producers, is the country that is thriving best, and getting fed in the cheapest possible way. There is, indeed, room in the world for every person to himself produce his own necessities of life.' S'o that, like many ideas that come from America, there is real "horse-sense" in the words of the Senate Committee about the tariff,in its effect on the prices of foodstuffs. These are wise words: "The shifting of the population from fopd producing to food consuming has increased the-price of food more than the tariff can do." Life in the city has many attractions for the man on t)ie land. 'lf the farmer's son becomes a bootmaker in the town, he has gone out of the food-producing industry. Although he is engaged in a highly necessary occupation, he is only one of myriads who abandon broad spaces for little backyards and handkerchief sections. America iboasts proudly that it has cities that will soon be as large as London. There is nothing to be proud of in congested areas, sky-scrapers, the problem' of poverty that always comes with great cities, and the fact that the supply of food producers does not grow at the same rate as the supply of food-eaters. There is a manufacturing fever in many countries, and although everything manufactured comes from the earth,, the growth of manufactures does not always spell the health and wealth of the people. Manufactures are riecessary only so long as they can 'be immediately dis posed of. Most modern manufacture is by way of producing more than is needed; and with the disposition of an increasingly large proportion of people to abandon agricultural or pastoral pursuits, comes a lessening of the food supply and a consequent increase of prices for it. The food producer is quite independent, for his sustenance, of any organisa tion. To give a homely "Illustration. A Taranaki farmer might feed himself and his family for their natural lives without going outside histyaddocks, except for seed. The productivity of Nature is so vast that her increase is in just proportion to the needs of animal life. The idea that food should be dear near thousands of acres of fertile ar.ci unused land shows the remarkable loss of instinct in man. Nearly all modern social troubles spring from unnaturalness. and a disinclination to earn a living by the Adamic method. The methods of the nations may change, and it will yet be found necessary not to attract ipeople to centres, but to spread them over the fruitful earth, where there is enough food to send everybody to bed with a full stomach—and for this latter we work, when 'all is said and done.