CURRENT TOPICS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 76, 8 July 1910, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS

WHAT IT MEANS. The barque Viganella ca.me to this port yesterday after a voyage occupying lour mouths. The sixteen men ou her had no communication of any kind with the world during that time. Their whole world was bounded by the bow and the stern of a small ship. There is nothing on earth so depressing to man as to be cooped up with others of his own sex for a long period, and it is easy to understand that in the days before steam aitered the whole science of navigation and made the world so small, that little ships on long voyages were "living hells." It is impossible for the landsman who has never experienced the feeling of utter isolation, to understand the real physical joy that a sailor leels when, after many days on the trackless ocean, he at last spies a sail. It is the only indication he is afforded that there are other people than himself and his mates in the world. Besides sailors, there are the lone men of the great land wastes who can appreciate what joy thereNis in seeing someone or something new. Sailors are often blamed for excesses when, after long voyages with no incident, they at last reach land and are so overjoyed that they take their fill' of whatever novelty the port affords. But such excesses (seen also in the bushman, the soldier, the man of the .desert) are merely the revulsion of feeling after separation from ordinary everyday life. The sailor who tackles a voyage in a deep-sea sailing boat is a brave man. His forerunners were the men who made it possible for us to inhabit this land. One does not know the joy of decent eating unless one nas lived ion, "hard tack" for a lew months; and one cannot believe what a valuable thing a printed paper or a book is, unless one has been at sea for awhile or has been cut off from one's kind in the desert. Nobody who has lived in New Zealand all his life appreciates tiie-real delight of a drink of fresh water, because he has never lacked it. But today even on sailing ships tiie conditions are infinitely easier than they were before the days of tinned provision*. The brine. tub and the weevilly biscuit locker, if not entirely things of the past, are not common circumstances, but the craving for something new is to-day as great as it was then. A sailing ship which will not touch land lor aour HM«itk« is no place for weaklings, «.nd it is because of this fact that navies and the mercantile marine have done such wonders in the great work of colonisation, physical endeavour and grand endurance. To understand the absolute aloofness of these German sailors from! the world, it is only necessary to mention'that they knew nothing of the greatest event of the year—the death of King Edward. And we suppose that, in a short time even sailing vessels will not be aloof, for the wizard Marconi is making the earth and the sea very, intimate. The coming of the barque is an event of no small importance to'Taranaki, for it marks the commencement of a period when, instead of relying on the big ports for our importations, we will have our goods unshipped at Moturoa direct from the Old Country, and our produce sent to England by the same l means. An even more eventful circum? stance will be the arrival of. the harbormaker, the dredge Paritutu, in a day or two. The making of the .harbor means the making of the town and advancing the province as a whole. The arrival of the dredge will not only be a red-letter day in the history of Taranaki, but will mark an era of unparalleled development and prosperity, in which everyone in the province must share.

DISTRIBUTION OF WEALTH. No one has ever heard of a Socialist who refused to become wealthy. There are cases of Socialists who are very wealthy, but they do not distribute their wealth. The Socialist holds tnat although it is very wrong to increase one's wealth at the expense of one's fellow man, it is reasonable to get all one can while the conditions are as now. So it is gratifying to hear the Daily News of London on the question, for the Daily News is worth a million pounds or'so, and is therefore entitled to hold that wealth is* unequally distributed when it has a million pounds and Brown the navvy has twopence. In the meantime it won't augment Brown's twopence, although it remarks tliat prohablv some day the tramways mid the railways will be .as free as the roads, as this simply means "redressing the handships caused by unequal distribution of wealth." Before it is possible to "equalise" wealth, and to make public services free, it is necessary to kill human ambition. It is necessary, for instance, to persuade the Daily News of London that it is a very wrong thing for it to continue to circulate when it could make many thousand of people witlnout money, happy with a few pounds!' It is feasible for the person who has no money, to speak of the wickedness of accumulation, but no one refuses to accumulate money if he has the chance. If great public conveniences held bv private corporations were made free, they could onlv be made free bv the State compensating the owners and •taxing the people to pay the money. By this method the state would oreatly enrich the owners, and would certainly not "distribute" wealth. It would only be forcing great concerns to realise for cash and"to become idle. Tf tramwavs and railwavs become as free as roads, there seems to be no reason why one should have to pay to voyase from England to New Zealand, or elsewhere in 'ships. . If one can get a free tram rifle, whv not a free cab ride, fme bread and butter, and all the rps+ nf the necessities nf life? The average idealist who preaches about the distribution of

wealth) does not believe his own sermon. | Ti« finest method of testing him would be to give him a railway of his own, so' that he might make it free for the ■ people. Do you think he would do so? ]

THE "GOLDEN PAST." ihe Kev. il. Taylor, M.P. for Thames, louclifcu on an interesting topic in the .House of representatives the other uay when he mentioned that the " tote " was an innocent atiair compared to "scripping" in umvorked mines. As Air. .tailor lias lived for nearly thirty years in a mining district, where "scripping" was once one of the chief "industries," 'lie knows something 1 about it. In- the boom times of Upper Thames, a man might apply for a "special claim" of, say, one hundred acres. He pegged and surveyed this, whether he knew there was gold in it; or not. He generally gave it a high-sounding title like "Golden Morning" or the "Great Nugget," and had to apply to the Warden's Court for the granting of a license to mine. Dozen after dozen of these special claims were granted at every sitting of the Warden's Court, and it was a condition of the license that the licensee should employ a stipulated number of men. Not one claim in a dozen employed the stipulated number, and exemptions were easy to obtain. Gold was frequently not sought at all, but good "specimens" found their way to agents' office, and there were some splendid "flotations. 1 Men technically "bought" shares in these properties, knowing „that tihey were not being worked, but their selling df the scrip was very real, *nd the money paid by people who had never seen the claims they were interested in made many people wealthy in the district. In comparison with the "tote," therefore, > Which does exist, and wnich '•pays out," this kind of "scripping" was not gambling—it was sheer robbery. It would be interesting to know what has become of all the "special claims" that were taken up for the purpose of selling worthless shares in the days ot the gold boom. .

MAGISTERIAL INCONSISTENCY In the Magistrate's Court yesterday a Chinese was fined £5, with costs, £-1 ISs, for snatching a rope out of the hand of the Borough Inspector, who was leading thex alien's horse to the pound. In the same Court, a white man who had assaulted the same inspector, and who had, according to evidence, knocked him down and used insulting! language to him, was fined £2, with costs £1 4s, He was allowed a fortnight in which to pay. The Chinese was allowed one week. We suggest that the Magistrate who inflicted such a heavy fine for the minor offence was inconsistent. It would be interesting to know what Kind of fine would have been inflicted on Joe Wong if HE had assaulted the Inspector, and whether the case against. John Tuohy would have been dismissed if he had snatched a rope out of the official's hand.