CURRENT TOPICS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 77, 9 July 1910, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS

THE PICTURE BOYCOTT. Speculative moving picture firms planned to make a huge fortune from the exhibition of films taken during tha recent prize fight at San Reno. They paid huge sums for the rights of taking a unique record, and the fighters were rewarded with small fortunes for permitting a camera to play on them. It seems likely that the speculators not reap such a large reward as tliey anticipated. Already in America, many authorities have decided that the pictures shall not be shown; in South Africa it has been feared that they will stir up race-hatred, and that the black population will get "out of hand"; in Australia there' is a decided feeling against the proposed picture exhibition, and steps have been taken in New Zealand to pass legislation preventing the pictures being shown in this country.] It has been pointed out in Parliament that as there' is no "race question" here the pictures should be allowed. No spec- j tacle could be more unedifying tmaii that of two men battering each other, and the realistic reproduction of the sordid money grubbing affair—also entirely for money—would be almost as unedifying as "the actual encounter. ilie temptation to stage this class of picture is, of course, very great, and entreprenuers cannot be blamed for giving the people what they so obviously desire. The Burns-Johnson fight pictures were an unqualified success from the managerial standpoint, and hundreds of thousands of people saw them gladly. If it can be held that the sight of those pictures did the seers any good, by all means let New Zealand have its fill of the black and white fight films. But K it can be proved that the constant "repetition" of this fight is debasing, appealing to the brute instincts, and unfit to be seen by women and children, by no means let them unload on a New Zealand wharf.

SECRET COMMISSIONS.

"There are tricks in every trade," and the trick of ''secret commissions" is known in most of them. Three years ago a Bill to make secret commissions illegal was promised, but the rush of j legislative work seems to have been too great since to allow of it getting beyond the pigeon-hole stage. We are now promised that such a Bill will be brought down by the Premier this session, and it is very gladdening to know that one dishonest practice at least will probably not be permitted in the future. A person is entitled to do business where and with whom he likes. Any servant of a principal who uses his employer's business in order to make secret emolument is dishonest. Any business man who descends to the practice of bribing of an intermediate party is equally dis-| honest. A true case will illustrate onej particular phase of the "secret commission" swindle. A certain man owned a house. He wanted to let it at a rental of thirty shillings per week. An agent promised to find a tenant—his commission to be the amount of one week's rental. This was agreed to. The agent had not obtained a tenant when he spoke to X {the owner), but he approached a man who desired a house, and. told him that, "for a week's rent," he would obtain a house. He did not tell the owner of his transaction with the potential tenant, and he did not tell the tenant of his transaction with the owner. He simply gathered in his three pounds for .indicating the number in a street Secretarial "cuts" and discpunts, "commissions" given to servants to "work" bigger business into the hands of firms, and the various other forms of dishonest perquisites, will vanish if the drastic Bill promised, emerges from its pigeonhole and is passed by the House.