CURRENT TOPICS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 106, 12 August 1910, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS

TAXING BOWLING GREENS.' The spectacle of a deputation of bowlers calling on the Premier to ask him not to allow their greens to 'be rated must have been most pathetic. They pointed out that their greens were such ornaments to the town, and all that sort of thing. Playing fields of any kind are ornaments to a town, but if they are privately held they are rightly taxed. A man's front garden is an ornament to a town, and it is taxed, too, even if the man is a laborer at two pounds a week, and the man who plays on the bowling green next door is a bank manager with a thousand a year. Even if fowling is not indulged in exclusively by the mOnied and leisured classes, it is certain that the leisure of most bqwfera is great enough to suggest that they do ndt find it necessary to keep their hoses to the grindstone perpetually. The system of unimproved value rating has had 'the effect of forcing owners of property to build for financial reasons. Most bowling greens have buildings on them, and in cases we could mention the buildings are valuable and palatial. It is absurd , to suggest that a bowling club that can 'afford a couple of thousand pounds to i erect pavilions, club-rooms and the like ! cannot afford to be taxed at the same rate as the owner of a residence section, j The big bowling clubs which desire free-| dom from taxation have very large memberships. The tax of the average bowling green cut up among the members would "be : very small. The ordinary tradesman who pays iaa sixpence to flee

a football match would scorn to send a deputation to anybody asking that his Saturday afternoon's amusement should be free. If local bodies are given the option of rating bowling greens or not rating them, it is possible that unless a council is wholly composed of'bowlers , who object to be treated like average I citizens that the rates will be duly levied. ! Af least one may hope so.

NEW YORK SOCIETY. We have been permitted a view of high life in and around New York because a •'new broom sweeps clean." The cables tells us that a gambling house at Narrangansett frequented iby society men and women of great wealth was raided by a new constable who evidently knew no ibetter, and' that his chief was so enraged that he and his party fought the constable's party; It is evidently so uncommon for a policeman to do his duty in New York or thereabouts that police captains get a shock when such a mislake occurs. But the story of that raid is most interesting as a sidelight on the kind of society which spends all its useless time in searching for new sensations. Ultimately the millionaire and his women will kill America or America will kill the millionaire and Ms parasites. Miss 'Ethel Barrymore, a famous actress, recently, had a word to say of New York society: "If a plague were to wipe out the entire society element in New York the metropolis would' be none the worse. Society women in America—at least in New York —accomplish nothing and give nothing to the world. Their international marriages are a failure, because they have not enough culture, education and serious purpose to interest for very long a foreign nobleman or to meet the requirements of foreign society. In New York, if a woman can join gracefully in the inanities of the ordinary dinner table she will pass muster, but if she should happen to touch on anything that the real men of the country are doing, or if she should venture on a discussion of political issues and problems, books, or any of the multiple interests which might appeal to one of her mental capacity, she is shunned as a frightful bore. New York women of wealth are merely selfish and piggish, content with comfortable living quarters, good dinners, a little goll and bridge, and a rapid ride or two in a motor car. A millionaire is bad enough, but the son of a millionaire—ugh! Why, the average son of an American millionaire has not ibrains enough to interest a cat. He has no purpose in existence. He j never enters the world of affairs, the poI litical arena, science, art, or a career of i any kind, as the English gentlemen con- < sider it their duty to do. All the rich young American cares for is to lie about in a luxurious club, talk polo and golf, and 'bask in the glory of his father's dollars at infinite leisure." And when a new policeman dares to interfere—his 1 captain fights him!