CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 253, 4 March 1911, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

TARANAKI PETROLEUM. That the' visit of Mr. J. D. Henry, the English oil commissioner, will give the oil industry in these parts, and of New Zealand as a whole, the h'lip required to establish it on a sound commercial basis, there are good grounds to believe. Mr. Henry confesses that he came out favorably disposed towards New Zealand as a likely oil-producing country, and what he has seen since being here lias but strengthened his first impressions. Nothing could be more unequivocal or encouraging than his declaration at the presentation ceremony yesterday: "I did not expect to find here such extensive prospecting fields as I have found. . . Taranaki is the field I intend to support in the Old Country. I am prepared to back Taranaki against the other fields of the Dominion." And at the banquet the previous evening he was quite as enthusiastic in his references to the.industry, the value of which he ventured to prophesy would within the next six years be equal to the value of our gold industry. (Our present gold yield amounts to about two millions sterling annually.) These arc encouraging words; they could hardly be more so. Mr. Henry's unique and high position in the petroleum world invests his views and opinions with considerable weight. In fact, it is said in England that the oil investors trust no one more absolutely or so whole-heartedly as Mr. Henry, who was mainly, if not solely, responsible for the big development that has taken place in recent years in the oil measures of Trinidad and Newfoundland. If, by his writings and influence, Mr. Henry can do for New Zealand only one-fourth of what he has accomplished for the islands mentioned, then we are in for very good times indeed. Capital, and abundant capital, is required to thoroughly exploit our field. Our people—the people of New Zealand—have not yet awakened to the fact that we have vast stores of wealth at our very doors crying loudly to be unlocked, and so it is clear that we must look elsewhere for the necessary capital. Here Mr. Henry steps in and tells us that the time has arrived when we should make friendly alliance with British finance. To the consummation of this alliance Mr. Henry has pledged himself. We have no doubt whatever that he will be successful, and the time may be near at hand. With that accomplished, a new and brighter era will be opened, not only for Taranaki and New Plymouth, but for the Dominion as a whole.

TING-A-LING! We ventured to prophesy a while ayo that in the near future a telephone would be considered as necessary a part of a town house as a fireplace. The remarkable development in telephony is, however, much more likely to effect benevolent revolutions in rural districts than in urban. Groups of settlers in New Zealand, as elsewhere, have been quick to grasp the benefit, and we have from America lately an inspiring promise that soon there will be ''a telephone in every farmhouse." Tt is impossible to overestimate the benefits to be gained to isolated communities by vocal connection with distant centres. The unobtrusive and inexpensive wire that stretches from settlement to centre, from farmhouse to surgery, from garden to market, is going to revolutionise settlement, for it is the isolation, the loneliness, the sense of social aloofness that handicaps settlement. It is a wonderful thought that the man living practically in the i wilds can, just because of the genius of one person, communicate with the other end of the earth. It is only necessary to tell a little story to illustrate the fact that the telephone is a better friend than fast horses, as helpful as good friends and warm hearts, and more indispensable in some circumstances than gold. In a remote portion of this province a strong man was smitten down in the bush. He was surrounded with mates who would have given their last penny for him, who would have performed prodigies of heroism to save his life, but who were 40 miles from any place where surgical aid could be had. The obvious thing to do was either to carry him forty miles or to ride furiously to the township. The latter course was taken. The doctor who was summoned made not a moment's delay. When he reached the patient, the latter was dead. "I could have saved him if 1 had been an hour sooner," was all he said. To-day if such a thing happened in the same vicinity, the victim's mates could communicate with the township in a few minutes —and a motor car and a doctor- would do the rest. Nothing we could write could be more convincing in advocacy of ''a telephone in every farmhouse." We in Taranaki are often brought face to face with the fact that women will not go to the backblocks. No man who knows anything about backblocks blames the women. The life is frequently a living death. But in the far future when the powers that be understand that settlement is the vital need of the country, they will make a habit of roading before settling and of linking up new settlements by telephony as an absolute essential and not a luxury.

RENMARK AND MILDURA. Attention is drawn to Renmark, the great irrigation settlement on the river Murray, by the news that the fruitgrowers' laborers are striking for more pay and that the local butchers have decided to starve them into submission. This is perhaps the only occasion on record where this means of quelling a strike has been adopted, and is especially quaint seeing that the butchers have -not much to do with fruit and must necessarily play a losing commercial game. But of great interest is the fact that Renmark as well as Mildura—both on the same river—have been saved from the desert to become the homes of thousands of prosperous fruit cultivators. Before the advent of- the American men, Chaffev lb-others, both potential settlements were mere wastes of drought-smitten malloe scrub, capable, perhaps, of sustaining in misery one sheep to fifteen or twenty acres. These American engineers obtained options over huge areas of this desert from the Governments of Victoria and South Australia, advertised wonderfully in Britain, erected huge pumping plants, cut up the areas into ten-acre blocks, channelled the whole, and raided both settlements on the American plan, numbered streets at right angles to "avenues" and intersecting every line of blocks at each boundary. The peculiarity of these settlements is that the greater proportion of the settlers are English university men. There is an air of culture about both Mildura and Renmark, and there is no doubt about the beauty of the "fruitstcads," the homes of the people, and the settlers' industry and prosperity. Because of lack of cap'ital in the earlier days of the settlements the hundreds of miles of irrigation channels were not concreted, so that the soakaije from the channels brought up a destructive saline earth-constituent and devastated many magnificent fruit plantations. The lack of capital also caused a strike among the men who tended the great irrigation works and as a continuation of irrigation was the only salvation of the settlements, the earefullv-broiight-up young men from England.' who had taken up laud literaliv "manned the pumps" and saved the' situation. (; 0 - vernnient .help brought about, the eoncretins: of the great channels, and today Mildura supports one person for every ,acre under cultivation. The two

settlements are wonderful examples of , what can be-done by enterprise, patience and water, and although it was at one time freely stated that the American men who were responsible for the great schemes were mere money-making adventurers, they opened up a prospect to Australia up to that time undreamt of. The. products of those two settlements are famous the world over to-day, but the notoriety of the founders to whom Australia should erect an imperishable monument has died down.