CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 272, 7 April 1911, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

AN UNJUST ACT. S. St. J. Lidiard, a master mariner, is totally blind as a result of injury sustained while employed at his avocation. The Compensation Court has decided, as it necessarily had to decide with the Act to guide' it, that as the skipper of the Pitoitoi had been earning upwards of £5 per week, he was outside the scope of the Workers' Compensation Act. If Lidiard, who is now, of course, absolutely incapable of earning his livelihood, liad been earning £4 19s lid per week he would have been entitled to compensation. If lie had been earning £5 0s y 2 d per week he would have been outside the benefit of the Act. The result *of the action is tragic to a man who, had he foreseen his fate, would have been probably glad to take less than £5 per week so that he might be compensated for irreparable and awful injury. An incurable and permanent disability is as great a blow to the man who earns £8 a week as to the man who earns £4. If a man earning more than £5 a week is outside the Scope of the Act, why insist that lie should be insured against probable injury? The presumption of the -framers of the Act is that a man earning more than the minimum named has sufficient means to make compensation! for total disablement unnecessary. We believe that every fair-minded person will sec the harshness of the provision, and it is hoped that the disability may be removed next sesson. The number of cases for compensation brought under the Act are not so many as to seriously handicap insurance companies, which necessarily do a very lucrative business in this class of policy. If the wage-earner, whatever his weekly emolument may be, is insured under the Act, he should obviously be entitled to its benefits. Under present circumstances, increase of wages to a worker may mean loss of benefit under the Act, and an added half-crown may easily prevent an incapacitated person from obtaining £SOO or less to which he would otherwise be entitled. Although the majority of compensation cases are settled out of court, they are rarely settled without recourse to legal advisers, so that even though the right to compensation seems as "plain as a pikestaff," few beneficiaries under the Act are able to obtain the full sum to which they are supposedly entitled. In the case of Lidiard the common-sense citizen simply holds that blind eyes are sightless, whether their unfortunate owner earns £lO a week or £5.- The Act ridiculously infers that a blind man who used to earn about £5 10s a week is better able to put up with lifelong blindness than he who earned ten shillings less.

MORE ABOUT BUTTER. The fame of New Zealand as a butterproducing country is spreading in Britain, largely through newspaper advertising, but principally through the literature inspired by the advertisements. Owing to the insistence of our representatives in London the papers are helping New Zealand butter, the representatives knowing that in the matter of our butter it is necessary merely to tell the truth about it. In a recent article in the London Daily Chronicle it is shown that the development of a great trade in butter between Britain and New Zealand is '"one of the romances of modern commerce." Tho, first consignments of butter and cheese were sent round the world in 18S5, and in 1910 the Mother Country received from the Dominion 321,915cwt. of butter and 441,884cwt. of cheese, valued at £3,000,000. Mr. Cameron, Produce Commissioner, had told a reporter who sought information on the subject that' the New Zealand dairy farmer had an enormous advantage in being able to keep his cows on the natural pasture all the year round. "Some persons," said Mr. Cameron, "have an objection to the rich golden color of our butter, but that color is due to the richness of our pastures. A great deal of the butter which comes to this country is got from stallfed cows, and this accounts for its pale color." What was really needed, he added, was a New, Zealand brand, which could be used by all the factories. Buyers would know then when they were being supplied with the Dominion's butter. Under present conditions a large part of the supply was bought in Britain by traders and used for blending with and improving other butters. The Produce Commissioner explained the efforts that bad been made by the New Zealand Government to maintain a very high standard of quality in the dairy factories. Probably no small number of London people, after reading the Daily Chronicle article, were possessed of a new desire to taste the butter that had travelled 12,000 miles by sea and was being sold fresh at their doors. THE EDISON STORAGE CAR. The latest information to hand concerning the Edison storage battery car does not by any means justify the very high opinions expressed by its promoters and those who have come under their spell. Writing to Mr. E. G. Foster, of the Invercargill tramwayspMr. H. R. Benjamin, 8.E., of Auckland, now with the American Wcstinjrhouse Electric Company, makes the following reference to the much-discussed Edison storage battery car: —"I was in New York for a couple ' of weeks last November, and paid special: attention to those vehicles in which I

rode. My personal opinion is that the battery cars are a splendid advertisement for Thos. A. Edison. There are 00 cells, supplying current totwoo-h.p or 7'/ 2 -h.p. motors, chain drive on to the axle. The batteries are under the seats. They say here that 20 lead cells would drive the same motors as the CO' Edison, and would weigh the same. The ears are light enough; in fact, they look frail, and run at a very low speed. They travel about the same speed as the horse cars. I should not recommend them in any place except where the franchise cannotbe got for the trolley system, as is the case in New York City. In contrast to this, I see in the journals that the Edison storage battery is a great success, but they generally talk like that in a review of the year's progress. Those other lines quoted as using the battery cars are small feeder lines. Tliey have been giving demonstrations of the cars in NewYork and New Jersey for a long time, but so far they have not been adopted by any large concern. They are good for delivery waggons, which bear an inscription, 'This car is using Edison batteries,' and many of the large stores use them I entirely."