CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 278, 15 April 1911, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

THE "ENCUMBRANCES." The public bodies and private people who have billets to give to married people only if they have "no encumbrances," are not the only people who discourage children and are enemies to the race. The mother who has travelled with her offspring knows that they are generally not only unwelcome on public conveyances, but in many public houses, both licensed and otherwise. As far as the railway authorities are concerned, they assist in the antipathy to youngsters by penalising the parents in fares. The point of view of any railway management is that it does not cost more money to draw one hundred people than one hundred and twenty. Many trains in this country do a proportion of their journeys "half empty." For the purposes of revenue and to the penalty of the parent, the railway department insists that parents of children over the age of three years and under the age of twelve years, shall pay half adult fares for each. A child of seven or eight years is no more trouble to the railway authorities or its passengers than a, child of three years. The idea that a child of thirteen years is an adult for the purposes of revenue is a very harsh one. It not only prevents thousands of children from obtaining a necessary "change," but cash consideration also prevents parents undertaking holiday journeys. The railways in New Zealand arc supposed to belong to the people. State-owned railways should be run as cheaply and conveniently for their owners as possible. If the State railways permitted children up to eight years of age to travel with their parents free, more parents would travel. The revenue would not be affected, because trains cost as much to run without these potential passengers as they do with them. If the State allowed children from the age of eight years to fifteen years to travel at half adult rates, four times the number..of children between these ages would travel with their parents, and more parents would take advantage of the railways. The trains would cost no more to run. And, at any rate, the trains belong to the people. Maybe this is a small matter, but extension of privileges to parents of large families would add to the pride of their possession. If more children travelled on the railways, the general public might in time learn to regard them with more toleration. In fact, they might become even fashionable. When the parental pride of the Chinese, or the national love of children that marked the Napoleonic era, settles in New Zealand, even a cast-iron railway department may help to nurture it. REWARDS OF INVENTORS. Discoverers and inventors are not rewarded by society in accordance with any equitable plan. Probably the greatest discoveries ever made were appropriated by the people who have profited by them without any recognition of the source from which they came. The protection of ideas, while not entirely unknown to the ancients, was never systematically practiced by them, hence we have nothing but myth to account for the origin of devices the adoption of which proved vastly beneficial to mankind. It is one of the greatest glories of an age often condemned for its commercial tendencies that it lias witnessed the development of the sentiment that a man is entitled to enjoy the fruits of his mind. Tt has. however, been of slow growth, and has not yet received general recognition. There is still a large element which insists that because knowledge and aptitude are tlie result of the accumulated experiences of ages, that their possession l>r the individual ought not inure to his particular benefit, but that he should employ them for the common good, without any expectation of reward. Fortunately for the world, this socialistic view has not prevailed. Instead the lawmaker has gone on the assumption that while qualities of the sort would find expression in discovery and invention may be a heritage of the ages, and as such, when exercised, their fruits should be for the general benefit, it is necessary to stimulate Lhein to activity by the hope of reward. Tt is to that end that patent and copyright laws have been enacted, and through their agenev man is reaping inestimable benefits. These laws are based ' solely on the observed fact that altruistic collectivism is not creative. Its tendencies are all in the direction of distribution, and not of production. Tt, aims at equalising the enjoyments of men, and abhors the idea of the individual profit- j ing by lii.s superior attainments, i, this! were not the case, if lawmakers could be convinced that the energies and ingenuity fit' the people would lie exerted without the stimulus of reward, their course would be clear. Til that event tiiey would accord no protection to the inventor or discoverer, and permit the whole people to appropriate inventions and discoveries as fast as they were made. Experience teaches us, however, that in the absence of the stimulus of reward, invention and discovery are sure to In;;, and that as a result production remains stationary, or actually diminishes. There are two or three historic instances of arrestment of progress dircct-

I.V traceable to this latter cause, but the chief evidence, of the ellicacy of holding nut inducements is the enormous increase of productivity that lias attended the; modern experiments of giving brains a good show. It i.s just a hundred years iijjo that Franeois Appert, a French scientist, discovered that food could lie preserved liy cooking and then sealing the cans. His great service was recognised by a reward of iTiIHI from the French Government. The amount seems ludicrously small when the vnslness of the benefit conferred, is considered, but it bore some relation to that immediately conferred, for it was many years after the discovery before it was greatly utilised, and then only because other innovations called into.existence by the extension of the monopoly privilege made it possible to resort to canning on a large scale. The world had managed to exist several thousand years without resorting to canning, and would probably have gone on more thousands of years if Appert bad not discovered its efficacy for preserving purposes. But he made the discovery, and the result is a tremendous enlargement of the human dietary and an enormous increase in the production of consumable things. The stimulus of reward has called into existence a host of Apperts, who are discovering and inventing new tilings daily, and thereby adding to the sum of human comforts. The fact that the particular form of mental activity which results in increased pro. duction ha,s never exhibited itself on a large scale, except in response to the hope of gain, proves conclusively that it is profitable, to make the rewards commensurate wiiii the benefits conferred. Moderns have acted wisely in making literal patent and copyright laws, and in otherwise encouraging man to put forth his best efforts. When he does so the whole of his kind profits. No matter how well the inventor is rewarded, the additions his invention makes to the stock of consumable things is for the general benefit.