CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 287, 27 April 1911, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

DANISH BUTTEEMEX. Much lias been written and spoken in New Zealand in advocacy of co-opera-tion by groups of men gaining their livelihood* from specific industry; and in no business can better results be attained than in the butter business. We are again asked'by an expert, who lias been visiting New Zealand, to observe the methods employed in Denmark in regard to co-operative butter enterprise, but although it may be yet necessary to copy Denmark more closely, there is at present no analogy in the conditions existing in the two countries. The suppliers in Denmark are better grouped than in New Zealand. The majority of them are peasant proprietors or small lessees, dependent on extremely limited areas for subsistence, and therefore having to employ intensive methods. The land that is used for dairying, is used for dairying, and not chiefly as a realisable asset. The expert referred to lias showii that the Danish butter men co-operate not only in .the matter of factories, but in the sale of their butter. There is a clockwork system of regulation whereby the number of cows supplying milk is practically the same all the year round, so that the London firms handling the whole exported output are' assured of an exact and steady supply from January 1 to December 31. It has been pointed out that almost the whole of the Danish exported supply of butter is handled by two English firms, who, of course, require that their reputation—a most valuable asset —shall be upheld. Co-opera-tion consequently exists from the time the milk leaves the cow to the moment the butterf is bought by the potential consumer. The Danish standpoint is that it is better to ensure a definite supply of even quality week liy week than to spasmodically forward goods of extraordinary excellence and in unusual quantities. Uniformity of quality and quantity are therefore the foundations on which the continued success of the Danish butter business is built. With Danish and Siberian competition to fight it will be always worth while for Xew Zealand to study and apply any improved methods for ensuring absolute uniformity of quality and quantity.

PHOTOGRAPHY AND DETECTION. Word comes from France that Champagne rioters have been arrested on the evidence of the cinematograph. There is no question that the camera and the wrong-doer are at daggers drawn. Photography is one of the finest weapons the police possess, and no malefactor can drop into police hands without leaving a photographic record. With the introduction of cinematography the scope of detection in specific instances is enlarged. A dramatic story was told a while ago in the London papers showing how the "long arm" could be aided by cinematography. A society woman in London had been deserted by her husband. She desired to obtain a divorce, but lacked grounds of action. Attending a picture show," she declared afterwards that in one record of a great street function at Madrid she had seen in the crowd her husband with a strange lady. The detectives were put on the trail, with the result desired. In another, instance, a New Zealand lady, who had for years desired news of her only son, found it at a little picture show held in the Wairarapa. This film was also of a street function, in London, and she declared that one of the men-o'-warsmen in the procession was her son. She therefore made enquiries from the Admiralty, and proved her supposition. An even more curious case in which photography played a leading part was reported at Auckland ten years ago. A titled lady touring Now Zealand purchased, among other photographs, one of a navvies' camp in the vicinity of Whangarei. Examination of the photograph determined her to proceed to the camp. There she found working in the gang a brother, who, having quarrelled with his father (a peer), had "cleared out." On the death of the father, the lawyers had been unable to discover tbe whereabouts of the heir, and a stray photograph was the means of sending the peer's successor back to his estates. There is a story—which, however, is not substantiated—of the capture of a noted anarchist by the aid of the cinematograph. The detective who obtained the clue had, so it is said, merely seen the retreating figure of his man in the moving picture. He proceeded to Berlin from London the next day, and in an attempt to capture the

anarchist was fatally knifed. It is to Me noted that many criminals who are forcibly photographed by the police endeavor to facially disguise themselves. In "rogues' galleries," or, to be more modern, police gazettes, one sees startling grimaces, grins, scowls, or even hearty laughs. Some look up and some look down, and some look astonished at being "wakened up" from behind by the official. The use of the "linger-print" system has done away with the oldfashioned idea of making the prisoner cross his hands over his breast, and the official photographer does not "retouch" all the character out of his subject.

•'ONLY FOOLS AND HOBSES." Somebody said in an Auckland Court the other day that laborers were never intelligent, the supposition being that if a man had intelligence he would not be a laborer. There is a rather wide belief that intelligence can be grafted and grown on to anything human. It is impossible to grow intelligence, but it is easy enough to foster it. There are dull Masters of Arts and bright scavengers, brilliant-minded illiterates and woefully stupid "collcge-brcd" men. The idea that because a man pushes a long-hand-led shovel or wields an axe he must necessarily be a dullard, is a very stupid one. The intelligent shoveller will shift I more spoil than the shoveller who is a | dullard. To preach the doctrine that the man who performs "menial" tasks is necessarily a fool, if the doctrine were generally accepted, would upset society. The •'intelligent" man, if we believe that only those who do not take their coats' off are intelligent, should really raise j his hat to the laborer, for the primal toiler gives him everything he has. What about the fools who cleared our New Zealand agricultural country, the idiots who dug our railways, the asses who carry the bricks and make the mortar, the dolts who scooped the Panama Canal, the stupid folk who carved the Suez Canal? To aim at a uniform "intelligence" is to aim at the ultimate removal of the "hewers of wood and the drawers of water." The idea of the genius is useless without the brain to produce results from it. It is the application of intelligence to common tastes that makes the world go round. The man who believes ho is intelligent because he has passed a certain standard of education is one of the world's worst fools. You might as well try to grow new eyes for a blind man, as to convince him that "learning" is not intelligence.