CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 325, 12 June 1911, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

| , ii - •—— I " '"' " SICK WORKERS. A curious request was lately made by. a deputation from the Trades and Labor Council to the Government. The deputation desired that sick workers should be State aided, in order to get to Rotorua for curative treatment. Advanced Socialists have said that all medical services should be retained by the State, and should be free to the people—but the time is not yet. To grant a con-i cession to "workers" in regard to fare to Rotorua, and treatment while there, would be a pretty long jump towards the nationalisation of curative services/ One of the deputation (an M.P.) defined "worker" as "a person in need of health," and so the relief would not—were it granted—be merely confined to organised workers. About nine-tenths of the people of New Zealand could conscientiously describe themselves as "workers," and as each of them might easily get "run down" once a year, the Government would soon be called upon to increase the rolling stock intended for Rotorua. In New Zealand there arc many ' provisions for meeting emergencies. We have seen boards of benevolent trustees award money to both sick and well folk, fares paid, rent paid—all sorts of things paid. There are many friendly societies, and almost all workers can afford to be members. There are free hospitals and sanatoria where the ill worker may get the best of treatment,- there is an excellent compensation for accidents law, and, in snort, the "worker" who is nine-ten'lis of the population is very well cared for. Thecfwwal person who read that a large number of cases of sickness ana injury that could only be treated at Rotorua might become indignant at a supposed lack of humanity, but we are neither convinced that Rotorua is the only place for a sick worker, or that the State should assume further private burdens. As the New Zealand railways belong to the State, it follows that every New Zealander who wants to go to Rotorua has as much right to get there at reduced rates as every other New Zealander. If the concession were granted there could be no objection to an extension of the privilege to Hanmer or Te Aroha, Cambridge or Russell, mid the run-down small shopkeeper or clerk might claim the kindly consideration of the State just as if he were a. J wharf-laborer or a building-trade union-1 ist.

THE EARTHQUAKE FEEUXC. 'J ne man who says ho is not frightened of earthquakes and snakes is a citizen whose word you may doubt. We affect to joke about a minor quake—when i| is ever—but just before the windows rattle and the crockery dances, all normal penpinexperience a feeling thev cannot explain. There were a couple of smart shocks locally on Saturday evening, which just reminded people'that they' are not absolute masters of the earth,

and that under some circumstances an aeroplane would be a more desirable place than "terra (intia." All nature is terrified during violent eanth shocks, and most human beings "lose their heads." The sudden twisting of n forest of chimneys on their bases is excessively wierd. It has been more or less cheerfully asserted that if one or two of the Wellington shocks of the past two years had tilted the earth ji couple more inches, that city would have been demolished just as San Francisco was. In earthquake panics the fright of others' may easily demoralise tlie bravest, but, on the oilier hand, it may stiffen itho strong man's nerves. For instance, a violent shock occurred in a Mew Zealand city while a stable proprietor wag directing about a dozen men in a yard full of horses. The men bolted, and the liorse9 tried to. Asked afterwards if ne idt frightened, the proprietor said, "My word! lint I forgot my fright in cussing «ome sense into the men and horses!" A Jocal man, asked to describe his sensations, said he could "feel an earthquake coming,' and it seemed to him as if all nature, himself included, was in a state of suspended animation. "A man somehow feels as if he were sent for," he graphically said; and this seems to get as near to describing the sensation as possible. Curiously, however, people "get used" to anything—war, pestilence, sudden death, and earthquakes. On occasions when earthquakes continue for 'days and weeks, folks give up making exclamations and running for the open, The inborn optimism of humanity comes to humanity's aid, and the stricken people of a Bhaken city simply set to work to build again. Volcanoes erupt and demolish villages on their sides, but the people who are saved go back and sow anu reap and live and die in the old place as before. This is at least the history of Vesuvius and other burning mountains. The least panic-stricken in earthquake time are the weakly and infirm. The strong fear because their instinct is to cling to the life that may be sniffed out by a heave of the earth's crust, If little earth-shocks have any use other than that of cosmic evolution,,it is that tue earth people are disciplined into feeling their snuillness and weakness, for the earthquiiKe reaches for the millionaire and the pauper alike, and teache9 each his utter insignificance as an atom that may lie swept away with a breath.