CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 61, 2 September 1911, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

THE TRAVELLING PROPHETS. The credulity of lmmmi nature still astonishes the eynio. The person with the <ilib tongue, the ready lie, and the mysterious manner is always certain of clients. AVhen, for instance, a man eomes to Taranaki ami systematically enframes in a house to house visitation, and for two shillings per person "reads hands." he is certain of support. Indeed already such a one is "work-inn-" this district and has- prophesied many and various disasters, illnesses, deaths, fortunes, journeys, births, marriages, dark men and fair women, and has used ■all ihe rest of the device's to obtaiu money. This generation rather prides itself on its commonsense, but it still lias people who really and truly believe that an ignorant person posing as a. "palmist" can .see the present, the past and the future. A short time ago ,

one of these '''palmists" was before, the court on a charge of some sort. It was shown that the. lady varied hoi crystal gazing, palmistry, and psychromtry with the much more honest occupation of "going out washing." Usually the person who undertakes to see the future for half a crown is entirely ignor- ! ant of any matter except that much j human nature is as credulous as it was a thousand years ago. Many sinmj.e I people are beguiled into parting with hard-earned cash by this type of exploiter. The obtaining of money under false pretences is the least of the evils that the palmist or other fraud brings in his train. He really influences persons to believe in his absurd prophecies. 1 It is definitely known that psychometrisls, palmists, crystal-gazers, seers and the people who impudently call themselves metaphysicians, have parted wife and husband, estranged relatives, and sent people, easily inlluenced, to asylums for the demented. The occupation of palmistry or any of the allied frauds is illegal, but until the public take a hand and help the police the public will be victimised not only by the house to house visitation ghoul who fastens on the ignorant, but by the permanently located "madame," who is sought after even by the opulent and educated. In every considerable town in New Zealand these harpies are more or less undisturbed, mainly because the authorities get merely periodical attacks of moral astonishment at the continuance of the practices.

IMPRESSIONS IN JAPAN. The Earl of Ronaldshay, who holds a seat in the House of Commons for one of the .Middlesex divisions, has been making a prolonged tour of the Far East, and some of his comments upon Japan are distinctly He states, as many other observers have done, that the Japanese nation is advancing with fixed determination towards the goal of supremacy in Asia. The dream of its rulers, who as yet wield power unfettered by any scheme of democratic Control, is to possess a dominant voice in the destinies of the Eastern world, and to that end a fierce effort is being made to maintain naval and military efficiency and encourage industrial expansion. But the Earl of Ronaldshay' has no admiration for the methods that are being employed in order to make Japan an industrial force. He quotes Lafeadio Hearne, who said that there had been brought into existence in the country he loved so well "all the horrors of factory life at its worst," without any restraint at all on the inhumanity of the individual employer. "When one sees women undergoing the physical strain of a fourteenhours' day at the hand-loom at a fraction of a penny an hour," writes the British politician, "when one unexpectedly encounters coal-begrimed and scantilyclad females figures emerging from the coal-pit's month; and when one observes children of ten and twelve toiling through the long weary day for a pittance of two pence, one cannot but suppose that, sooner or later, the question of labor will call for solution." The earl proceeds to prophesy that Japan will follow a policy of protecting the home market and encouraging her own industries by of a tariff, but evidently bis remarks were penned before the conclusion of the AngloJapanese trade treaty. The Eastern Power has not yet displayed any readiness to stand 'entirely independent of the West.