CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 95, 12 October 1911, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

FIRE! There have not been many fires in New Zealand lately, which is perluaps more a matter of luck than anything else, and tlie people whotse business it is to extinguish fire- -till periodically draw attention to the fact that New Zealand is terrilily inflammable. ft is no good blaming New Zealand' buildings for being made of wood 1 , because tliis is the wooden age. and it will pass like the liioa and the rest of tlie curiosities. It is 110 good either blaming the people for permitting the erection of houses t'liat are merely lire (lues, because building materials are excessively dear, and solidity is not likely to be a sine (|ua non while authorities play into the bands of the speculator and the man who 'hangs a claw-hammer in his belt and believes •he is ail architect as well as a builder. Inspector Woo Hey, of the Auckland Fire Brigade, has uttered the old' truth that

the root of the fire evil is the wooden I house. The hollow wall of the weather- | board house., the case with which insur- j ance is obtained over uninspected chat- | tela, and various other odds and ends previously discussal aid the root of the evil vastly. The inspector, however, made his most important statement when lie said that the "so-called brick areas hardly deserve the name." This perhaps does not affect small wooden towns, but it Is- true of the centres that a large proportion of buildings in compulsory "brick areas" are as readily destructible as the weather-board pillboxes that the people are glad to be permitted to abide in. There are present in these (as everyone acquainted with the cities will admit) the more or less hollow walls -that distinguish the common dwelling. ''Brick buildings, as I have seen them in New Zealand," said the Inspector, "are far from being safeguards against fire spreading. From the outside they seem quite fire-proof, but inside the ceilings and often the floors are wooden, while the walls' are covered with scrim and paper. The walls are varnished just as if they were being prepared for a blaze. Wax matches can easily spread t ruin. Here in New Zealand we have to watch both buildings and contents when a fire breaks out. In most places the firemen have only to direct the hose on the contents. Adelaide, for instance, is a brick-built city. Brick houses there are brick house—no wooden paper walls, no flimsy partitions, no inflammable ceilings. Each rooWris a fire break. That is all seen to by stringent city by-laws and watchful inspectors!." The Inspector's remarks are really an accusation against local bodies, an accusation that is just and substantial. We are all ready enough to burst into a paean of praise of the man who erects a new wooden death-trap on the score t'liat the town he honors is " progressing." The New Zealander has to pay heavily for his annual fire bill, and as buildings increase his bill will lx» still heavier, unless local bodies take the matter in both hands and insist upon the building precautions common to other countries.

THE FARMERS' PARADISE. Some of the farming community of New Zealand allege that the workers are spoon-fed, but in the opinion of the Argentine correspondent of the Lyttelton Times the boot is on the other foot. He writes: "We have seen a number of New Zealanders over this wa,y at one time and another. Working men should not, however, come over here unless they have money to spend. The average camp laborer, working about fourteen hours per day, may get equal to £3 fo 8d per month and found in the very roughest of food, and with permission to sleep in the stable or the fowlhouse. In striking such a billet he could consider himself lucky. There is money to be made in land—and will be for some time to come if we get a good harvest—but if a bad yield strikes the country one may see a serious set-back. Land here is dirtcheap when compared with the prices paid in New Zealand for similar land, but here we have few of the conveniences your farmers enjoy. In New" Zealand the farmers have had to pay good wages to their employees, and perhaps for their supplies, but on the other hand it is (Loubtful if in any part of the world the landed class has received more assistance from their Government than has that class in your country. No better proof of this can be adduced than t'he enormous pises that have taken place in land values during the last ten years. Cheap transport, Government grading, Government supervision, cheap postage, free transport for manure, and the thousand and one other benefits', have all been capitalised by the landowner. 'Whether it is wise or not to allow this increase of values to go on or not is not a subject for these notes, (but here we have no such chance. Only recently the railways have gone, in for an all-round increase in freights. We have Government supervision, but it is a fraud. Everyone knows that, the 'graders and inspectors l — meat, milk, orchards, and, in fact, every line—are men pitchforked into this or that billet for political services rendered, and- that the men are there for what they can make, not out of their salary, but by illicit means.

THE WEALTH OF AFRICA. Four great railways have been driven into the heart of Africa. From the Atlantic to Timbuctoo, from the Mediterranean .to Khartoum, from' the Indian Ocean to Uganda, and from Capetown to the source of the Congo iron roads have been laid to tap the undeveloped wealth of the Dark Continent. More tlian two-thirds of the Cape-to-Cairo railway has been constructed. All this great development has been the work of the past ten years, and the next decade probably will see the north linked to the so-uth, and the east to the west. Thin is the opinion of Dr. Karl Kumm, the African- explorer and missionary, who is visiting Australia. He says that new roads and river connections, the veins of civilisation, will be opened up by the pioneers of industry to serve the great arterial railways. The whole of Northern Africa will be occupied by European Powers. The vast mineral resources, gold, tin, copper, iron and coal, will 'be exploited. Dr. Kumm says that much pioneering work is being done with a view to developing the mineral wealth of Africa, which is greater than that of any other continent. Coal in great quantities has .beer discovered in the Lado Enclave on the Upper -Nile, and -in Rhodesia and German feast Africa ric.h measures await development. In Northern Nigeria the largest deposits of tin in the world hare been discovered, and in the last three years' fifty, hew companies, controlling to £7,000,Oflfl, baye formed to work the deposits. Gold mining is developing very rapidly in Rhodesia, and one mine near Buluwayo last year returned to its proprietors dividends equal to 150 per cent, on their capital. A new railwav is being built from LoMto Bay to British Central Africa, a distance of 2000 miles, in order to tap a mountain of copper. Dr. Kumm himself 'on his last great journey from the Niger to the Nilo discovered large deposits of copper close to navigable rivers, and he also located gold. tin. iron anil coal in new districts. He has done notable service in blazing the path which is to open the heart of Africa to the influences of civilisation.