CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 155, 29 December 1911, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

LIFE-SAVING. A branch of the Royal Life Saving Society is to be started in New Plymouth, and as the efforts of the Society are to teach practical means of saving people from drowning, the institution of the branch is to be highly commended. Although a knowledge of swimming is common enough in Xew Zealand, a knowledge of rescue work is not at all c*mmon except among smali bodies of people in the centres. In almost numberless cases throughout the world brave rescuers have lost their lives while endeavoring to succor the drowning because of ignorance of the methods this Society exists to teach. Hundreds of people lose their lives every year because on rescue from the water there does not happen -.o be a person about who understand the restoration of the apparently drowned. Just as the ptrson who has learnt first aid to the injured has often been able to save a valuable life by the (xucise of easily acquired knowledge, so may a person who knows exactly what to do in the rescue of a drowning person or to the apparently drowned person who has been brought ashore,'become his best possible friend. Not long age in a New Zealand city, one man brought three drowning persons out of the surf and restored them to life in an afternoon. Although there were hundreds of people on the beach, he was the only one of them who was really useful. The point is, of course, tlut a life-saving society constantly increase? the number of persons who can be useful in such circumstances. We sincerely hope that the numerous local young men who are such fine exponents of swimming will enter with zest into the work of the Society, for there are opportunities for nol'.lc work at any seaport town, mid Taranaki beaches are' not always inr.ocent of danger. BUILDING IN SYDNEY. Sydney is experiencing a great boom in building. Over 5000 buildings were completed in the metropolitan area in 1910, but this year the figures are going on for T'OOO. The buildings put up this year have cost £3,05(i.7ii>5, but this is only half of what has been spent altogether on construction work in the city, public works of various kinds bringing the total up to about £7,000.000. Houses are, going up by the hundred in the suburbs, but the supply does not overtake the demand. This boom in building has occurred in the face of shortage of labor, which is so acute now that many builders are paying wages considerably in excess of the award rates. The plasterers' award provides a minimum of 12s a day, but up to 15s is frequently paid. Many plasterers make a habit of working only in the suburbs in which they live, so as to be handy to their homes. Stonemasons and bricklayers, whose award rates are 12s a day, often receive 14s a day, and -plumbers and carpenters will often walk off a job where the award rate of lis is offered, and pick up 12s and 13s elsewhere. Building materials are dearer. Timber has gone up from 7% to 10 per cent, in the year, and bricks have advanced from 38s to 45s a thousand since last year. The architects report a considerable advance in the tastes of clients. The Daily Telegraph says that a large villa residence has been erected at Warrawee on lines which, the designer holds, would have been scorned a decade ago. The building combines old English and American styles, with modifications calculated to meet Australian requirements—a combination which a few years ago would have been considered beyond the limits of practical domestic architecture. Clients have shown ' ; a greater readiness to fall in with the ideas of architects that buildings—whether to live in or trade in—should be made beautiful ribt by extraneous carvings and elaborate embellishments, but by the general contour and design set out in the plans. This is a matter upon which architects set great importance, believing that the appearance of the city I will be improved, as well as the dignity of their profession raised, when this principle is more generally realised. Indeed, a new era in this respect is prophesied, aiM Sydney ia said to be on the threshold of it, and particularly in regard to cottage architecture." The same tendency could probably lie found in other colonies.

WHERE BRITISH MONEY IS INVESTED. In a paper in the Economic Review the Rev. L. R. Phelps discusses the future of interest, and gives this survey of where the capital of Great Britain has found a home:—"The United States have long been the great field for investment. There is to be found no less than £OBB,078,000 of the savings of Englishmen, and the greater part of it, viz., £580,227,000, is in railways. To Canada the exportation of capital lias grown of late; in the last three years as much as £100.000,000 has gone there, and the total invested is £373,000,000. Canadian railways arc mostly built by English capita!, the capital of Canadians finding ready employment in the development of the businesses in which it was accumulated. Take the Canadian-Pacific railway. All the debentures, all the preference, and 05 per cent, of the ordinary shares are held in England. Australasia, which has suffered, perhaps, more than most from the vicissitudes of credit, owes Britain £38,000.000. To South Africa she has sent £357,000,000, to the Government (i.e., for railways), £97,000,000, for mines no less than' £125,000 r 000, for land companies and the like £73,000,000. Railways have absorbed the major part of our loans to India, 310 out of 305 millions, while tea accounts for £20,000,000." He draws the pracical conclusion that the, increase of capital whii.li -i« great in Englandy greater

in America, and will soon be «]■•■:■ i•./ sill in what are how new countries, makes it almost, inevitable that intere.-a »i'l fall. He asks, Will this not mean that production is cheaper and life easier for those who work, and more diliieuli, for those who do not? Leisurely lives will be fewer, but a greater number will enjoy more leisure.