LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 233, 30 March 1912, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

. Yesterday morning a break occurred in the Fitzroy water-main under the span of the Henui bridge, which runs above the railway line. Some inconvenience was experienced at the abattoirs on account of this accident. A meeting of the Equitable Building Society was held in the Town Hall last evening There was a good attendance. Mr. S. W. Shaw presided. The ballot for £3OO in No. 1 group was drawn by Mr f- E - L. Campbell, New Plymouth, and that in No. 2 group by Mr. S. P. How, Waverley. A note in the printed itinerary of the Australian journalists who are visiting iVew Zealand says, under the heading of Wellington," "Meet Cabinet Ministers, if possible." Some wicked imp must have prompted that "if possible," for on arrival in Wellington the visitors found Cabinet Ministers temporarily as extinct as the moa. In taking the party system of Government severely to task at the veterans' entertainment on Thursday night the Hon. 0. Samuel, M.L.C., remarked:' I am proud that I have represented this constituency in Parliament, but I am prouder still that I was sent to the House on each occasion not pledged to; either party, not bound to any partv' king, but left with free hands to vote as I thought fit, for either party." It is not every day that in democratic J<ew Zealand a prospective Earl is born, but the little son of the Hon. Trevor Ogilvie-Grant and Mrs, Ogilvie-Grant, of Karori, Wellington, will—if the Earl and Countess of Seafield have no son—su«ceed to the titles. The Earl and Countess have one daughter of eight years old, and the little boy for whom such interesting possibilities are in store has a small sister of four. It may be added that the present Earl was born in Oamaru, as well as his brother, Mr. Trevor Ogilvie-Grant. His father, before comin" into the title, worked as a roadman for the Oamaru Borough Council. Apropos of the proposal to electrify the Main South road, the Taranaki County Council wrote to the Wellington City Council for particulars of the cost of the scheme laid down in the Empire City. These have now come to hand as follows.—Capital cost, ±.580,335; number of single miles of track, 27%; cost of track only (including formation), £184,578; cost of overhead equipment, £70,761; generating station, £75,930; motive power at generating station, steam; horse-power required at generating station, 4000; maximum cost of maintenance of track and overhead equipment per car mile ■CiSd; gauge of track, 4ft. Worked out on this basis, the cost of the track only m connection with the Main South road scheme would be, assuming that the conditions were identical, something like £OOOO per car mile. The proposed gauge in the county's scheme is, it must be explained, less than that at ton. s The sovvici's in the Whiteley Memori.il Church to-morrow will be conducted bv the Rev. .T. W. Burton. Subjects: Morn- / ing: "The Blessedness of Giving"; evening, "What is it to be a Christian?" I

A recent motor collision in Hawke's, Bay is going to be a-pretty costly inci- j dent. The cost of repairing the two ■ cars is estimated at about £3OO. j The Eltham Borough Council has re-' ceived a letter from J. C. Williamson, I Ltd., complaining of the treatment accorded Mr. Irving and his company by the local hotel-keepers. The letter adds: "They (the artists) are treated almost in the manner of intruders, and in a great many cases (speaking generally) admitted to the hotels on sufferance." At the banquet to Mr. Massey at Inglewood on Thursday, Mr. Vickers remarked that he had made a start at chopping out the forest forty-six years ago, and he had been in business many years since, and he really thought that chopping trees was moire enjoyable than collecting debts. When you chopped trees in the day you could sleep soundly at night; but when you were collecting debts, night brought all sorts of nightmares. s The opinion is held by a number of experts that prices of butter will be good throughout the winter, for although the markets at Home have shown a tendency to drop lately, it is anticipated that if the strike is settled they will again harden, more particularly as there is a big shortage of the stock in store and the winter at Home has been a severs one, in consequence of which supplies are not likely to come forward in any quantity before June. Referring to the Mokau lands affair the Feilding Star says:-While we have all along regarded the transaction as improper and impolitic, we have always held the opinion—with some knowledge of the land m question—that the last buyers "fell in" badly, and that the gentlemen who engineered the deal in the first place knew too much for those confiding land speculators in the Liberal camp who were under the impression that they had "a good thing" on. ~< - 'n r _ '^^u rs^.a y night a-good number of the Tarana'ki war veterans saw a cinematograph show for the first time, fhey «w e n sur P ris€d and delighted. k sai . d i one ' " now that I have seen <the pictures, I can quite under-, stand how people get the picture craze." J-he zoological pictures were a source of great interest, they being regarded as good as a view of a menagerie. The Balaclava picture, of course, was the piece de .resistance as far as the veterans were concerned. Dr. Hogg, of Invercargill, who has just returned from a trip abroad, after seeing many English and foreign newspapers, has come .to the conclusion that the New Zealand journals can be placed beside any one of them and not lie ashamed Dr. Hogg told,a Southland Times reporter that he considered that there was at least some standard of dignity about the newspapers of the Dominion; but many newspapers abroad gave one a very poor idea of the public taste. He is convinced that for a person to keep up with the times, there can be no better means than the excellent summary of cable news which appears in the papers of New Zealand each day. 1 Colonel Allen Bell, lately in command ot the mounted forces of the Waikato district, who was one of the first to advocate the universal military movement m New Zealand, when interviewed on the recent Waikato camps, said they surpassed his fondest hopes. If the results attained in other districts were like those obtained here, all objections to the system would be quickly dispelled. Ihe time had come for radical alteration m the old-time army methods, iancy uniforms consisting of frock coats yards of gold lace, and cocked hats with feathers, which look very pretty on a lady, but make a soldier look effeminate and ridiculous, must be swept out of existence, with many other customs that had been handed down from the dark ages. Mr. G. F. Earp, a New South Wales M.L.C., returned to 'Sydney last week, after an absence of twelve months in England and the Continent. Referring to 0 " 3 m the 01(1 Countrv. he said that there had never been such unrest, politically and industrially, as at present He was inclined to think that Lngland was on the verge of revolution and turmoil. There seemed to be a universal determination to obtain better conditions and better wages. The Government was going to try to do for the coal industry what mine owners and employers had failed to do-fix a minimum wage Not only would there be an eterSu?d 3 W Vtv What the J" , fo !" , his particular industry, but all other industries would clamor for the same thing, and there never would be any satisfaction. "Poverty and pauperism are increasing. Indeed, I have never known such distress as was beini? experienced in England during mv staf a ™ , Notwithstamlin g that last year a record amount of bpsiness was done the grim arm of poverty was to be seen on every hand There is no saying how all the industrial trouble will end, but tW C f-t ne t J l ' ng certain > an d that is, that strikes of the nature of the one in P r °^f s at present must ma tress e P ressi °n and distress already m existence. It is hard tn in ,!° **"££££