SCIENCE CONGRESS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 199, 11 January 1913, Page 5

SCIENCE CONGRESS.

THE LABOR QUESTION. By Cable—Press Melbourne. January 10. At the State Congress, Dr. Mercer, Bishop of Tasmania, read a paper dealing with labor as the basis of the social system. Market prices were almost entirely the resu'rt of the automatic working of social forces, and it was hard to find a satisfactory substitute. Labor was not the sole source of the value of land and capital. Apart from questions of State and individual ownership, which had their own part to play, it might be granted that a living wage must be established, but Australia must preserve a large sphere for industrial freedom by a system of free exchange and open markets, if industrial stability was to be assured.

AUSTRALIAN HYGIENE. Melbourne, January 10. Dr. Springthorpe gave an address on some desiderata in Australian hygiene. He said the Australian was energetic, enterprising, progressive and free to act beyond most others, but the Australian failed to see that evolution was a factor in both progress and production. He devoted his energies to remedies rather than prevention, and relied far more on legislation than obedience.

THE WAGES PROBLEM. Melbourne. January 10. Mr. Johnston. Tasmanian Government statistician, at the Science Congress, read a paper on wages. He said that the standard of living of the people as a whole could only be raised by cheapening the cost of commodities, further improvements in labor-saving machinery and the harnessing of natural forces. The arbitrary increase of nominal wages, if restricted to a few industries, might increase the power of the wageearners belonging to those trades, but if this mere rat-dug of nominal wages was too widely extended it would tend to lose the advantage to those whom it included, owing to the fact that they were consumers as we'd as producers.

PROBLEMS OF HEREDiTV. Received 10. 9.45 p.m. Melbourne, January 10. At the Science Congress Professor Kirk. Wellington, in his presidential address in the biology section, dea'.t with the present a>pec: of some problems of heredity. BISII SICKNESS. Mr. Reakcs. of the Department of Agriculture. New Zealand, contributed notes of investigations into the nutritive disorders of ruminants, including the so-called bush sickness.

INFANTILE MORTALITY'. Keceivcd 11. 111.-) a.m. Melbourne. Jamtarv 10. Mr. Wiekciis. of tin' Federal Statists J'ureau. said tli;it investigations into infantile mortality disclosed by the Commonwealth'?- experience for the ile.cenniiim of 101)1-1(1 showed that, of 100.000 n.all's horn H 7.020 would reach the age o*' live, while of 100.000 females the number would he till.2SO.

STOPPAGE OF WAT!. Kcdivcd 11. 1-2.1.-, a.m. Melbourne. January 10. Professor Henderson, dealing with rational selection, said that it. needed only a sullicieiit number of strum: peaceablydisposed nations to sign a treaty to make it practicably impossible for warlike nations to take the aggressive.