CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 285, 25 April 1913, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

GISBORNE AND TYPHOID. Gisborne is said to be one of the most ■go-ahead towns in the North Island. The report submitted to a recent meeting of the local Council by the building inspector bears out this statement. For the year ending March 31, 1913, the building permits issued amounted to £114,225, the figures for the previous year being ,t!!)"2,I87. The buildings included 120 dwellingliouses, 01 additions to dwellings, 21 shops and odices, and 13 stores and warehouses. But there is a ily in Gisborne's ointment. At the same meeting of the Council it was shown that as many as sixty eases of typhoid fever had occurred there within the past four and a-lialf months. Gisborne has always borne a bad name for typhoid, but we had imagined that with the initiation of drainage and water schemes the causes had been removed. Evidently, however, the dreaded disease is more rife than ever it was. The local people are perplexed as to its cause or causes. Writing editorially, the local Times says: ''Why is it that there has been so much fever about lately we do not, of course, profess to exactly know. It has certainly been a very dry summer and autumn, and it is also a fact that much has been done in the way of opening up trenches on the roads and on private property in order to enable sewerage connections to be made. For our own part we can hardly think that the use of unboiled water, which is certainly a risky matter, has been, as some suppose, the chief cause of infection. What seems to us the position is that some ratepayers may not have taken sufficient care to prevent the creation of breeding grounds for flies. Only on such a supposition we think can the fact be explained that more eases have occurred among houses that are sewered than among houses which are still served by the objectionable system that is being all too slowly displaced. If flies are in the main responsible for the outbreak, then it would seem that many householders whose premises are clean and tidy may have suffered from the temporary incursion of germ-laden flies from the premises of careless and inattentive householders. Thus it comes about that we earnestly join the borough authorities in urging upon the residents the absolute necessity for care, not only in exterminating the flies, but also in doing away with conditions on their properties which are favorable to the existence and multiplication of the pest." The Council is asking the Government health officer to visit and inspect the town with a view to suggesting means for the eradication of the causes of the epidemic. New Plymouth cannot boast of the great progress its eastern neighbor is making in regard to building, but it has a great advantage over it in that it is practically free from diseases like typhoid, has a climate as healthy as any in the Dominion, 'and, moreover, is endowed with natural beauties second to none in or out of the Dominion. Wherefore we should be duly thankful.

THE FINGER OF FATE. Questioned as to the loyalty of the people of India, Mr. Cotter, K.C., of Auckland, who has just returned from a tour of India, said that it was impossible for a tourist to judge. The natives were really a people living apart. They had 110 ambition to move out of the grooves in which they considered fate had placed them, and consequently were content to spend their lives without thought for the future. • Wages paid to native workers were ridiculously small. He {Mr. Cotter) took a Hindu servant on his travels, and the remuneration was one and a-lialf rupees (two shillings) per day. A curious aspect of their ways is that although that Hindu was Mr. Cotter's hired servant, lie would not handle any of his luggage. The duties of his post were to see that other natives did so. If a native was employed to care for a horse, nothing would make him do some gardening to fill in his spare time, and so with other occupations. Seven or eight natives would, therefore, be required to undertake what one European servant would do.

SLAVERY ON FARMS. Says the Napier Telegraph:—"At the back of the problem of child slavery on dairy farms, and underlying it, and surrounding it, is the land question. . . We may condemn the practice which leads farmers to overwork their children—and not infrequently their wives and themselves as well—but we must in fairness take account of what leads to this. It is 'Rent' in all the cases. That is to say, it is economic rent, that definition by the writers of treatises on political economy which only too truly describes the facts, and only too surely proves, that 'Rent' means all that comes from the land after the subsistence of the laborer and the cost of working are met from the products of the land. The plain conclusion is that if land is too high in price to justify working it for dairying by the labor of adults, for moderate periods daily, children will be forced into the toil incidental to the occupation. Competition for food and raiment necessitates this. Land is in manyparts of New Zealand too dear to be profitably worked for dairying purposes except by means of child and woman labor. The obvious thing is to make land cheaper. . . . Tf the land tax were abolished to-morrow the price of land would rise. If the tax were made more substantial, the price of land would fall, in proportion to the magnitude of the tax. A land tax is the only tax that cannot he 'passed on.' " AGITATED AUCKLAND.

There is a political crisis in Auckland —a real, live, momentous political crisis —and the fate of the Oovernment is trembling in the balance, The Minister of Railways has decided to stop the second daily express running between Auckland and Wellington, and the electors of the northern city are seriously "considering" the position. Even the Nw Zealand Herald, the local organ of Reform, is handling the subject quite frankly, and making it perfectly clear that it attaches more importance to that second express than it does to Mr. Massey's occupancy of the Treasury benches. "Why," it asks, "should the north be starved as well as sweated for the benefit of the south? Tf the Minister of Railways desires to check all allusion to north versus south, it is surely wise to give to the north something more than fair words for its money." Then it it proceeds to answer its own question by asking many others. "Tf only profitable trains were placed on the regular departmental timetable, how many trains would be dascontinued south of Cook Straits? If only profitable railway lines were kept open, how many lines would be closed in the South Island? If only promising projects were considered in the Public

Works Estimates, how many pence would he allocated to the Otira tunnel V And so on to the length of a column and a half, ending up with a solemn warning to the (lovemment that "the whole problem of railway management is involved in the light of the north for fair and equitable consideration." Mr. llerries Hud his chief must keep that express going or prepare for the worst (remarks the Lyltelton Times).

BRITISH DEFENCE, The question of the British second line of defence is. at the moment, the cause of some considerable controversy at Homo. With the exploitation of the air and the increase of foreign armaments, both military and ttav.il. (lie old proposition that "the sea is England's safeguard," is rapidly weakening in force. Lord Roberts has spoken his mind upon the subject wiih characteristic frankness, and now we have Sir William Ilall- ] Jones and other prominent politicians i following iu his footsteps and advocat- I ing a system of conscription to replace the present Territorial scheme. Britain , must have an army and an effective one at that if she means to maintain her position as chief among the nations, but its present Territorial system is apparently inadequate. In reply to a question in the [louse of Commons last ytoir Viscount Hahlane was compiled to state that its numbers were only slightly over 2G0.(X)(), of whom about 232.000 had attended camp iu 1911. Of the rank and file 32,424 were under nineteen years of age. This, of course, outside the regular troops, is no sort of a supplementary army for a country with Britain's population and resources, and it spells comparative failure so far as her modified Territorial system is concerned. Excel* lent 'as the compulsory conscription movement has proved in various Continental countries we doubt whether it would be acceptable th the British temperament and |tho Motherland would probably be wiser to adopt some such scheme of compulsory training as is in force in the Dominion and other colonies. We younger children of the Empire are devoting a lot of time and a lot of money to the question of defence, and it is not an impertinence to suggest that possibly we have gone further towards solving one branch of the problem than our respected parent has. It is estimated that under our compulsory training scheme, in four years' time, with only approximately a million, we shall 50,000 trained men ready to take up arms efficiently at a moment's notice. With her' population of forty millions, in the, same time, under a similar policy, Britain would have an auxiliary army of two million men. Not only would she have this stand-by, but the disclipine that accompanies such training would do much towards removing the growing reproach that the standard of physique among the British at Home is deteriorating and that the race is rapidly growing to be a decadent one. Our own Territorial system is turning out an admirable success, and older countries might easily do worse than take an example from even our comparative juvenility of enterprise-