CURRENT TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LV, Issue 304, 16 May 1913, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

RECIPROCITY IX OLD-AGE PEXSIONS. Australasion reciprocity in the payment of old-age pensions has been agreed on in principle between the Hon. Mr. Fisher, of New Zealand, and the lion. llr. Fisher, of the Commonwealth, but details are not easy to settle. An Australian paper oilers the following alternative: —'It has been proposed that in a case, for example, where a person has lived fifteen years in New Zealand and five in Australia, New Zealand should pay three-quarters of his pension and Australia one-quarter. This, however, would result in a complicated system of book-keeping having to be maintained, and might end in serious annual outlay. Another proposal is that each Government* should agree to pay the pension to citizens who have qualified by residence for the required number of years in the two countries. Australia would then pay in that case the pensions of Australians living in New Zealand. An important part of this plan, however, would be to ensure first that there was no great disproportion between the populations of one country settling in the other, so that neither New Zealand'nor Australia should have to pay what would practically bo the pensions of the other country." POLITICAL ECONOMY. The Taramiki branch of the NeW Zealand Farmers' Union is of opinion that political economy should be made a compulsory subject in our ''higher schools." It is not quite clear what is meant by the term "higher schools" mentioned in the resolution, but there are many good reasons why this important subject should tnd a place in some part of our national

education system, though the reasons by j which tiie Taranaki members of the • Farmers' Union support their . proposal | f are not well chosen. Political economy . ] should not be introduced into our schools ,■ tor the purpose of "counteracting the in- ,• Jury caused by the dissemination of fal- ; lacious views by the Socialists and single- j taxers," but with the sole object of, ; spreading sound knowledge. It may 1 serve the purpose sought by our Tara- < naki friends, but its justification must ] be the same as that of all other subjects taught in our State schools and colleges, namely, its utility and truth. It is not ' the business of State teachers in their .official capacity to be influenced in any way by the burning political or social questions of the day, or to aim at coun- ' teraeting the ideas of this or that sec- ' tion of the community; but it is their '' business to make their pupils understand ' the foundation principles of the subjects • they are called upon to deal with. Political economy may rightly be called a science. Professor Chapman states that "positive economic science takes as its object neither more nor less than the explanation of economic data in the manner of the natural sciences, or, as we may put it, the tracing of cause and ef- . feet in the economic universe." There must always be difference of opinion about the things that really matter, and if on that account instruction in subjects of such fundamental importance as political economy is to be entirely shut out from the schools, half the value of )ur education system will be lost. It ffould probably be very difficult to find a jlace for economic science in the pritniry course, though years ago it was •,aught in the highest classes. Something, however, might be done to give the pupils in the secondary and technical schools some knowledge of its fundamental principles.—Wellington ion. GETTING.AT THE GAMBLER. The new English Bankruptcy Bill makes an interesting departure in prci scribing punishment for those who have become insolvent through gambling. The law is always chary of making itself a judge of morals, and adheres in the main ' to the principle of letting everybody "go ; to the devil in his own way." But (says, . the Pall Mall Gazette) the man who has gambled away not only, his own assets, j it the security relied on by creditors, ' has obviously over-stepped the bouni daries of his charter; he has, in effect, » squandered what was not his own, and r is really in the same position as the embezzler. 1 THE LIBERALITY OF MILLIONAIRES. No fewer than fifty-seven millionaires,.! > with their wives and families, live in - the town of Greenwich, Connecticut, and the estates they own are valued at something like £2OOO an acre. But Greenwich also possesses that most ob- >' noxious form of mosquito, the anopheles, s the insect which played havoc with the B Panama Canal workers before modern science was brought into service to B check its ravages. In consequence ,of ■-. the presence of the mosquitoes there - were 900 cases of malaria in the town E last year, and physicians assert that the results of many of the attacks will be D permanent weaknesses. The discovery ■> of the character of the anopheles is f twelve or fifteen years old, and the doc-, , tor of Greenwich, supported by precise knowledge, asked the Town Committee *' for an extermination fund of £IOBO, to f be used in fighting the mosquito, but the i request was refused. Then the doctors l appealed to the fifty-seven millionaires, many of whom had sufferers in their 3 own households, and the men of wealth came forward with a munificent subscription of £56. It is easy to see that it was by the practice of thrift that most of them became millionaires. I RAILWAYS IN CHINA. Ii g Ono of the things that most favorably e impressed Mr. William Ah Ket, a MeiiX bourne barrister, during his visit to a China, was the excellent railways system ~ now in operation there. He says that e the first-class carriages on the line from d Shanghai to Pekin were beautifully upe holtsered and scrupulously clean. This ~ service is offered by British people, ~ among whom are quite a number of'Ausa tralians. Even the purely Chinese-con-;r trolled lines could, he declared, show a d few points to some of the Australian „ systems. Mr. Ah Ket travelled on one ,t of the lines managed entirely by Chin,j ese, and the only complaint he had to h make was that the carriages "could do v with a bit of paint." He experienced ,' g some difficulty in making himself under- „ stood in Pekin. He speaks the Ca till tonese dialect fluently, but the Pekin diaw loct is different, and at the convention r the services of an interpreter were often I required to enable him to follow the dew bates. He says that the up-to-date inII formation possessed bv the Chinese GoII vernment as to Australian affairs is quite surprising.