GENERAL NEWS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LVII, Issue 45, 14 July 1914, Page 7

GENERAL NEWS

GIRLS' NEW EDUCATION. The new education for girls has no quarrel for men, .but it leaves them to make their own arrangements. It docs not undertake to provide wives for them. It bothers with men very little. Its aim is to turn out girls, so , developed mentally, and so trained and] instructed, that they can make „„' elr j-i°^ n 01101063 in world, can earn their own livings if fchey wish or it tliey must, can take a man if one that suits tiijtti offers, can turn all men away, for » 0 long as they will, and still if°v themselves a. life of activity and employment. Tire new education aims to give girls suck an equipment a? will relieve them of the need to marry f or a living. That is no more to start them on the same level with the men, and that is no more than fair. ■ ®uat marry for support 13 rated as a pitiable figure. A young woman who must many for support is not in so much better a case as we have been used to thinik. For support that one buys with one's life is dearly bought, and should be a good article, and everyone knows tihat famine prices are high, arid that who would make good bargains must see to it not to be pinched by need.—E. S. Martin, in Harper's Magazine for May. NO TANGIS. Says the Wairarapa Age:—A year or two back a movement was made in New Zealand with the abject of inducmg the Natives to abandon, the absurd ceremonial known as the tangi, which follows the death of almost every native of any standing in the country. Apparently this movement has not been attended with success, for the exper«lence in the Wairarapa during the past week or two has shown that the aboriginals still cling tenaciously to the burial custom of their forefathers. In one case the body of a native was exposed to view for nearly a week after his death. In another ca.se there was an interval of five days between death and but'?!. The natives assemble from all parts of the district, and not ft few cotoe from long distances, to join in the mournful incantations l , feasting 1 , and korero. Thie conditio is under which they assemble, apart altogether from the character of the assemblage, are a distinct menace to health. The time has arrived when the health department should seek the co-operation of the more intelligent natives in an endeavour to suppress this extravagant and unhealthy form of superstition. •It is demoralising to the natives ttan- ' selves/, and impoverishing in its liinfluence. NO FAITH IN SIGNALS. "The recent accident to the express train, which rudely shocked the minds of the public in New Zealand,' says I the July number of the Loco. Record, i just published, "will no doubt be the ! subject of a special enquiry, and the I limelight will be -specially turned upon the signalling apparatus on t'he New Zealand railways. It is needless for us to -say that every effort will be made to prove that the human element was to blame, a<n:l that the method of signalling trains is perfect so far as ihutnan skill is concerned . . . So far as we, the locomotive drivers, firemen and cleaners, are concerned, we place no implicit faith hi their most perfect system, and we are educated in that direction, although the travelling public are educated in the opposite. To say that we, therefore, have no faitih in signalling, whether interlocking or • the old method by which the accident occurred, may seem to be a statement that requires some explanation, but our space is too limited to go into details. However, the same system is in vogue to-day at many stations asi was in use during the early days of railroading. The same primitive signal, with its wire running a foot or eighteen inches above the ground, still exists, and this small wire has been the mefins of causing more than one narrow escape from a very serious accident, ■ and it has caused more than one driver to be rjuiovd from the footplate to a subordinate position."

"THE AMAZING ARfiEXTINiE." "The hotels arc an imitation of thrfae n Paris. The restaurants arc on a par .vith the best of those we have in Lorilon. A Viennese hand plays while you iave Russian eavaire and the waiter is isking your choice in champagne. But 'verytiling is expensive. A man needs three times the money in Buenos Airea to live in the. way he would in Lonion. You can get' a modest lunch for 10s; but von pay is for a- "bottle of beer, and 3s Gil for a cigar worth smoking.'' This is a passage from the latest book of the tr'obc trotting John Foster Fraser, "The" Amazing Argentine." In iUs picture of the South American Republic as a luxurious place for the wealthy, the, passage is typical of the general which Fraser gives in the whole volume. For people without capital, the message is:- "There are, of course, cases of men who started with nothing, and «in now give their wives a £20,000 necklace. But to the man who lands in Argentina with nothing but his muscle or 'his salaried job, although his position will be improved, and lie can save more than he ever made in the Old Country, the chances are. a-'niinst 'his evei joining the nabobs 1 . Private capital has certainly done wonderful things iu Argentina, accomplishing much which State enterprise in Australasia is very slow to perform. Starting with a clean sheet, the financial groups which develop and exploit the country have organised commerce on the most scientific lines. In Buenos Aire,, a city claiming twice the population of Sydney, you see on every hand the wheat elevators which Government in Australia is only talking about; and there lire huge killing establishments for the trade in chilled meat, with the most modern labor-saving appliances ,or the loading of the steamers.