WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, 23 January 1919, Page 7

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

' . f? COST OF w?m( j: t 4j . . ><> I I DEMAND FOR INQUIRY.; * ! I'> a. (Special Correspondent.) .'•! Wellington, Jan. 2<T. The cabled extracts horn the report 1 of the Commonwealth .Incer-Stato Commission on the cost of living probably. ] wi.il create v. touuiu for n\u, appoint-1 meat of a, similar eo-inmissiuii ::ei».! trices for the particular Hnua mentioned in the cable messages, have <heen subsuu- j tialty higher in New Zealand time in ' Australia, and it is argued that if the average profits made by the manufacturI im» and wholesale firms in the Commonwealth have risen from 13 per cent, to 33 per cent., ihe advance has 'bean coujsiderably greater in the Dominion, "if 1 there were any prospect of prices returning to their pre-war level in the near j future, probably the sorely-tried con-1 suiner and user waidd he disposed to j let bygones lie bygones, but, judging' from present appearances, it will be many months before the position from the buyer's point of view is materially improved. NATIONAL FITNESS,

The Dominion is publishing a serioa of very interesting articles dealing with "the fit and the uufit," as it put? it, medically examined for military purposes during the course of the war. The article published this morning classifies according to degree the fitness of the 71,177 men drawn in the First Division ballots. Of the number 23,382 were pronounced fit for active service, 654 fit for active service after treatment in camp or hospital, J,iM) fit for active service after treatment and recovery at home, 2,261 likely to become fit for active service after special training, 38,546 unfit for active service, but fit for service in New Zealand in connection with the war and 2,693 unfit for any service at all. The figures, it seems, are just about what the medical men expected from the examination and in keeping with the experience of other countries. , LABOR FEDERATION Notwithstanding the loud protestations of the Labor Leaders of their peaceful intentions in seeking to bring all the workers' unions into one big federation the majority of the employers here look upon the movement with a good deal of "mistrust and apprehension. "A one-big-union devoted to class war," the Post says on their behalf, "means, at the outset, the general strike, which amounts to a strangle-hold imposed by unionism on every other member of the body politic. At the least it means that, and at the most it means the whole range of Bolshevik principles and pracUow.'' This view is built up on the assumption that the leaders of the movement art prepared to defy all constituted authority and the leaders themselves hold it to bo entirely unjustified.

PEAeKJfUk PIiKIiTKATION. One of them, whose absence from tlio Christchureh conference perhaps may discount the value of his evidence, speaking on the subject to-day said that so far as he could judge a great majority of unionists were opposed to what had been caJled direct action for the removal of tlieir grievances. Their success in the recent by-elections had turned their attention more than any amount of talking could have done to the possibilities of political action, and he believed their future efforts would lie in this direction. They realised that strikes whether justified or not, must estrange the sympathy of large sections of the community from the workers, and if for that reason alone strikes v/ere falling into more and more disfavor.