WELLINGTON TOPICS

Taranaki Daily News, 24 June 1920, Page 9

WELLINGTON TOPICS

PILLAGING. SOME ASTOUNDING FIGURES. (Special Correspondent.) The local newspapers are waking up to the fact that Wellington has earned a very evil notoriety among the ports of the Dominion through the amount of pi'.laging that goes on along its waterfront- The Post last evening quoted some astounding figures it had obtained from the shipping companies and consignees, showing the amount of thieving from five sugar cargoes unloaded here between November 2S and January 17, a period of little more than seven weeks. The total "short delivered," to use the euphemistic phrase employed in business circles, from the live vessels was 197 701b bags and 170 1401b bags, a total of 37,5901b5, or just upon 17 tons. It seems almost incredible that a thief could get away with a 1401b bag of sugar without being detected by one or other of the watchers employed to prevent such happenings, but the facts are established beyond a shadow of doubt, and it is only on the rarest occasions a pilferer, probably a littlj less astute than his fellows, is brought to book. MORE CONVENIENT HAULS. While thieves are walking off the ships and across the wharves with 1401b bags of sugar, it Js not surprising less daring operators are lifting pounds of tobacco and small boxes of tea. It is a significant fact that as the prices of these smaller articles rise the number of thefts increase. The advance in the price of tobacco was followed immediately by air* 'increase in the amount of pillaging, and the advance in the price of tea produce! a similar result. One shipping company has had to pay six claims amounting altogether to over £250 for "short-deliv-ered" tea during the last few months, and has not succeeded in catching one of the thieves. The shipping companies, of course, insure themselves against thes* losses, and the consignees recover from the shipping companies, but the cost of insurance, represented by -the increase'! freight, is inevitably passed on to tinconsumer in one shape or another, so that in the end it is the community that is being robbed. SOLDIERS' SETTLEMENT. There is a growing feeling here, and doubtless in other parts of the Dominion, that the Government's well-intentioned soldier settlement schemes are not progressing so well as all but the most churlish of political partisans would wish The New Zealand Times, referring to the matter this morning, in the course of a notice of the Hon. G. J. Anderson's^address to his constituents, reiterates a good deal of what was stated by members of the deputation from .the R.S.A. that waited upon Mr. Massey the other day. "The flood of expenditure on the purchase of private estates," it says among other things, "has caused a boom, which has alarmed the public and frightened into considerable perplexity the Government, which ought to have foreseen the result of its ill-considered expenditure." The Minister's answer to this indictment is that the land purchased for soldiers' settlement was acquired at its productive value, and that 1 a vast majority of the men are satisfied with the provision made for them.