GENERAL NEWS.

Taranaki Daily News, 2 December 1920, Page 3

GENERAL NEWS.

Linseed oil lias eased again at Home by about fid a gallon, aud white lead bv "0s a ton. bui it will be some time vet before merchants will he able to hind goods from present quotations.

At the Sydney night refuge and soup kitchen, during the past year, .14,721! men were supplied with meals, and 24 075 were given bods at the refuge. "This is a daily average of 14!) meals and 07 beds. and shows an increase of 24,310 in the number of meals supplied durin» the year and 804 in the number of "beds Women to the number of .IMS and six children have been fed, and shelter has been given to 577. This is some indication of the poverty existing in the Australian city.

The equipment of the' Xew Zealand Fertiliser Company's works at Te Papapa, near Onehunga. is now practically' completed, and grinding operations will be commenced to-day. The bricks for lining the acid chambers are coming to hand from Australia, according to "contract, and it is anticipated the works will bo turning out a good supply 0 f superphosphate in January. The date of the official openings of the works has not been fixed, but the ceremony will take place early in the Xew Year.' The Prime Minister has accepted an invitation to attend the opening ceremony. The huge fleet of German sailing ships which were in Chilian waters at the commencement of the war (states the Mercantile Gazette of August 21st) still remains at its original anchorage. Instructions were received from the German Government to get the ships ready for the voyage home to surrender, but there was difficulty in getting sailors to man them, because wages on steamers arc much better, and consequently sailors are unwilling to undergo ■tho''hardship and monotony of long voyages in sailing ships. An American visitor, Professor H. H. Wing, of the Cornell Agricultural University at Ithaca, Xew York, gave to a Christchurch Press reporter some interesting views of the pastoral and dairy activities as they appeared to him. He was taken with much of the country he passed over in the Xorth Island, and a point that impressed him was the manner in which pastures grew all the year roiind. The pastoral qualities of some of the country behind Gisborne appealed to him. as did the dairy land of Taranaki and some of the mixed farm lands in the VYaikato. He had a good run through Taranaki. Questioned as to what he thought of land values in the dairying districts, lie non-eommiltingly remarked that it appeared to him that some of the dairy land was undulv inflated: but on the other hand he had heard of £2+ being taken from an acre in a year. Up in Taranaki the farmers were taking kindly to the idea that they will have to cultivate if they want to carry their stock through, and the production of turnips, lucerne, maize, and mangels was being gone in for. "It is only in comparatively recent years that Britain's industrial supremacy has been threatened, and the future is-fraught with grave danger, for the I'nited States is producing" an exportable surplus of 200 million tons, a quantity equal to the annual production of coal in the United Kingdom to-day. Another signiticant fact is that the English .miner produces at present about Klewt of coal per day; the American miner produce snearly four tons, whilst the Xew Zealand miner produces about five tons per day."—Mr. ,T. W. Collins, Secretary to the Board of Trade, on (he coal situation.