Page 10 Advertisements Column 3

Taranaki Daily News, 11 December 1920, Page 10 (Supplement)

try. Side by side with the efforts to promote the production of power alcohol as an alternative motor fuel, steps are now being taken to overcome obstacles that would retard its use when available. The Empire Motor Fuels Committees to deal with the modification of Customs and Excise restrictions in connection with its control; experiments to discover the best conditions for developing the alcohol engine and types of alcohol fuels, alone or in mixture, for industrial purposes; and the important subject of denaturation (or rendering alcohol unpotable). Some trouble wrb caused recently by the use of vessels manned by Japanese to carry cargoes on the Australian coast. It is interesting to notice (says a Melbourne paper) that the Japanese Seamen's Union is agitating in favor of the exclusion of Chinese seamen from Japanese ships, on the ground thatChinese cheap labor is excluding Japanese seamen from employment. A deputation of seamen, which waited on the Director of the Mercantile Marine at Tokio, stated that owing to the employment of Chinese on Japanese vessels 3000 Japanese seamen were out of work a.t Kobe, InOO at Yokohama, and about 3000 elsewhere. It was stated that the wages of Japanese seamen were 25 yen ( £2 10s) a month, or, with the allowances of 200 per cent, now given, 75 yen ( £7 10s) i a month, while the Chinese were employed at 20 yen less a month. The hope was expressed that the authorities would restrict the employment of foreigners on Japanese vessels. It was urged that the demand for the exclusion of Chinese seamen was not on the same footing as the anti-Japanese agitation in California, because the Japanese in California were not "cheap labour," neither was there anything which made them an "objast of international drta^,"