LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Taranaki Daily News, 30 March 1921, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

To-morrow will be the 80th anniversary of the founding of Taranaki. The goods train from Patea which arrives in Hawera at 9 a.m. will in future have a passenger* car attached. Thieves entered two Palmerston North hotels this morning, and visiting bowlers were robbed of £2oo.—Prese Association.

Newton King, Ltd., has received the following cable from its principals, Messrs. R. and W. Davidson, Ltd: •‘Cheese market quiet; white £7 2s, colored £B.”

“Any man can sheep-farm on paper,” said a witness in the Supreme Court at Gisborne, “but it takes a good man to put his theory into practice, and the chances are he would soon find himself in the Bankruptcy Court.”

To-morrow afternoon the Taranaki war veterans, survivors of Waireka and other important battles of the early days, will be motored by the younger men of New Plymouth to “Hapurunui/ at the Meeting of the Waters, where they will be entertained to afternoon tea by Mrs. C. H. Burgess. If the weather is unfavorable tea will be dispensed at the Victoria League rooms by Mrs. Burgess.

Residents of Canterbury are apprehensive about the Lake Coleridge electric power supply on account of th? Public Works Department having abandoned the permanent diversion works on the Harper river. The supply of current from Lake Coleridge will be precarious during the winter, it, is stated, and .an effort is to be made by the Canterbury Progressive League to induce the Government to complete . the diversion works.

The vast difference at present ruling between the value of the raw material and thj* price of the manufactured article wffs brought home to a Taranaki wool-grower the other day. He offered a Hawera tailor two bales of wool for a suit of clothes, but the offer was refused. The tailor that the two bales weighed approximately GOOlbs, which at 5d per lb would amount, to £l2 10s. His lowest price for the suit was- £l4 14s—Argus.

A good story comes from the North about a pushing land agent who had a prospective buyer fort some gum land, and assured the latter that the land had a carrying capacity of two sheep to the acre. The farmer was not satisfied with the agent’s assurance, and said he would like to see the place. After inspection, the agent asked him if he was not now satisfied that the land was as good as he described it. “Well,” he said, “I’ve heard what you have said, and I’ve seen the land, but before I decide I would like to hear the evidence of the two sheep.”

“It is a relief to be in Taranaki after visiting Hawke’s Bay and the Wairarapa,” stated an Auckland visitor to a Daily News representative yesterday. He proceeded to state that in both those districts the effects of the financial stringency were greatly in evidence, and business was very poor, whilst the higher the position the people enjoyed the more pessimistic were they in regard to the future. In Taranaki he found business going on as usual, people v ere buying, all seemed to have confidence in their, own district and the Dominion, and were backing their faith in many ways. It was a welcome change, and due, in his opinion, largely to the fact that Taranaki was supported almost entire!v by the dairying industry, which was in a sound and flourishing condition at present and was likely to remain so for some time to come.

In the New Plymouth Magistrate’s Court yesterday, Lincoln E. Turner appeared 1 on remand on a charge of the theft of four heifers at Hastings on 20th iiust. On the application of Senior Sergeant McCrorie accused was remanded to appear at Napier on April 1. A Wellington lady, in a letter from London to a friend, states that at the time of writing there was a decided slump in all sorts of clothing and boots, and “bargain sales” were everywhere the order of the duty. Food .prices had receded slightly, but the cost of meals in the big restaurants and hotels was still high; bus and tram fare were double what they were, three years ago, and travelling generally was as expensive as ever. There was a great deal of unemployment all over the country, and wages were gradually coming down in consequence. Girls, who in the munition making days spent their money on fur coats and 60s boots, were back to their former employment, and glad to get it. Few of them seemed to have profited by the high wages that prevailed during the war period.

Speaking of the hurried, legislation of last week, a Dunedin merchant says : The plentifulness <Tf money that was borrowed for war purposes created an inflation which tempted some business houses to extend their premises, to increase their capital, or to take money on deposit at call or short notice practically without limit. These firms that thus went in for what was really private banking bad to put the money out at interest, and if their capital was all called up and they began to press, the depositors would have no chance of getting their money out. ' Evidently the Minister of Finance* has realised that a grave disaster might Occur if one of these companies had to stand a sudden call up. The legislation now agreed to, by Which the companies are protected till May 31st, or beyond that date, was certainly necessary, but the taking of money in hundreds of thousands at call or short date should never have been allowed to go on so long. I know of one company that took nearly £200,000 on short dates and £50,000 at call, and that was the strongest case that could be cited. Tn Otago and Southland our national caution has kept things reasonably safe, and we shall feel the pinch less and get over it quicker than our more impetuous neighbours in the north. As for the extension of the moratorium till the end or 1921, it is all very well to so protect the borrower but it is hard on such lenders as hard-up widows who •have nothing but their interest to live on.”

Rain has not fallen in the Morrinsville district for over four months, and the milk production has fallen away to almost vanishing point, it is stated, on the majority of farms. One farmer — a returned soldier —said he was not ting sufficient milk from a herd of 35 cows to feed a baby. An enthusiastic angler, Mr. George Wilton, of Palmerston North, during four months’ fishing in Lakes Rotorua and Rotoiti this season, took 2698 lbs. of trout. He fished every week, and six days a week, hie average take being 101 b. daily. The fish caught in Lake Rotorua averaged 2Mb. in weight, and those from Lake Rotoiti 51b. The heaviest fish was a 10-pounder caught in Rotoiti.

Mr A. Al ye J's, M.P., who has just returned from his visit to Britain, stated in Wellington last week that while the community to-day is necessarily divided into various political parties of nil shades of opinion, these parties are reducible broadly into two main groups—(l) Those who,’ accepting the present system and structure of society, seek to improve it ; and (2) those who desire to upset the whole system. “It appears to me obvious, tnerefore, that it is absolutely essential that the several parties in the first group must pull together for t'he preservation of national unity' and for the safeguarding both of national and of Imperial interests.”

A considerable amount of attention was attracted to the sale which was held at Dunedin on Wednesday of a portion of Dr. Truby King’s library. There was a large attendance of buyers, and bidding was spirited for all the works of general literature, and in particular for the New Zealand books. Ati showing the keen demand for these latter it may be mentioned (says the Otago Daily Times) that three small volumes in paper covers on New Zealahd flowers and illustrated with coloured plates brought £3 ss. When the medical works were reached 'bidding slackened off to some extent, except for Any works of use to students, and these met with eager competition. i Discussing the waterfront trouble at a meeting of the Wellington Harbour Board, Mr. Wright, M.P., expressed the opinion that to palter with the situation was only putting a plaster on a sore, instead of curing the cause of it. Talk about increasing the permanent labor! Look at the railways! With their superannuation and everything they had struck. Take the coal miners —troubles had become so bad at Runauga—the State mine—that the Minister had threatened to shut down the mine altogether, since when they had been behaving themselves a little better. It was all due to a small body of men who directed the trouble. First it was here, then it was for Auckland to give it a go ; then some other place, and’ back again. It was going on all the time. They could devise schemes, build houses (with hot and cold water), and send men to work in bell-toppers. ]t would make no difference. These men were out to make trouble. Only recently a stevedore told a gang he wanted them to work overtime. Some of them said they’ would not—others would like to work, but they were afraid that something would fall on them in the ship. One man asked the stevedore whether he could work though the others would not, and was told that he could, but a friend had told him to watch himself or something would fall on him. They could set up all the commissions they liked, but so sure as they neglected to deal with the ringleaders and fire them out of the country they were going to have trouble.