LOCAL AND GENERAL.

Taranaki Daily News, 28 March 1922, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL.

An epidemic of infantile paralysis is reported to be prevalent throughout the Auckland province.

There are reported to be 3£o exsoldiers at present out of work in Auckland.

The retail price of butter in New Plymouth has beeij increased, as from yesterday 2d per lb. The price in pats will therefore be Is 7d and from bulk Is .fid.

. Speaking at the Commercial Travellers’ Club, Auckland, yesterday, Mr. Massey said he hoped in the near future to announce a new railway policy.— Press Assn.

It is stated that the New Plymouth mail train is to be heated by steam during the winter months, and that the necessary alterations are now being made to the carriages.

The Waikato Winter Show Association has accepted a tender at £778 10s for the erection of additional accommodation. The new structure will adjoin the building erected last year, and provide 14,600 square feet of additional accommodation.

The Taranaki Jockey Club have appointed Mr. Hugh Mace, of Bell Block, as assistant caretaker at the z New Plymouth racecourse. In all forty applications were received, nd these were narrowed down to six, from which the final appointment was made yesterday.

In a recent test case taken by a Te Kuiti farmer against the Valuation Department on the assessment of the unimproved value of his farm, the Court of Appeal gave judgment against the department on the ground that the law governing unimproved values aS laid down in the Valuation of Land Act was not sound.

Some idea of the heavy losses which are suffered by large city shopkeepers through shoplifting was given by the evidence at the Sydney Central Police Court recently of a shop detective from Mark Foy’a, Limited. He stated that his firm found it necessary to make an allowance of £2OOO annually for such losses.

“I think it is generally recognised,” said the president of the Arbitration Court in Wellington on Thursday, “that the business of ‘higher, still higher wages’ has temporarily, at any rate, come to a stop. Everybody knows that industry throughout the country is not good at present, and everything depends', more or less, on the prices we get, for our primary products.”

“The Government takes 3d, the merchant and the retailer tbgether take 2Jd, and the manufacturer takes which covers the cost of the leaf,” said the general manager of a prominent Wellington firm of suppliers to the trade of tobacco and cigarettes a day or two ago in answer t)o a question as to how the 9d the citizen paid for his packet of cigarettes came to be allocated.

Reporting to the New Plymouth Borough Council last night, Inspector Day stated that the majority of places in~ New Plymouth where food was prepared had agreed to throw their back premises open for inspection by the public on certain nights. He did not anticipate that any persons engaged in this trade would raise objection to the scheme; in fact, tne ones he had seen welcomed it.

The reduction in the number of ordination candidates has brought the Church of England into a position of grave peril, said the Bishop of Durham, preaching in his cathedral. It was stated that there were 4000 fewer clergy than in 1914, and the question arose whether the inherited resources of the church were being used to the fullest advantage. The outstanding requirement was to make the ministry as open to the sons of the artisan as to any other.

At the.meeting of the Hawera Chamber of Commerce on Friday night, it was stated that there were a large number of unemployed in the town, and many did not have sufficient money to take a job on the Public Works, not being able to provide tents or pay for food. The president (Mr. J. B. Murdoch) suggested that the Public Works Department be requested to provide tents and galley arrangements. This was agreed to, and a committee was set up with a view to the establishment of a central bureau, where unemployed could reg’ >ter.

. A thrilling accident, with a miraculous escape from death, occurred to a workman in Adelaide last week. Ha was engaged on the third storey of a building in the course of construction, and, when testing the scaffolding, fell and took s.ome of it with him. Luckily the heel of one boot caught in the stonework of the building and the man hnij-* suspended. A fellow employee immediately held the heel in the crack and the man pulled himself to a nearby window and made his escape from a terrible' predicament, having sustained only a few bruises. Speaking to a Hawera Star reporter on the scope of musical education in New Zealand, Mr. Wills Hutchens said that as far as a New Zealand musical college was concerned, there was a good deal to bo said for and against. Such a college would fill a great need, but of course a truly good musical education demanded that 'breadth of knowledge which could only be obtained by a personal connection with the older countries. An artist might develop splendidly in New Zealand from a technical point of view, but artistic development required personal, contact with musical life in the various great centres of the world. That meant that any local conservatorium • would have limitations, however much it might increase the appreciation for music. The older world could not be dispensed with as a finishing ground for Colonial musical artists, for it was that personal contact with the older schools of thought which made the all round musician;

A report on the crusade against rats was received at last night’s meeting of the New Plymouth Borough Council. Under date March, 11, Inspector Day reported that at the end of October an extensive rat-poisoning campaign had been carried out, and since then he had followed the matter up by personally laying poison and seeing that shopkeepers were also taking steps. A certain business place caught 29 rats during one week in February, but had only caught one or two since then. Another man had accourtted for 170 rats in 4 months, but during une past month he had only got 20. The report dealt with general measures which had been adopted, the inspector stating that whereas previously 90 per cent, of the baits had been taken, a recent trial showed that very few were touched, and biscuits which were not poisoned at all were also untouched. He regarded this as a test of the effectiveness of the measures during the campaign.