TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 7945, 22 January 1906, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

In a number of the journals in the colony muah has been, said regarding the recenh announcement of a rise in the price of boots. The mauager of one of the largest firms in the South Island states that the rise was world-wide. For h long time past hides have been steadily going up, and were now quoted at a higher figure than they had been for the last fifty years. In consequence manufacturers had had to cry a halt at the old prices, and in sympathy with the Commonwealth of Australia, America, and Great Britain, New Zealand manufacturers had been compelled to announce a general advance of from 7% to 1° Per cent. The export of hides from New Zealand to Australia and America was seriously interfering with the output of manufactured boots in theoolony, while the prices for hides offered by outsiders had to be met by equal prices being paid here. The manager in question expressed the opinion that, at the outset,the increase would have an adverse effect on the sale of colonial boots, and manufacturers were, he said, quite alive to the faot that tho cheaper attiole could be placed on the market the more satisfactory was the business done, hence no advance had been made until absolutely imperative. Ultimately, however, he thought things would settle down, and tho colonial firms get tack whatever tracle might be lost on the first introduction of the new scale of prices.

Against a nation on strike, says a writer, any and every Government is powerless. But how long is a nation, how long especially is the Russian nation, the poorest of them all, able to remain on strike? What resources have they with which to maintain a pressure that bears hard on every one, but hardest of all on themselves? A people always overtaxed, always within measurable distance of famine, does not possess the material background necessary for the maintenance of a prolonged economic war.' suoh a war can..onlj plunge it deeper Into'destitutiou; it cannot be waged' indefinitely.

It is a temporary expedient only, the employment of which for a single fortnight would inevitably lead to violence and anarchy. Both parties, indeed, to the Russian struggle are in possession of weapons which they rightly hesitate to use to their full potency. The autocracy caonot preserve itself by force of arms; the people cannot conduct a general strike along lines of passive resistance without injur ing themselves more than their rulers. We look upon the events of the past therefore, as amounting to no more than an incident in a lengthy conflict. They do not by any means end the question. They add their weight to that process of attrition which is gradually wearing down the autocratic system, but that is all. They are a step, but no more than a step, onwards to the goal which it miy take years and generations to reach.

The Spectator (Nov. 4), in an article on the retirement of Sir William Butler, says:—"To some men the rehabilitation of their fame only comes after death. Sir William Butler was spared this fate. Bis judgment has been verified in a very few years. The evidence before the Commission on the war showed that he was right and Lord Milnor wrong in every single instance in which their advice and opinion conflicted. And the victim of the resentment of the Chartered aliens has lived to see his country taught that his view of the origin of the war was the just one by the dramatic and fatal triumph ofjthe Eandlords, When six years after the first soldiers foil in that unhappy war the Goverament has*solemnly to warn Englishmen in an italicised notice in every post office not to emigrate to the Transvaal when the Band, which was to have been the Englishman's Paradise is found to be the Chinaman's Bedlam, when the new industries we were promised turu out to be the bunting of escaped serfs and a furtive traffic of opium, many Englishmen will think that certain words which Sir .William Butler put into a warning message to the Colonial Office about the Johannesburg group were not the immature assumptions or the prejudiced acousations which Mr Chamberlain and Lord Milner believed them to be."

I It was decided by the National Committee for tbe .Relief of Jews in Russia, at a meeting held at New York on December Mb, to raise at least £500,000. When the committee met Mr Straus, said: "I had hoped that this meeting would end our task, but it will not be, although over 1,000,000 dollars have been collected for our co-religionists, no offering that could be made is sufficient nor can be sufficient. Jacob H. Sohniff reported that he had forwarded 1,000,000 dollars by cable to Lord Rothschild in London. Since the reported completion of .the first 1,000,000 dollars, tbe committee has received 35,000 dollars. Mr Schniff will be able to send an additional 50,000 dollars. Secretary Sulzberger, in his rerort of the collection of 1,000,000 dollars, said of that amount 430,883 dollars was the New York contribution, represent ing about 55,000 contributors. Of this, 66,000 dollars came from nonJewish sources. In fact, about 20 per cent of the grand total was given by Christians. Chicago was second on the list, with 84,608 dollars; Philadelphia third, with 60,608 dollars; and Boston fourth, with 20,025 dollars.