TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIX, Issue 8138, 12 May 1906, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

The offloial report of the Saxon Government on the conditions prevailing among certain home industries has juat been nublisbed, and reveals a terrible state of affairs. In several induntries wages are as low as two and three pfennigs an hour. In thd vast majority of cases the work-room serves as kitchen and sleening-room for the family. The unfortunate workers are obliged not only to employ their children, if tney are to have enough to live on, but to work sometimes eighty hours a week. Children not infrequently ■ work sixty-six hours. The worst-paid work is that connected with the toy industry, but artificial flowers, lace dress trimmings, and numerous other minor industries employing tens of thousands of persons are in the same category.

The Transvaal Leader publishes an article whioh it vouches was written by a Dutch Afrikander, whose authority is not jo be questioned. The editbr disclaims having had anything to do with its genesis, but publiahes it as an absolutely genuine document. The writer gives it as the universal Afrikander hope that within ten or fifteen years there is to be a general rising throughout South Africa from the Cape to the Zambesi, for the purpose of throwing off the British supremacy. He declares that there wil be vast numbers of Britons by descent and by birth who will willingly throw in their lot where the oause is a free and republican South Africa. To these the inducement will beheld of the confiscation of all mines to the State, to be worked on a purely socialistic basis. While disclaiming that there is any secret understanding to this effeot, the writer states it is a position that is tacitly accepted by all, and whereever two or three Afrikanders meet together, sooner or later reference is made to this ideal.

The Adriatic, now being built by Messrs Harlaad and Wolff, at Belfast, for the White Star Line, is

not so long as the Cunarders Mauritana or Lusitana, bat she is as much as 1,200 tons gross bigger than tbe Baltic Her displacement will be over 40,000 tons—twice tbe displacement, tbat is to say, of tbe battleship Dreadnought, at ber loaded draugnt. Ber double bottom has a depth of sft lin, under tbe propelling machinery it is sft lOin—and her hull is divided into watertight compartments by 11 bulkheads.' There are seven cargo holds, including reserve bunkers, two 'tween deck holds insulated, and two holds fitted as deep tanks. In her hull are close on 20,000 steel plates—some of the shell plates are 30ft long by si't wide, and weigh from three to four tons-r-and nearly 2,500,000 rivets have been used to bind them together. The work of building the vessel is proceeding rapidly, and it is expected that she will be ready for launching in the late summer.

The preaenoe of Turkish troops upon Egyptian territory in the Peninsula of Sinai was first discovered in February last by Rumbley Bey, an Anglo-Egyptian officer, as the result of which a strong remonstrance was addressed from Cairo to Constantinople, which elioited tbe reply to the effect that "a vassal Powef bad no right to make such complaints to its suzerain." Tbe impertinence of this answer was naturally resented by Lord Cromer, who referred the matter to London. Jt was stated at the time that the Sultan's forces bad not only been establishing forts in territory admittedly Egyptian, but had also been threatening the officers of an Egyptian gunboat lying in a bay near Kabah. All local efforts to remedy tbe matter proved unavailing. On further representations being made by the British Government, the Porte, it is said, formally refused to withdraw the Turkish troops from near Akabah affirming that tbe territory is Turkish, and not Egyptian, The British Government then ordered the cruiser Diana to proceed to the Gulf of Akabab, whereupon the Sultan "climbed down," and oonsented to the despatch of a joint Turko-Egypt-ian Commission, to settle tbe question on the spot, though (as an English exchange puts it), "there was nothing to study." The Diana's orders were thereupon oanoelled, and two high Egyptian officers proceeded to the scene of the dispute. It was assumed that the matter would end there, bat disquieting rumour followed, and the negotiations whioh have since been pending seem to have been without peaceful result.