TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8172, 2 July 1906, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

The United Stages Steel Corporation is proposing to construct a new steel plant in Indiana. To meet the expense, which is estimated at £15,003,000, a matter of £2,000,000 has already been set aside by the steel trust, and while some further sums may be allocated to the parpose during the five years or so which must elapse before the works are completed, the bulk of the cost will, it is expected, be covered by an issue of bonds. At this rate (says the Ironmonger of April 14th), there is not much chance of oontinued good times in the United State iron and steel trade leading to the draining of some of the water from the capital stook of the steel trust. It would Purely have been sounder finance to pay for the plant out of revenue than to pile ap farther millions of dollars of bond obligations. The plant ia to have an annual output of 1,760,000 tons of finished steel, which will make the trust's annual production of that olase of material clone upon 10,000*000 tons.

To assume a "Yankee twang," and adopt the incongruities affected by many Amerioane, will no longer be fashionable in England if Mr Wbitelaw Reid, the United States Ambassador to the Court of St James, can dieoourage it. Mr tfeid, who is also the proprietor of one of the great New York dailies, presided at the annual dinner of the Newspaper Press Fund last month, and in bis address said that the English people liked many things, nowadays, among them some things the Americans were trying to get rid of. Some American newspaper ideas seemed to be travelling across the Atlantic. In view of that, be deprecated English support of the oonstant and almost incredible corruption of the English language, which was proceeding in colleges as in 'the streets, and for which some newspapers raked the country. This degradation of the common language would be less threatening, Mr Keid said, if only the English people less cordially admitted American slang.

The great impediment in the way of popular emigration from Britain to the Australasian colonies is the expense |of the journey, which is commonly quadruple the rate to Canada and nearly double the rate to South Africa, says the Auckland Herald. The best emigrants in the average are those who are able to pay their own passages to any part of the world but it is simply preposterous to assume that thia is more than a vague generalisation. Many of those whose friends have gladly paid their passages to ,f Australasla have been very sorry additions to our colonial life and many of those who have arrived by means of assisted passages have proved themselves to be among best and worthiest citizens. And it is evident that the lower w6 can reduoe the passage rates between the United Kingdom and this colony particularly if that reduction is so under control that it assists in the selection of a good and desirable class of immigrants the more our population will benefit and the whole community profit. For this sufficient reason we are strongly favourable, as long as the uolony can absorb new blood from over sea, to such State subsidising ofj the shipping oompanies as will enable desirable British immigrants to join us at more reasonable passage rates than those ordinarily prevailing.

Writing on philately in New Zealand the Wellington correspondent of the Hawke's Bay Herald says:— "Quite a number of persons are utill saving up copies of the Wakatipu error stamp of our last isaue. This stamp, however, is of very little value, because, in the first place a large number of tbem were sold; secondly, Jbecause the error was not an error in the striot philatelic sense. A valuable error consists of a mistake in one stamp in the plate from which the impressions were made. In respect to the Wakatipu stamp, the whole of the stamps on the plate had the same error, so that the error was in the die and not in the plhte alone. Errors are more oommon than in stamps that hare type-set values. Such an error occurs in one of the New Zealand stamps where the word 'fifteen 5 is spelt 'eifteen.' This stamp is exceedingly rare. Therd is one New Zealaud error that makes a shilling stomp worth about £5 now—namely the one shilling surcharge for the inland of Niue the word 'Tamae' being used instead of 'Tana,' thus converting 'one shilling' into 'thief shilling.' This was discovered, and, as the stamps were immediately withdrawn, the error has become valuable. There are less than a hundred of these stamps in existence. It appears that there is no abatement in the stamp-collecting habit, and rather an increase. For New Zealand and Australian stamps the demand is'greater than the supply, and during the last fifteen years prices have been steadily going up."