TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8197, 30 July 1906, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

Interviewed by a Lytteltou Times reporter, Mr Kinsella said:—Mar* marine .has been imported into this country for a number of years from America, though I don't know ir any lias ever been shipped bore from England. 1 kuow for a fact that most of the margarine received in New Zealand has been used bv tho biscuit manufnoturor?, who Gud it more suitable for their purpose, owing to its uniformity than the various brands of eheapor graded butter. Margarine (refined animal fat) is largely used in Denmark, whore the highest-priced butter in the world uomes from, not only for biscuit, making, but by the poorer olasseß, who cannot afford to buy expensive butter and use it on their tables. In the meantime there need be no anxiety on the part of producers that anything will be permitted to be done that is likely to injure the dairying industry of this colony, but the quantity of margarine at present imported is so trifling that it is not worth making any fuss about.

t Three years ago the Gardeu Oity was still no more than "a pattern laid up in heaven." To-day (remarks a London paper), when it issues amid unanimous approval its appeal for further capital, it is no longer a Utopia,, but a substantial town of brick and mortar, growing daily, not at haphazard or in obedi ef.ce to the caprice or interest of individuals, but on a reasoned plan which provides at orioe for health, convenience, and beauty. In the pßst year its population has risen from 600 to 1,600 souls. Pour industrial enterprises, oaa of them at

least a co-operative undertaking have settled within its boundaries, and in their wake a further influx of immigrants is certain to follow. Its oommon life is already being organ* ised, and it is solving its educational problem by startling a school which ainia at breaking down class barriers by attracting the children of all its tenants alike. While its strides grow, its agricultural belt is being steadily improved, and the children who grow up within it will have all the advantages of town life in a setting of cornfields. Its cottages benefit by the experiments in cheap and tasteful building which have been made in recent years, and they may be had at rentals as low as 4s 611 weekly. The beat of all is that its whole oonduot and control lies in the hands of its citizens. The Garden City will be a miracle indeed—a modern town without landlord or sweater.

The last English mail brought accounts of the ceremony of launching the new mammoth Ounard liner Lusitania—the world's largest vessel —which took place on June 7th, at the famous Clydebank yards of Messrs John Brown and Co., Limited. No event connected with ooean transit and the British mercantile marine, sin3e the launch, sixteen years ago, of the first twin sorew Atlantic liners, has aruused to great and widespread interest throughout the shipping world and among the general public as the launch of the Lusitania. The event represents the breaking of mauy marine records, and, apart from anything else, compels attention for the reason that it gives to the first maritime Power in the world possession of the finest and biggest steamer in the world, and that despite competition of a fierce character during the past decade. The Lusitania is easily the largest ship afloat in every dimension. Her speed and power will be greater than that of any rival afloat, or now on the stocks. She represents the most important advanoe yet made in the development of the famous Parsons turbine; and lust, but not least, she is Great Britain's champion, and dedicated from her birth to the task of winning baok the blue riband of the Atlantic, wrested from us by Germany. The Lusitania's displacement is 33,000 tons, and to main tain her minimum speed of knots her superb turbines will develop about 80,000 horse-power, or double that of the most powerful steamer now afloat. Her length is twice the height of St. Paul's Cathedral, and 60ft more than that of the longest steamer previously afloat.

Thin-lipped, clean-shaven, with a firm ohin and keen eyes, a man of whipcord all through, with every nerve tightly strung, physically the type of the keen, straight, cleanlimbed American athlete, whom Gibson loved to depict—this is Upton Sinclair, the author of "The Jijngle." He is only 27, but he has already begun to make history, bacauße his great novel has opened the floodgates on a rising tide, and no power on eaith oan close them now. The pebble has loosed the avalanche. Alone he faced a giant trust—a pigmy armed only with his pen. But all the world knows now how the fight went. The Chicago ogro first ignored him; then tried to shout him down; and finally bellowed with riage and dismay as his remorseless realism finally dragged him into the light of day. But to no purpose. Uptoa Sinclair is a man of fighting grit, end a 'strenuous life had tested his mettle long before he won fame. He gained his education at Columbia University at the point of his restless pen, At the age of 17 he had written a long and notable novel. For four years he roughed it in Canada. He nearly starved in New Yoru, and wrote the tragedy of Grub Street in the New World from his own bitter experience. Then he went to Chicago, a convinoed sooialist, but eager as ever was knight-errant of romance to goad iniquity from its hidingplace. The story of the tremendous sooial and eoonomio problems "The Jungle" has opened up is an absorbing one; but Sinclair lived the story first in ail its passionate human interest, its blood and tears, its sordid heroism, and its flaunting crime. It is a story that has been lived; therefore it challenged a hearing, and could not be denied.