THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1906.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8289, 17 November 1906, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 1906.

The existence of platinum-bearing lodes on the West; Coast is of great interest owing to the great demand for the metal, and the limited supply of it. Platinum now ranks as the most valuable of metals—except, of course, radium and some of the other rarer metals whioh are not produced in commercial quantities. Eleven years ago platinum was only 26s an ounce. A year and a half ago it was worth its weight In gold, and to-day, while pure'gold is valued at £4 an on nee, platinum is worth from £6 to £7. The demand for it baa inureased very greatly, "mainly owing to the enormous increase of olqatrio lighting. In all incandescent eleotrio lights littln bits of very fine platinum wire are used for the connections between the carbon film in the glass buib and the fwed wire. Slight as the quantity of platinum is in each lamp, the value of the metal is now so high that there is a considerable trade in old bulbs in whioh the Dims have been burned out. The tiny pieoes of metal are extracted, melted at a very high temperaturn, and re-drawn Into fresh wire. There is no substitute for it in tbia use, and the wires are being made thinner and thinner, owing to

tbe increased cost Flatinnm is as necessary to tbe obemlst as bread is to mail in general, that he may Ike. Tbe metal is invaluable as tbe material of ohemioal utensils, teoauee of its reaistanoe to beat and acid, and a large demand baa developed for tbe use of ulatinum in jewellery, in whiob it is especially employed for tbe setting of dla monds. It enables tbe finest diamonds, tbe pure white, to be displayed to the best advantage, while they are liable to oatob a yfillow reflection from a gold setting. A silver setting, of course, is easily tarDished. While the demand tma increased, tbe supply has remained stationary, for the mines do not grow riober, and practically all the supply is derived from tbe Ural mountains in Kassia.

Professor W. T. Ashley, Dean of the'JßVulty of Commerce, of Birmingham University, in the coarse of a leoture on "Some He pes and Fears Concerning Co-operation," defined cooperation as "a gigantic system of associated shopkeeping carried on by working-class consumers for tneir own benefit." Ihe co-operative movement had been valuable by teaching business ways to working people, and in making a pound go further than it did before; hut it was far more valuable, benauee it insensibly and seductively taught thrift by means of the quarterly dividend. Oritios had spoken of "the worship of the divvy" as if that were the end of the movement. The danger be saw in co-operation was toe danger of the old-fashioned, prosperous ohapei, which, having a good thing itself, forgot the people outside, and oeaaed to be a missionary ohuroh. ; They had a duty to bring In the mass of the improvident around them. The motto must oe, "Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in." He did not share the expectation that co-operative production and distribution were going to cover the whole field of human supply. The great bulk of the middle and upper classes would not be furnished by co-operation, and be did not think ships would be built, or engineering produced by cooperative enterprise. There were great evils * whioh 00-operation was not in the least likely to remedy or even mitigate. The co-operative store was incurring severer competition than ever through what was known as the multiple • shoo company, whioh were now appearing in working-class districts, whose polioy was to meet .no operation by making concessions Jn price, instead of saving up the concessions til l the end of the quarter. That kind of thing was very attractive to tinman nature, and the co-operative customer might ba tempted to buy that one speoially-ohenp article away from the store. Jn view of that competition, it was dangerous to allow any falling off 4 in quality. As to management, it was very hard for the democracy to team the value of a wise economy in the remuneration of its servants. Cooperation had gone past the first fine glow of patriotism, and its activities were humdrum and businesslike. There was always a danger of secret commissions, such as were oonneoted with ordinary business. The movement had been a vast good to the working population, but *;hey needed to spread its benefits over a wider area.