TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8329, 10 January 1907, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

That perenially interesting topic, the cost of living, is being debated in the New York papers. Should a man working for wages pay out a fourth or only a sixth of his earnings for rent? How much ought he to spend on 'his table? The range of the answers (says a New York correspondent) ; is very, very wide. Nearly all'agree, however, in giving an astonishingly large percentage as the necessary outlay for dress —as much or even more than for rent—and it may therefore reasonably be inferred that a rise or fall in the expenditure for outward display is the real barometer of prosperity. ■ At any rate, fine clothes seem to be the one gulf into which most of the surplus earnings of the average paterfamilias disappear. Surprisingly small, on the other hand, are the sums set aside for religion, and literature. x Sir Frederick Treves, addressing a meeting of Hospital Saturday delegates in Nottingham (England) recently, said that nothing more disastrous could happen, according to his view, than that hospitals should become municipalised, or turned over to become State institutions. Such hospitals, he contended, would in a short space of time become very little distinguised from workhouses or infirmaries. It was said that the expenses in connection with hospitals had increased out of all proportion to the increase of population, but the result had inevitably followed upon the cost involved in better scientific appliances and in the provision of improved buildings. A whole multitude of maladies which thirty years ago were regarded as incurable were now treated with safety and ease. The recognition of teaching as an art has been. followed, so far as State school teachers in New Zealand are concerned, by the provision of means whereby they may be scientifically grounded in their profession. The course of instruction cannot make a really good teacher of anybody who has not the capacity for teaching, but it does ensure that those who pass through it have some knowledge of proper methods of imparting instruction. To a greater or less degree, similar action is taken in the other colonies. But Victoria, we believe, stands alone in demanding that the teachers engaged in private schools, as well as those in the public schools, shall be fitted for the duties they have, in many cases too lightly, undertaken. By the Registration of Teachers and Schools Act of 1905, no person who was not employed before the Act passed, could teach in a school unless registered, and registration could only be secured by those who had attained a certain degree of capacity as teachers. The statistics which have .been published for the growth of the population in France for 1905 are well calculated to make every patriotic Frenchman reflect .seriously on tthe present situation. The number of births amounted to 807,000 and of deaths to 770,000, so that the total increase of the population stands at 37,000. In the previous year, 1904, the results were somewhat better. For that year 818,000 births were registered, and 761,000 -deaths. Thus the number of births exceeded those in 1905 by about 11,000, and the number of deaths, was about 9,000 less. The excess of births over deaths was 20,000 greater than was, the case during the past year. In consequence, the natural increase of the population has declined to the extent of one per thousand, whilst in

the case of the other great Powers of Europe it is relatively much higher. In Great Britain the average increase is over 11 per thousand annually, the same is true of Austria-Hungary; in the case of Italy it is 10 per thousand, of Russia 18 per thousand, and of Germany from 14 to 15 per thousand of the population.