TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8342, 26 January 1907, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

"There will probably be no little comment," remarks the London Globe, "on the fact that the New Zealand Government has again determined to place the loan of a million sterling, required for the current year's public works in the Antipodes. The last loan was raised partly in Australia and partly in Mew Zealand, and thus for the second time the London market is passed over. As I the colonial Government is prepared to pay up to 4£ per cent, for the loan, there is no question that it could have been placed in England, and although, we are informed, it is anticipated that the money will be obtained at something less than 4 per cent., evenat that price application to London would not necessarily, have been in vain. But the colonies feel that when money becomes once more abundant and cheap in the London market, a reasonable appeal from New Zealand would not suffer because of their having proved the ability of the colonial market to meet local requirements." "The remark," observes the Globe, "is shrewd. In this conservative Old World we may sometimes stare and gasp at the free way in which New Zealand spends money and raises further supplies, but the prosperity of the colony is beyond doubt, and to, say that it is solvent is to pay i£ a poor compliment." The New Zealand Institute of Surveyors, which he'd its annual meeting in Dunedin, on Wednesday, is, it may be assumed, one of those useful, necessary, unostentatious bodies that emerge into public prominence not very much more frequently than their annual meetings recur. The career of the surveyor probably varies very much, but in New Zealand there has at all events been plenty of pioneer work. It has afforded an avenue for the abilities of a good many young New Zeaianders, and it is satisfactory to learn-that New Zealand surveyors, like New Zealand mining students, are thought well of outside the colony. An examination of the list of members of the Surveyors' Institute will disclose tha fact that among their addresses are included Hongkong, San Francisco, Malay States, Tonga, the Transvaal and Borneo. The fact testifies to the enterprise at least of the New Zealander, and we are quite prepared to believe, that the satisfaction given by New Zealand surveyors abroad is in some measure attributable to the fact that as cadets they have had the advantage of receiving their fieldtraining in a small country of infinite diversity of physical feature and climate, with the result of gaining a more varied experience than would be possible under simpler conditions. An interesting story showing that the great commercial prosperity of the United States is the indirect cause of the many railway disasters for which this country is notorious is printed here, wrote the New York correspondent of the London Daily Express*, recently. The inevitable result of dealing with enormous quantities of freight is congestion on the line, and the slightest slip or carelessness causes accidents. The following figures show the almost incredible number of passengers and tons of freight carried every year on American lines: —1902, passengers 649,878505, tons of freight 1,200,315,787; 1903, 694,891,535 and 1,304,394,323; 1904, 715,419,682 and 1,309,899,165; 1905, 738,834,667 and 1,427,731,905; 1906, (estimated), 800,000,000 and 1,610,000,000. To set against this there is the appalling fact that during the last fiscal year 9,703 persons were killed in railway accidents and 86,008 injured. The question of paying large subsidies for the encouragement of the American mercantile marine, a matter which is of some interest to New Zealand because of its connection with the San Francisco mail service,, lately formed the subject of two public speeches made by Mr Root, the United States Secretary of State, at Kansas City and St. Louis. The Bill, which he was then advocating was apparently the one that was rejected by the Lower Chamber in Congress, and the burden of his addresses was the necessity of securing a larger portion of the trade of South America than has yet fallen to the share of the United States. As one of the features of the amended Bill now before Congress is the annual payment of a million dollars towards the building of twenty fast steamers for the South American trade, it is cjlear that the principle of the measure remains unchanged, though its scope and the method, of assisting the shipping companies are altered. The present measure is much less comprehensive than the former one, and so far as one can gather from the cable messages the proposed subsidies will be devoted to the specific purpose of shipbuilding instead of being merely large grants injiid.