TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3114, 12 February 1909, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

THE RAILWAYS,

The South Island, in spite of eur recent advances in railway construction, still has nearly 50 per cent, more railway lines than the North, but it is a very remarkable fact that our 1,100 miles of railway brought in last month a revenue, actually greater than the revenue derived from the 1,540 miles of railway in the South Island, says the Auckland "Star." The revenue for the North Island is set dawn at £145,000. for the South at £133,000, and we leave to our Southern friends and rivals the difficult task of explaining away the superiority of our lines as a source of national income. Surely these figures prove beyond the possibility of dispute that the country benefits more from pushing on railway construction in the North than in the South.

THE GOSPEL OF THRIFT,

It is not easy at this tima of day to say much that is fresh about thrift, but Lord Kosebery managed to be very interesting on the subject in an address at the recent annual meeting of the Edinburgh Savings Bank, He pointed out that the experience of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Manchester showed tnat the contention that the

poor could not save was entirely wrong, for periods of stress and not periods of prosperity were the most favourable to thrift. The eighteenth century was, perhaps, the time of Scotland's direst poverty, but it was also the period of her greatest thrift. There was probably not more than £200,000 or £300,000 in current coin in the whole of Scotland 120 years ago, while in the two savings banks of Edinburgh and Glasgow to-day there was £14,000,000 in deposits. Thrift, continued Lord Rosebsry, was the basis of Empire. The Roman Empire, "which lay like an iron stamp on the face of the world," was founded on thrift, and when it ceased to be thrifty, it degenerated . and fell. "Prussia began with a' little narrow spit of sand in the north of Europe—all sting, as someona said of its shape and the fact that all its inhabitants were armed men. It was nurtured by the thrift of Frederick the Great's father, who prepared the vast treasure and army by economy which we should call sordid, but which was the weapon by which the greatness of Prussia was founded, from which the present German Empire has arisen." When France was under the heel of Germany, Bismarck imposed such a financial burden as seemed impossible to be borne. "The stockings of the French peasantry, in which they kept their savings of years, were emptied into the chest of the State, and that huge indemnity and war expenses were paid off in a time incredibly short."