TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3139, 17 March 1909, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

UNEMPLOYMENT. It is disgraceful that in a country like New Zealand there should be any unemployed, for we have millions of acres awaiting development, besides the inexhaustible riches of mine and sea. Yet, remarks the Auckland "Herald," when through sheer misgovernment unemployed appear and an unemployed agitation starts, the spokesmen of the unions have no suggestion to make excepting that immigration be blocked; it never seems to occur to them that to open availabla avenue? for employment is the only intelligent cure. FLOURMILLERS' AGREEMENT. It is understood that all the flourmillers originally associated with the association down South have signed the new agreen.ent except one. The mill holding out is doing so not with

any intention of bursting up the association, but as a protest against what the proprietors consider unfair treatment at the hands of the directors, in that the millers are given credit for much less flour per month than they consider they are entitled to. From what can be gathered, millers generally recognise the association in the light of a necessary evil, if evil it can be called at all. Certain it is that it relieves the individual miller of much business wurry, in that all payments for flour sold are made through the .association, by whom J:he losses are borne. The effect of this arrangement is that whereas under former conditions bad debts up to £3,000 per annum were made by some of the mills, uncier the association's management bad debts of the associated mills approximate only I £1,500. For the miller this is a good thing, especially as each is allowed torui his mill as he thinks fit, receives a payment for his flour in ; accordance with its quality. For the farmer, too, the association is claimed to have advantages, for the assurance that their money is safe enables the millers to give the best price for j wheat. I BEAUTIFYING STATIONS.

In the course of a letter apologising for his inability to ba present at the annual meeting of the Christchurch Beautifying Association, Mr S. Hurst Seager referred to the very great care taken by the British railway companies to make their wayside stations beauty spots. In many cases, he stated., the directors offered substantial prizes for the best-planted and best-kept stations, with the re* suit that therewas strong emulation among the various stationmastera and men to secure the prize. Continuing, Mr Hurst Seager wrote: —"Could our own Government be induced to forego the paltry sums which it now secures by the advertisements on our stations and convert them in the way into beauty spots, what a grand opportunity there would be for through travellers from the far north to the extreme south to see, as they passed from station to station, the various native flora common to -the various districts. It would add vastly to the interest and to the enjoyment of the journey, and would be more calculated to induce traffic than any number of tourist bureaus. I would have liked to have moved that the Minister of Railways be requested to consider the advisableness of removing placards from our country stations, and of affording the railway employees every inducement to plant native shrubs and flowers common to the district in and around the station."