LOCAL AND GENERAL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 20 March 1943, Page 2

LOCAL AND GENERAL

Married Man Killed. While felling a tree in the Ohakune reserve near the railway line to Raetihi yesterday, Mr Thomas Bernard O’Connell, married, aged 50, foreman of the Ohakune Borough Council, was struck by a limb and killed instantly. Another employee who was working with him, Mr Jack Watson, .was injured and taken to the Raetihi Hospital. Infantile Paralysis. Since the first case of infantile paralysis was reported in the Canterbury health district on February 5, there have been 35 cases, five of them fatal. In addition, there has been one case at Hokitika. So far this week eleven cases and one suspected case have been notified in Canterbury, and there have been three deaths from the disease. Claimed to be Essential. The baking industry is at present only partially covered so far as a. declaration of essentiality is concerned, it was stated at the conference of the New Zealand Master Bakers and Pastrycooks’ Association in Wellington. It is intended to make representations for extension of essentiality to the whole industry, including shop assistants and general hands. Loss of Kauri Gum. A valuable piece of kauri gum, weighting 2161 b, dug on the Redhill Field, near Dargaville, and which the owners, Marriner and Co., proposed giving to the Auckland War Museum, was among the property lost when the company’s store shed at Babylon, north of Dargaville, was totally destroyed by fire. About £5OO worth of gum was also destroyed, besides other goods. Driver Sent to Gaol. “All carriers are custodians of the goods they carry and are in positions of trust,” said Mr A. M. Goulding, S.M., in the Magistrates’ Court, Wellington, yesterday, when sentencing Lewis Edward Williams, a driver, to six months’ imprisonment on a charge of having stolen two cartons of tumblers from a consignment of 86 cartons he was transporting from the railway goods shed to the city. Pilot Officer Drowned. When an aircraft of the Royal New Zealand Air Force, engaged in night flying from a North Island air station, crashed into the sea at 8.30 p.m. on Thursday, a member of the crew, Pilot Officer Morris Mclntyre Bee, of Wairoa, was drowned, and the other two occupants, Sergeant Derek Aylmer Leslie (Gisborne) and Aircraftman Alfred Norman Larkman (Wanganui) received injuries, classified as not serious. Size of Sacks. A committee has been formed with the object of reducing the size and weight of sacks used for wheat and other produce, it was stated in Christchurch yesterday. This is the result of recent meetings of representatives of the farmers, millers, merchants, waterside workers, shipping and other interests. A good deal of progress is reported to have been made and various sizes and shapes of sacks have been produced for testing and experiments are to be carried out in the next few days. Servicemen Defrauded. Charges of having given short change for dollar bills, laid under the Finance Emergency Regulations (1940), were preferred against four defendants in the Magistrates’ Court, Wellington, yesterday. They were the first charges of the type to be made under the regulations, and were laid by the police after investigations at the request of the Reserve Bank, which had received complaints about the defrauding of overseas servicemen. The charge against Mrs Beryl Harris and her employer, Christopher Christie, proprietor of a restaurant in Courtenay Place, concerned an occasion in January last, when a five-dollar bill was tendered in payment of an account for 4s 3d and £1 5s 9d was given in change, 5d short of the correct change at 6s Id to the dollar. The second case was against Mary Maxwell Duncan employed in the bottle store of the Regent Hotel, Manners Street, and the licensee, Robert McMullian. A five-dollar bill was tendered to the first defendant in payment for a bottle of sherry costing 13s 6d, and 16s 6d was given in change, the magistrate imposed fines of £ 5 each on the defendants Harris and Duncan and convicted and discharged the two employers, Christie and McMullian.

National Savings. The National Savings receipts at the Masterton Post Office yesterday amounted to £63, making the total to date for the week £621. Jeweller Fined £5O. A fine of £5O and costs was imposed in the Wellington Magistrates Court yesterday by Mr W. C. Harley, S.M., on Emile Arnold Cattin, watchmaker and jeweller, who was convicted of profiteering in the sale of a watch for £7 10s, a price alleged to be unreasonably high for that type of watch. The Magistrate said the penalty was the minimum set by the Legislature. Fined for Profiteering. “These regulations have been made for good reason, to stop prices from soaring, and all of you know it. They must be observed strictly,” said Mr W. H. Freeman, S.M., at Te Aroha, when C. K. Foster, storekeeper, Te Aroha West, appeared on two charges of selling goods at prices in excess of those laid down by the Price Tribunal. The articles sold were a pound of rice for 6d, when the price was 5Jd, and a bottle of coffee and chicory which had been sold for 2s 4d, when the prescribed price, with allowable freight added, was 2s Id. Defendant pleaded guilty, and was fined £lO on each charge, with costs. Interhouse Dance. The Masonic Hall, Masterton, was crowded last night when the • Wairarapa Interhouse Association held a most successful dance. The music was supplied by Mrs V. J. Ashton’s orchestra and the M.C. was Mr J. Bruce. A Monte Carlo waltz was won by Mrs Cane and Mr R. McKenzie and a lucky spot dance by Miss June Smith and Mr Palleson. Supper, a feature of which was the serving of coffee made in American fashion, was served by the Interhouse girls. Elizabeth Keisenberg, a pupil of Miss B. Hirst, gave a special song and dance item. The audience was so pleased with the performance that the sum of £6 7s 5d was showered on the floor. The amount was handed over by the recipient this morning to “John Bull.” Girl Fatally Gored. After having been attacked at Waitotara by a Polled Angus cow which was guarding an injured calf by the roadside, a Maori girl, Roberta Kahukaka, aged six, received injuries from which she died in the Palea Hospital. The cow was one of a mob of cattle driven that way the previous day. When about to cross the Waitotara Bridge, 23 miles north of Wanganui, a calf jumped over a bank and was followed by a cow, both animals being injured. On the following day, slix children on their way to school were rushed at by the cow. The little girl who subsequently died was walking ahead of her companions and when attacked was badly injured about the lower part of the body. Two other children in the party were also knocked down, but with others subsequently climbed through a fence and reached safety. The cow and its calf were subsequently destroyed. Mr B. Roberts and the Wool Question. “In his statement on the wool question, Mr B. Roberts, M.P., made reference to the average wool price from 1927-28 to 1938-39, saying that the price had increased by nearly 50 per cent, said Mr A. P. O’Shea, Dominion Secretary of the N.Z. Farmers’ Union, yesterday. “What should be pointed out is that during the period Mr Roberts referred to, there were five years of slump prices. Also it should not be forgotten that today the value of money is nominaly 25 per cent less than it was in most of those years, and the real value of money is consideiably lower than that. It should also be remembered that in 1939 the plight of the sheep industry was such that the Government set up a Royal Commission to investigate the condition of the industry, and to report, on it. Having regard to these facts it will be obvious that a very great improvement in the returns for the industry’s products was urgently necessary, otherwise the position of sheepfarming would have been very serious indeed.”