A GLOOMY COLUMN.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 3089, 3 May 1892, Page 2

A GLOOMY COLUMN.

Further experiments in rain-making are to be made at Terowie (South Australia) shortly. A Kempsey farmer sent 80 bags of potatoes to Sydney and received nine penny stamps as the net proceeds of sale. The Chinese leper brought down to Cooktown from Maytown was such a horrible object that the railways refused to carry him. At a bankruptcy meeting in Isapier recently, a creditor proved in the estate for £(U for liquor supplied. The debtor was a blacksmith, and averaged 13s per day for beer.

The destitution in Brisbane is becoming daily more apparent, Scores of families are starving, and many decent, steady men assert that they have had no food in their houses for several daya. Children are sleeping on heaps of straw. * An Oamaru " Parent " complains in the North Otago Tunes that he has to pay 7d per 41b loaf for a v.;ry inferior article in bread, while Duuedin people pay 4d per loaf for a belter bread made from Oamaru Hmir. In Waikato we consider ourselves remarkably lucky to get off with fid per leaf of the same weight. A gentleman in business in Melbourne, writing to a friend at Invercargill, says : — " I never had a worse time of it than during the last twelve months. Is'o money, and no business is doing. Melbourne is in a frightful state, commercially, financially, and morally. In fact, the bottom has completely dropped out of the couutry."