THE PASSING SHOW.

Auckland Star, Volume LXIV, Issue 18, 23 January 1933, Page 6

THE PASSING SHOW.

(By THE MAN ABOUT TOWN.) > Dear M.A.T.,—Now that the Government has delivered one of those "body blows an banked on a Lang-Plan principle to save the poor hard-working u-i THE UPPER CUT. mers, a sbn of the soil has declared in favour ol country life, whether exchange is pegged or not. Tiring of dairying routine, lie shook the dust of Tauranga district from his boots, arriving in Auckland in seareli of a jo . proved to be the wheeling of bricks for a building contractor. Work, by heck!— knew what it was previously. No hes not the sort that' will chuck up the job. He is determined to see it through—and then back home to confirm, his fat/her's prediction. In future, he says, no one will get away with •snivelling about "/arm slavery." There is nothing like a taste- of experience to blast roseate theories!—Agricola. An exile from Auckland, cooling his heels for some years past in the delectable atmosphere of Dunedin, where he is officially engaged, travels daily between the BAKED PEANUTS, city and Port Chalmers. He is interested in inventive ideas and writes to say that while travelling in a carriage with homing schoolboys he noted that the lads unfastened the lamps in the roof of the carriage, filled them up with peanuts, and sat in expectancy. As the train neared Port Chalmers, the ingenious youths removed the nuts, deliciously baked, and regaled themselves. He neglected to say what the ingenious lads did with the shells, the Auckland method being well known. As the exile knows Devonport very well, he will be pleased to hear that the nut eater of the ferries merely casts his in the breeze— his nearby neighbours sitting to leeward receiving them. There is one advantage in travelling by boat, in comparison to train— you can't bake peanuts at an electric globe.

A family afflicted by a telephone on a recent day were forced to post a guard at the instrument and to keep it posted throughout a blistering day and RING OFF! far, far into the night. The reason for this exuberance of- telephonic communication is to be found in this sample of the calls, "I notice you want to buy a motor car." The guard on the family 'phone replied, "No, I dont want to buy a motor car." Then the voice from the other end,. "Hay? Wot number are you?" And the guard replied, "This is No. 00-000." "Ow," came the voice; "well, the ad. said 00-000. Wot, did yer go an' mike er mistike?" "I didn't," said the guard. "I didn't make anything. Ring off!" During the day some dozens of voices began long, cosy chats about Chassis and paint and rubber and speed and oil and benzine before the harassed guard could explain that some simple mistake in caligraphy had been made. In the majority of cases the people who -had a car to sell were exceedingly-peeved when they found that the wrong number didn't want a oar and wouldn't 'have a car if the soloists at the other end gave it away. One of the curiosities of tins day of unrest was that the people with cars to sell —not a reprehensible desire in itself— curtly demanded the name of the listening victim, an extraordinarily futile proceeding. Then, of course, there was the juicy inquirer who dripped oleaginous words and who had the world's finest car to sell for twenty-two pounds ten. /But in the majority of cases the people with cars were furious that the family that stood with a receiver to its accumulated ear all day had nothing to do with it. In fact their number is not 00-000. Our excellent friends the Victorian farmers who are taking, a look at New Zealand farms have been: made to say that "every farmhouse in Victoria had around it '1 KNOW a garden and orchard," A GARDEN." etc. A man who frizzled in Victoria for many years is very glad to know it —the thousands of farmhouses set down in the paddock without a suggestion of any kind of garden or orchard in sight must be a mere dream. What is possible is that the . farmers we happily have amongst 'us are of the superior race with money. You may travel far and wide in Victoria and in the sister States of New South Wales and South Australia where the typical farmhouse is a ghastly little unpainted corrugated iron shack, with a door on each side b6 let the wind blow through and a summer temperature increased by the sun on the iron to about one hundred and twenty-five degrees in the shade. The wheat farmer in innumerable cases, although he may farm a square mile; generally has so much to do that he has no time for fruit, vegetables, hedges or anything else of the kind. One remembers a farmer in a tin shed among the wheat who, having grown four or five plants of tomatoes (and ten children), was regarded by his fellow cockies as either a crank or a waster of precious time. In large numbers of cases the lack of water- makes fruit trees and garden truck impossible. One has had the disadvantage of working on a largish wheat farm where fresir meat was unknown and green vegetables a mere rumour. The meat was either of the iron-clad type or imported from the city in a brine cask. Yes, yes, there are farms in "the Garden State" with everything the heart of man might crave, but the ghastly little tin hut dropped down promiscuously in a whtat paddock is a feature in endless multiplication. The women who live in such places deserve the pity of every person on earth. To them a potato is a luxury. Small doubt that the average man (apart from the owner, lessee or mortgagor of acres), gazing at his last shilling, deliriously concludes that there is about nineHIS NINEPENCE. pence between him and the bread line. No ukase has issued from the dens of the Dictators declaring a close season for financial discussion, and so "the likes o' me and you" dare to discuss exchange until such an edict is promulgated. It occurred to the owner of a silver shilling (and therefore the possessor of ninepence) that money is a mere symbol for goods —and that his shilling would be of no exchangeable value on the Sahara Desert or up among the Himalayas. He suggests, therefore, the fairer system. Suppose, said he, you determined to buy a dozen eggs and, offering pegged currency, you asked for the same. Would it not be reasonable and helpful to the primary producer of eggs for the salesman to give you twelve? Then, again, in the matter of a hundredweight of potatoes. What is to hinder the Government from ordering that for the purposes of financial adjustment seventy-five per cent of a hundredweight is really one hundred and twelve pounds? By this process of exact reasoning the father-of twins might be assured by Mr. Malcolm Fraser that he merely owned a twin and a half, or, alternatively in the case of farmers, two twins and a portion. The basing of income tax on the alleged income the man with ninepence used to have before his shilling was worth eighteen halfpennies seems to be another subject of discussion which ought to be nipped in the bud. The average man should not be permitted to think. If the method of assessment by materials and not by symbols was adopted there seems to be no reason whatever why during the next football season the ball should not be deflated twenty-five per cent. THOUGHTS FOR TO-DAY. There never was a man, who thought he had no law but his, own will, who did not soon find that he had no end but his own profit.— Edmund Burke. Beauty soon grows familiar to the lover, Fades in his eye, and pales upon the sense. —Addison.