WELLINGTON NOTES.

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 12827, 11 June 1907, Page 3

WELLINGTON NOTES.

, « . (SPECIAL TO ".TO PRESS.") WELLINGTON, June 10. The Hon. W. Hall-Jones was sufficiently recovered to go for a drive yesterday. The Tutanekai has found tho bad spot in tho C-ook Strait cable, and it will probably bo repaired to-nigjht. Naturally cable laying is not a cheap process. The sample used for the recent break coats, says the "Post," about £200 a mile (six tons), "but of course all cable docs not run to that figure. On I some deep sea bottoms, where the lines may rest in peace, they run only a ton and a quarter to the mile, and tiho price varies accordingly. The Telegraph Department pays the Marine Department £75 for every day that it has tho ! Tutanekai employed in this service, and the figure is low compared with tho bills that had to be mot in the days , before tho Government had a steamer available for this purpose. Years ago the Eastern Extension Telegraph Comp_any charged £10 an hour from the time its steamer left Singapore till it returned. This cable-laying is only one of tho many uses of tho Tutanekai, which has a very busy round of duties for the public good. Mr Fred. Cooke, of Christchurch, lectured here last evening, under tho auspices of the Socialist Society. Etc pointed out that every move of tho Trades Unionists for bettor wages was met by an increase in the cost of living, and they wero back where they wore; and in many cases tho last state was worso than the first. Trade Unionism was the sixth rung of the ladder. He did not advise kicking tho six rungs away and falling back to the starting place, but ho advised stopping on the seventh rung—industrial organisation—as an evolution from sectional trades' unionism. Industrial organisation in the economic field, and the Socialist party fighting in the political field, would bring about the collapse of Capitalism.