TRADE TOPICS.

Press, Volume L, Issue 14903, 17 February 1914, Page 9

TRADE TOPICS.

(FROM OCT. OWN COI-RESPONDENT.) LONDON, January 2. THE ICINEMA CRAZE.

Tho chairman of tho Amalgamated Cinematograph Theatres, at the annual, meeting, lamented sorely the baneful effects of oscessive competition on tho earnings of the company. If they made a success, euch was tho insane competition, and such was the desire to como and take front anybody what he was on joying, that no sooner was it known that ono was making a success, with a theatre tha.. somebody else came and bujjfc a theato opposite, or beside it. Within the last twelve months the fearful octopus of competition had spread its tentacles oyer thoir property, and iiad gei-sod hold of it in a merciless manner. The registrations last month added another half hundred to tho many enterprises already in oxistoncq, j the capital involved being __IS3,4QQ. Tho average capitalisation works out at £S6GB, as compared with £4370 in October. Tho tendency of the. mean to get em all or illustrates the increasingly petty character of the ventures now being floated, and it is easy to see that many of them, though of ophomeral Jifo, and not even robust, rivals while they last, may easily de->_''oy tho margin of profit of "fairly well-established places. Some of the places .n which kiimmns are now to be .started have a, population nucleus of only 500 or GOO, and though they may draw on a district with a good many more peoplo than this, it is not easy to imagine for them other than a transient popularity. SUPPIIICSSING BIRD D__ST_lTJC'lisiX.

Mr S. \t. Uensusan cays it is- generally understood that during tho next session of Parliament the (-overnment ■will bring in a Bill to abolish in this country tho trade in tho skins and plumages of all birds with the exception of tne '■ostrich, tho" ojdor-duck, nnd domestic fowls. The object of this measure, which treads upon tlio heels of similar legislation in, the United States, is to protect bird life from the indi-criminating assaults of fashion. Trathc in birds Jias 'n-sumed very considerable dimensions in the past few years, and nearly every X>art ot the earth has boon laid under contribution. With tho exception of tho trade in ostrich feathers, the business would appear to bo littlo more than forty years old, and to havo been established more or less by chance- In tho seventies of last century shippers began to add bird skins and plumago to tho miscellaneous" goods they were sending to these shores; a demand sprang up, a market followed, and a business grew. At the samo time, tho era of Oversea expansion and of exploration opened in Africa and elsewhere. Arms of precision camo into general use, and in North America, lor example, the slaughter of beast and bird wag carried out on a scale that threatened to exterminate tho fauna of the continent, and was responsible for the complete disappearance of certain species.