WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 19, Issue 99, 21 January 1926, Page 6

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM (By T.D.H.) Communism on a piece-work baeit with a’’ profit at the end of it is the order of the day in Russia.—A further cooling off in the enthusiasm for Russia may now be expected in local socialistic circles.. The new regulation* laying it dowa that motor-buses must be stopped from carrying people too cheaply embody a valuable principle capable of great and useful extension. In the past, before economic laws were properly understood, it was customary to fix maximum fares for buses, hackney larriages, and taxi-cabs, and drivers vho by their superior skill were able to extract more than the legal sum from their passengers were not infrequently haled before the magistrates and penalsed for their enterprise. Students of economics, however, now realise that this curbing of initiation must have a depressing psychological effect on the drivers, destroying that hardy initiative and force of character which are the greatest assets of the race.

Dr. Bumpus and Major Fitzurse inform us that in view of tie readjustment of official views tovards the motor transport business tiey have m hand the flotation of a company to provide pink cabs for pale people. The prospectus will be issued immediately the present hacknew carriage by-laws are brought into line with'the motorbus regulations, and minimum fares only prescribed with the tpward limit left to be determined by the circumstances of the case and the personality of the driver. With a picked personnel to operate the cabs and a discriminating selection of the fares carried, the Major has figured out a highly satisfactory yield on the shares to investors.

“A misunderstanding of economic laws in the past,” states the Major, “led to a widespread belief that it was the duty of the State to limit the rewards that might be legally secured not only by persons operating public utilities, selling staple commodities, and so forth, but also by those who from philanthropic motives were assisting their financially weaker brethren by advancing money, at compound interest. As a shareholder in various companies I have leng suffered from the effects of these pernicious views, and I most earnestly hope that now the authorities have adopted sounder principles they will not lie confined to motor-buses alone, but applied generally to all branches of com nerce, and that all who fail to overcharge will be punished without mercy.”

Some months ago we incautiously wrote a piece in this column about that curious festival, the annual Oyster Feast at Colchester, in Essex. Row comes to hand the Colchester newspaper, the “Essex County Standard,” .giving us » very severe wigging for our references to the history and institutions of that ancient city. It is even hinted that the Colne Fishery Company may be after us with a libel. action for giving currency to a tumour that the post-war oyster of" Colchester is not quite up to the pre-war .standard. It would be an interesting action, particularly if a really adequate supply of the oysters and stout were provided by the company for the jury and witnesses to sample, as would undoubtedly be necessary to reach a true conclusion in the matter.

However, the head and front of our offending is on-another point: “It may be taken,” says the Colchester journal, "that ‘T.D.H.’ himself has never personally enjoyed the memorable banquet or he would not have indulged in the extraordinary assurance that- one of the features of the gathering is that it is considered an affront on the excellence of Colchester - natives'to ask for lemon, vinegar, or pepper as aids in getting them down. He actually declares that the waiters at the feast turn a totally deaf ear to requests for any such thing, and that those who are unable to face an oyster feast without them are obliged ‘(o arrange privily to have crusts, smuggled in and hidden away in the flower pots.’ This may or may not be ‘excellent fooling,’ but it seems a pity that such nonsense should be broadcast in the colonies,. where possibly it will be accepted seriously, instead of with the ‘grain of salt’ which the story literally, as well as metaphorically, needs.”

To bein with, we must ask the “Essex County Record” to wake up and not call us colonies any longer, as Palmerston’ at any rate will not stand nonsense on this point. There seems to be some mystery about the precise ritual of the Oyster Feast, and it may be that there is a Low Church party that uses vinegar and a High Church party that doesn’t. Curiously enough, our impression coincides with that of the London “Times,” for its representative at the revival of the Feast in 1919 wrote as follows in the issue of that journal on . October 21 of that year:—“There are, one has heard, common, base people who squeeze lemon on an oyster, who sprinkle it with vinegar and pepper. The real Colchester feasters looked with horror on those who, so. ignorantly, spoiled their oyster. Waiters, with long traditions of Feasts behind them, tactfully refused to hear demands for vinegar, and kind friends hid cruets behind plant pots.”

Why do doctors write their prescript tions in Latin? The explanation appears to be very ancient. Pliny the Elder, at about ‘the beginning of the present era, in speaking of the presence of Greek doctors in Rome remarked that even among the ignorant and those who did not know Greek more authority was attributed to physicians who wrote in that language, for in matters concerning health men showed less confidence when they understood too much. In our day Latin is as good as Greek for this purpose, and a lot easier to write.

If the quack nuisance was not a* troublesome to the medical men in ancient davs as it is to-day, yet both Plato and ’Aristotle (whose father was a medical man) complain of the people who read medical works to save the doctors’ fees. A "Manchester Guardian” researcher states that as regards medical advertising there is less direct testimony from the ancient world, but the problem existed. Epictetus speaks deprecatinglv of doctors who solicited custom instead of allowing their patients to seek them out as they used to do, and Plutarch tells with disapproval of surgeons who, by way of advertisement, performed operations in public. In the good old days, however, there was a legitimate kind of advertisement for the medical profession which is no longer available, for then the grateful patient might, on his recovery, put up a laudatory tablet to his physician in the Temple of Aesculapius! Nowadays • the monuments to the doctors’ work have to be sought in another quarter. COMPANY. There was a man lived up this lane Whom no one ever went to sec. He never walked but in a rain, And then indifferently. og was always chained ahead. And trotted slow, as if to find The road for him; and people said Therefore lie was blind. Hut there were some who said he saw;' The animal was onlv kept For comfo’t, and to lay a paw Beside him when he slept. —Mark Van Dores.