RANDOM NOTES

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 119, 13 February 1935, Page 8

RANDOM NOTES

Sidelights on Current Events

(By

Kickshaws.)

It is suggested that artesian bores should be sunk in Wellington. We know of a few other bores that ought to be sunk too. # ¥ * * The happiest people in the world, says Lady Baden-Powell, are those who serve most. At that rate the icecream vendors ought to be tickled to death these days. # « ♦ An American business man declares that the ’world is run by men over 50. But what about the women under thirty? * * * The original designer of the skyscraper building in New York who has died in poverty after earning thousands is by no means the only individual who has met a similar fate. In fact tlie man who found the rich diamond field of South Africa, Honeyball by name, died so utterly penniless that not only had he to be provided with a pauper’s grave but a monument to bis pioneer work had to be erected by others. This surely js a sign of extreme poverty. One might also point out that the man who invented the picture post card, a German, also died in extreme poverty despite tlie fact that the idea was worth millions of pounds to the post offices of the world. This was not the case with the inventor of the Christmas card who lived to pile million upon million as the result of his enterprise. In addition to these men who made millions and lost them, there is, of course, a long list of doubtful millionaires who came to a bad end. Whitaker Wright, Stavisky, Horatio Bottomley, Ivan Kreuger, Hudson the Railway King, Hooley, Baron Grant "Who presented Leicester Square to London all died owing nearly as many millions as they made.

A poultry board is to be set up in England to put the egg producers on their feet. The vast quantities of eggs and egg pulp that are stored in New Zealand if we are to believe official statistics in matters pertaining to eggs, is calculated to make us feel that it would be a duty toward our country to live exclusively upon egg pulp. ■ Fortunately we may rest assured that we shall be spared this fate owing to the little-known fact that every egg laid is not another egg to be eaten. The boilers, the cookers, and the eggs that find their way into cakes are by no means the only job that a self-respect-ing hen must attend to in her daily duties. Enormous quantities of eggs are used by glove makers. These hardy workers do not require an egg diet, but they do require eggs for their gloves. Indeed one great firm of kid glove manufacturers uses up no fewer than 100,000 eggs a year. Only the yolks are used. Moreover, duck’s eggs are - preferred. The dressed leather is fed upon eggs with a solicitude not given to the family at the breakfast table. Egg yolk gives a softness and gloss that no chemical preparation has ever been found to do.

Chemists are another outlet for eggs. Strange as it may seem there has yet to be discovered any better product for tlie mixing of liniments than the whites of eggs. Between .the chemists and the glove makers everything inside tlie eggs we don’t eat are used to good purpose. Even the shells are used to good purpose, however. The glove makers having used the yolks the chemists the whites, the shells are ground up into fertilisers. It will be seen therefore that nothing is wasted in the egg, not even the squeak, because there isn’t one to waste. The fact that eggs are used for so many purposes not connected with the inner man perhaps explains the millions of great hundreds that are required in manufacturing countries such as Britain and elsewhere. Indeed, the eggs required in Britain in a year require 45,000 railway trucks to carry them. If a cook were to attempt to poach each egg it has been estimated that if he started in the days of Moses he would still be on the job with one year’s supply. The problem, of course, is complicated by the fact that most of the eggs would not have been laid, and if they had there would be further complications when they were broken.

In the midst of our money problems it is interesting to record that at one period in the history of New Zealand improvised five-shilling .notes were made depicting a whale and giving a promise to pay when presented. The fact is that in tlie history of almost every country resort has had to te made to some form of token payment at one time or another. In New Zealand at one time token counters were a common form of currency. Several centuries ago the same system had to be improvised in England owing to the utter impossibility of solving the small change problem. In a sense, our own bank notes are a form of private money smiled upon by the State, but not for njuch longer. In Australia all manner of curious expedients were resorted to in order to eke out the currency. In the early days the only currency was rum. From the first the public swallowed this idea as a circulating medium. A labourer received so many gallons of rum as wages. A sawyer received a bottle of rum in payment for cutting 100 feet of timber.

In the United States of America even wood has been used as currency before now. In fact only a year or two ago the little town of Tenino, faced with a currency scarcity, produced as a temporary expedient coins made from wood cut into discs. In California about the same time clam shells in 10 and 25 cent denominations made an appearance. Each shell bore the signature «of the issuers with a promise te redeem them in silver. Shells, of course, have been used as currency by many savage tribes for centuries, and at one time the cowrie almost attained to a position in the civilised money market stock quotations. Perhaps the money problem jvas reduced to its simplest form by the inhabitants of the jsland of Yap. where stones were used for the purpose. Tlie group of islands of which Yap forms a part are essentially of coral formation. The natives therefore set forth in their canoes and returned with granite from distant islands. The stone was so rare it was immediately put into circulation as money, superseding the then prevalent trade by barter. • » « » Pleasures lie thickest where no pleasures seem: There’s not a leaf that falls upon th* ground But holds some joy of silence or of sound. Some sprite begotten of a summer dream. —Blanchard.