MERCHANT SERVICE GUILD.

Evening Post, Volume LXXXI, Issue 104, 4 May 1911, Page 8

MERCHANT SERVICE GUILD.

The annual meeting of tho New Zeakmd section of the Australasian Merchant Service Guild wus held in Wellington today. The financial statement showed a Burplus of £2000. Mr. Orton Stevens was re-elected president, and last year's executive was also re-appointed. At tho ♦conclusion of tho business of tho meeting, Mr. A. L. tlerdmaii, solicitor to the guild, presented Mr. Stevens with v handsome presentation on behalf of the members of the guild. Mr. Stevens's health wus subsequently toasted with enthusiasm.

Representatives of the licensed victuallers from all parta of the Dominion met in Wellington to-day and took the preliminary isteps towaids arranging a plan of campaign for the next local option poll. The hearing of the application in connection with the writ of attachment in the case Rose v. Macdonald will take place, in all piobability, on Saturday week. The Postal authorities advise that the s.e. Maheno, which left Sydney at noon on the 3rd inst. for Auckland, has on board an Australian mail, also an English mail, via Suez. The Wellington portion is due to arrive by Wain Trunk on Monday next. The Wellington branch ol the New Zealand Farmers' Union will hold its annual conference at Woodville on 30th inst. The union's Dominion Conference is to be held at Wellington probably 'in July. One thing that particularly struck Mr. W. H. Atack, manager of the New Zealand Press Association, on his j scent vitit to Sydney was the vast amount of reeoubtruction that is going on in the city. In all directions, he told a Post reporter, they are pulling down the old buildings, not only to clear 011 L >.lums, but to niuk<2 loom for moie up-to-date edifices. For instance, theie was a brewery being pulled down in Oxfordstreet to make iconr for a picture palace, and a little further on a church was being pulled down for street-widening purposes. The district between the upper end of Hyde Park and the rai Iway station is' being practically rebuilt, and in one place the Oddiellowb tire demolishing their lodge buildings, which cost £18,000 or £19,000 less than i twenty years ago, to substitute cne that will cost at loaft twice as much. Pait cf Castlercagh-i>treet is to be made 94ft wide, ami extensive wharves and buildings are being eonsuueted at Dtiwes' Point' and Miller's Point on ths westerly side of Circular-quay. Noi all the new buildings are beautiful. In Mac-quarie-slreet there is a huge nine-Mxry red brick structure, railed Wyoming Building. 11 practically .'•huts out the post office ; and bemg near the hospital, every room in it if. iilled cither by a doctor or a dentist. That, and another led brick building which, he was- tolcl. was a 'barrack:,, completely hpoil that {.art of Sydney. In lact. said Mr. Afack, there is so much building going vn in Sydney ju.-t new that many bu>iuths people cannot get new piemisc-s erected, and have to wait. Mi. AtaUt •wap lntt in Sydney in the disunions drought tiino in 1902, and marvels at tne was iv »'.Jiich th» count iv has. ico<iVered from ths depths in which it yru then sunk.