TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Evening Star, Issue 12885, 7 August 1906, Page 2

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

[From Our Special Correspondent.! LONDON, June 30. GENEROUS GUARDIANS. The revelations the flagrant waste of ratepayers’ money in connection with the administration of the Poor Law in Poplar have had one very beneficial effect already. They have roused the auditors of the Local Government Board to a proper sense of their duties towards those who have to find the money for the upkeep of our workhouses and infirmaries, and items in the accounts of Boards of Guardians, which have hitherto been passed without questions, are now being closely scrutinised by the LGB. auditors. Surcharges against guardians and officials promise to be the order of tho day during the audits now in progress. One of the first hoards to come under the auditors’ lash is that of West Ham. It is, of course, one of the poorest districts in London, and one of the most heavily rated. These facts may nowadays be taken as prima facie evidence that wanton extra vagance the roost there, for it is in the poorest parishes that guardians and officials appear to be most “ generous ” in their dealings with contractors, and most lavish in their, expenditure on both necessaries and luxuries for the use of workhouse inmates and officials. At West Ham the auditor questioned a number of cheques paid by the Board for poultry, stationery chiefly, amounting to £17,000, and has issued notices of surcharges upon seven of the Guardians. His first discovery was that the Board had purchased no less than 4,658 fowls in nine months for use in the workhouse and infirmary, and had paid for them the astoniehine price of 4s 6d each. He rightly characterised such a price as “ absurd,” and decided to mrcharge the Guardians responsible for their purchase Is for each fowl, which means that among them the delinquents will have to pay over £230. The auditor considered 3s 6d a fair price to pay for good fowls. Even that figure is an extravagant one for the West Ham Guard ians to pay when buying on the scale indicated by the figures aforementioned. These indicate a consumption of over 6,000 fowls per annum, and any poultry-breeder would be glad to contract for such a supply at something considerably less than 3s a head for first-class fowls all the year round. Notepaper for minor officials at 17s a ream also appeared “absurd” in the auditor's eyes, but the breath was knocked out of him w-ben he struck this item: “Three dozen letter book oil-sheets, at £1 Is, £5 35.” It was explained afterwards that this was a mistake on the part of the contractor, who had put £1 Is per dozen on his tender instead of a shilling. The account, how-ever, had been rendered at a guinea a dozen, and had been paid! The auditor many other items in the Guardinns’ stnt'onerv account. ■ He admitted that they might have been getting value for money, but they hod b n en purchasing goods of an unnecessarily high-class quality, and wasting money in stylish and expensive printing. Hn also surcharged one of the ex-officials of the infirmary for the cost of erecting a greenhouse, and some £lO or £ll paid bv the coroner for the use of rooms at the infirmary. These fees, it seems, were treated as official perquisites ins’pad of being placed to the credit of the Board. A COLONIAL GRIEVANCE. “ Save us from our friends!” The following is extracted from the ‘ Evening Standard ’ ; —“Many colonials now in London will return to their native lauds with a bad impression of the Government’s treatment of the colonies. Almost as soon as they landed in England-—the first visit to the Mother Country, in many cases—they made inquiries with regard to the trooping of the color, whieb takes place at the Horse Guards on Friday, and implored the AgentsGeneral to get tickets for them. This cere mony is regarded in all the colonies as an Imperian on\ and practically the only func tion at which viriting colonials can get a sight of the King in the summer. But the Home authorities do not regard it from the same point of view, for the Agents-General are never invited to attend. This year, owing to the repeated requests made by the lar-e number of visiting colonials, the Colonial Office was approached with the object of obtaining some facilities. The Agents-General offered to defray the expenses of the creation of a special stand if the authorities would grant the epace. The matter was referred from one department to another, and after a very long delay, characterir.rd by the usual red-tape methods, tho application was rciected, on the plea that there was not sufficient time in which to erect a stand, although one could have been put up in twenty-four hours. The Colonial Office Fames the War Office, and the War Office says it io not responsible. Deeply disappointed at the treatment not only of them/se'ves, but also of their ‘ Ambassadors,’ as Mr Chamberlain once described the Agents-General, the colonials do not stop to draw distinctions.” Not content with this philippic in its ordinary news columns, the ‘ Standard ’ devotes a fiery leader to ‘The Courtesy of England,’ found d thereon. From this one might imagine that the larger proportion of colonial visitors at present in London are prowling round the streets muttering anathemas against the authorities because they were not invited to the trooping of the color, and provided with a special stand whmee to see the spectacle. As a matter of fact, for which one can personally vouch, only a very small percentage of colonial visitors to London are aware of the fact that tho trooping of the color is a spectacle worth seeing until they are told so by some friend here. Personally, in an experience extending over nearly twenty years, I have not been a;ked to assist half a dozen colonial visitors to obtain tickets for this particular pageant. Nor do I think it is usual for Agents-General to be inundated with requests to obtain passes for the trooping of the color. Each one is supplied, through the Colonial Office, with a certain number of tickets, and though these are, as a rule, all used, I Have known many occasions when some of the Agents-General have found the tickets in their possession more than sufficient to supply the demands of bona fide visitors from the colonies they have represented, and have transferred a portion of their allotment to other AgentsGeneral, or given their surplus tickets to important “outsiders.” During the last two or three years the demand has certainly grown considerably, but even this year one Australian Agent-General found himself in a position to give away at least a couple of tickets to people who had no direct connection with the State ho represented. And the demand there is has been to a great extent created by the AgentsGeneral themselves. They have offered Mr So-and-so tickets for the show, and So-and-so has told Mr Somebody Else, and so on. The result this year is that an abnormal demand for passes was made on one or two .of the colonial representatives, and in view thereof the Agents-General approached the authorities with a view to getting a special stand erected for the benefit of colonial visitors, but the application was made, it appears, too late for the necessary arrangements to be made. Tho application was, I understand, made more than a fortnight ago, but the arrangements for affairs like the trooping of tho color are made weeks ahead, and any innovation in connection with them is very difficult to arrange, many different departments of State being affected by any changes in the arrangements. The authorities are. I under tand, quite willing to fall in wi:h the Agenta-Oeneral’g proposal for the erection of a special colonial stand, and will make the necessary provision for such an erection next year. r The Agents-General do not seem in the least grateful td the ‘.StandArd’ for Us championship of their causa, or for exalting a .'trivial ’affair'into a serious bminess. As it happens, it was just as well that the Agent-General’s’ offer could not be entertained by the authority s this year, (or,- unfortunately, the weather yesterday morning was so unpleasant that at ten o’clock an intimation was given to the waiting crowd at the Horse Guards’ parade that the ceremony had been abandoned for the day, at all events. In all probability it will not take place at all. Last year there was a similar experience, a persistent downpour rendering the parade impossible. I

A TURF 001.1) MIKE. , - Is there any race TOeetirig" held at which SO much prize-money is at stake as at Ascot? At fho meeting held there, last week-—a four-day affair—twenty-eight races were decided, the prize-money ranging from £SOO up to £3,370. The aggregate value of the twcpty-eight races was no less than £36,603 10s—an average of over £1,300 per rare. In accordance with the rule “To him that hath,” the bulk of the Ascot thousands was taken by the wealthiest patrons of the Turf. Lord Derby secured over £4,000 by the success of his mare Keystone 11, in the rich Coronation Cup, and Bridge of Canny’s victory in the 48th Biennial; and the South African millionaire “ Solly ” Joel won £3,370 by reaeon of Bachelor Button's victory over Pretty Polly in the Gold Cup, The multi millionaire Duke of Portland secured £2,200 odd very luckily, his colt Wombwell winning the Hardwicks Stakes through the favorite running out; and Dinn ford’s Royal Hunt Cup victory placed £2,000 to the credit of Mr Reid Walker, another very wealthy owner. But the really lucky man of the meeting was Mr F. Alexander. He only ran three horses the week, and all of them scored, making their owner £2,000 richer thereby. Lord Rosebery, Mr Singer, Mr W. Baas, and Major Under were also four-figure winners at Ascot, and not one of the really “small owners” had a look in. . After all, however, it is only in accordance with the fitness of things that the chief prizes at Areot should go to those patrons of the Turf whose support of “ the eport of kings” is lavish and sustained, and who race for the love of the thing rather than for what they can get out of their blood stock in hard cash. Many of the chief winners at Ascpt hardly ever bet, ana those that do usually confine themselves to very modest investments with the bookmakers.