Notes and Comments.

Feilding Star, Volume V, Issue 1403, 30 January 1911, Page 2

Notes and Comments.

Here is a further sign of the attempts at closer organisation that a.re going on in our cities. The four Trades aud Labour Councils have been swallowed up in what is now known as the New Zealand Employees' Federation. It is a distinction, however, without any difference, and the exchange of a convenient and familiar name for a very clumsy title; and, besides, the new name is apt to make confusion worse confounded, for we now have so many federations —seamen's, butchers', operative bootmakers', boot nianiuifacturers', the Employers' Federation, a. few which readily come to mind—that to add one more to it is to add the straw to the camel's overloading.

The more Lord Gladstone seeks to explain away his action in reprieving a llhodesian native who had been sentenced to death for the most dreaded and serious offence in a mixed community the worse his bad break appears to be. The influence of his bad judgment upon the blacks will be tremendous, and Rhodesia will soon become no place for white women, for the Kaffir is qiuite as bad a brute as the South American negro. This is borne out by an Auckland resident, who a few years ago held a position in connection with the South African police, in an interesting interview in the Star. "It cannot be said that racial feeling runs very high in South Africa," said he, "but it certainly is a fact that all through the Federated States the fear of sexual offences is such that the people will have no interference with the existing law, and if the new Governor-General persists in interfering ther© is no doubt that the people will take the law into their own hands." It is to be hoped they won't go so far as to take Lord Gladstone into their own hands. Better ship him back to England before his headache gets better.

It is well occasionally to see our defects as others see them. Palmerston's water has not been clean of late months, and the Standard has been urging attention to the matter. Our contemporary sent a member of its staff to "write up" the effect of the use of the mechanical filters attached to the Feilding reservoir. The reporter was further moved to write: "Feilding's greatest want in connection with its waterworks appears to be an additional reservoir, so that one can always be in reserve, and, if the necessity arose, with the two reservoirs full, there would be a full week's supply in hand, so that any needed repairs could be carried out without affecting th© supply to the borough. When the Oroua river, from which the supply is obtained, is very muddy, during a heavy fresh, the water is sent thrquijgh the by-pass, and if the reservoir is then full it can be run to waste. Under ordinary conditions the water can be run either through the filters, direct to the town main, down th© by-pass, or used to cleanse the filters by reversing the ordinary process of filtration." We are wondering whether Mr Metcalf says anything about .this in his report—which the Council is keeping so long secreted in its back pocket, as though it were a loaded pistol. We should have heard something about that report last year. Perhaps its contents may be divulged this year!

Mr J. Lomas, who succeeds Mr Ed. Tregear as head of the Labour Department, is, like his predecessor, a son of Cornwall. Mr Lomas, who is a coalniiner by trade, came to New Zeaj land some quarter of a century ago, I 'and worked with his pick and shovel in our West Coast mines. He soon worked his way to a position above ground, and, taking aai active part in the trades union movement—he, like the Hon. J. A. Millar and the Hon. John Rigg, M.L.C., was a member of the central committee (in Wellington) of the great maritime strike a couple of decades ago—Mr Lomas attracted the attention of th© oiewly created Minister of Labour, the Hon. W. P. Reeves, the world's first Minister of Laboiurr. After the big strike, things went so badly with Mr Lomas that he decided to return to Cornwall, and was actually on the point of sailing when Mr Reeves offered him a position as an inspector in the n©w department, of which Mr Tregear was the first Secretary. Mr Reeves is in London, Mr Tregear is retiring, and Mr Lomas will remain the sole connecting link with the original staff of th© department. Under his regime we will 'not have any startling contributions with overseas nations on Socialism, such as frequently occurred under the Tregearian rule, for Mr Loman is not troubled with the literary gift, neither is he a dreamer, with Utopian ideas. Mr Lomas carries a whole sackful of tact, he is as sane as sanity itself, he is devoted to Primitive Methodism, and has frequently appeared in the pulpits of its chapels up and down the land. We think the Government has done right well in promoting Mr Lomas.