Notes and Comments.

Feilding Star, Volume VI, Issue 1670, 14 December 1911, Page 2

Notes and Comments.

Our readers will remember that last year a big light was put up by Canterbury farmers against the unionising of'farm labour in their province. The interest in the fight was so great in tho Feilding district that a substantial fund was contributed up here towards tho expenses. Tho Farm Labourers' Union, although beaten again and again before the Conciliation Board, has not for a moment ceased its agitation, and tho Arbitration Court has just decided that a dispute exists. The union's demands cover general farm work, and the Courtholds that if these demands were persisted in application must be made to join all the awards interested. If the demands, however, are (confined to musterers, shepherds, and packmen the caso can proceed. The Union wants every man on the land brought into the dispute, which would put the small farmer in a very awkward position.

When William Uaxton, away back in the year 1477, set up the first printing press in England, he had no conception of the charges that would belaid against him in -that same city of Loudon in the year 1911. At the end of last month, Dr. G. Lindsay-John-son, in a lecture delivered before tne Institute of Ophthalmic Opticians, made tho alarming announcement that out of the 43 million people in Great Britain and Ireland, at least 22 million require spectacles now, or will require them, or have required them at some period of their lives. And the expert added -that this unfortunate state of affairs existed chiefly owing to the advance of modern education— and that it was started by William Caxton and his printing press. "The more cultured a nation becomes," lie said, "the nioro defects occur in the eyesight of that nation. Take, for instance, Germany, whose education is far in advance of our own. Germany is far worse off than we are so far as eyesight is concerned—a fact that gave rise to the regulation that in future German army officers would be allowed to wear spectacles." Feilding folks have noticed that many young Feildingites are now taking to glasses —but to .blame poor old Bill Caxton is too far fetched.