Local and General

Hawera Star, Volume LIV, 22 April 1935, Page 6

Local and General

During the year 1933-34 factory production and employment in New Zealand increased over the previous year. During the year 1932-33 the added value amounted to £23,508,965, whereas in the following year it advanced to £24,851,679, an increase of £1,342,714. This increase in output and value has been accompanied by some satisfactory features in other respets, namely an increase in the number- of persons engaged, and increased wages paid' and materials and horsepower used. The increase in the use of materials amounts to JO.l per cent. An interesting feature of the employment situation is that it has become more steady; while salaries and wages paid have increased by so small a percentage as 0.5, overtime has advanced by per cent, in hours, while short time was reduced by no less than 16.5 per cent in hours. .

It was recently announced that the Unemployment Board proposed to issue 26,000 pairs of double blankets to relief workers as part of the plan to give further assistance to the unemployed during the winter. Asked this week whether he could give any indication of when the distribution of these blankets would commence, the Minister of Employment, Mr S'. G. Smith, said that orders had been placed for the manufacture of the blankets, but the information he had received as to the rate at which the mills could supply indicated that it would he some weeks before the full quantity would be available. He said, however, that as soon as a reasonable supply was received the most necessitous cases among the unemployed would be attended to. He mentioned that most of the mills of the Dominion had been invited to take a share of this large order, provided they could comply with the requirements as to price and quality.

In the course of a comprehensive four days’ reliability trial, organised by the New Zealand Auto-Cycle Union, 24 motor-cyclists passed through Taranaki during the weekend. Dusty and tired the party appeared to he thoroughly enjoying the trial on its arrival at New Plymouth on Saturday night. All were on the mark at 7.3 a.m. yesterday when the first was despatched on his journey to Wellington. The- .final lap from Wellington to Napier will be completed to-day. High speeds play no part in the trial, which is solely a reliability test and when competitors left Napier at 6 a.m. on Friday for Auckland all speedometers were disconnected. There are no secret checks, but non-stop checks were taken at Taupo and Hamilton on Friday, at Hamilton on Saturday, at Hawera, Wanganui and Levin on Sunday and at Masterton to-day. The checking-in stations are Auckland, New Plymouth, Wellington and Napier.

Great changes since her first day at school were mentioned at the New Plymouth Girls’ High School jubilee on Saturday by Mrs Gilkison, a Dunedin woman, who was one of the first twenty pupils. Fifty years ago if a girl lived in comfortable circumstances she stayed at home after she had left school and occupied herself in social and domestic duties. If her family was not well off she taught, was a lady help or married. For none of these careers was there very good training. Fifty years ago girls had no telephones, no hot water bags, certainly no lip-sticks or cigarettes. Electricity was known dimly as a thing that made frogs’ legs jump, not as the good giant that worked, cooked or curled the hair. If a girl had a “boy friend” there were no tea rooms for long chats togethers, no cinemas providing, as a vulgar young man in “The Wind and the Rain” had said, “a bob’s worth of dark.” Any entertainment had to he done under the parents’ eye, if amenable; stealthily, if not. Mrs Gilkison thought, however, that the essential girl was unchanged. Sound at the roots then, she was sound at the roots now, and if sometiriies the older people felt inclined to criticise the youthful attitude they must remember that they, too, were modern once and their parents shook their heads over their behaviour.