The Star. Delivered every evening by 5 o'clock in Hawera, Manaia, Normanby, Okaiawa, Eltham, Mangatoki, Kaponga, Awatuna, Opunake, Otakeho, Manutahi, Alton, Hurleyville, Patea, Waverley. MONDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1913. A NEW INDUSTRIAL FACTOR.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume LXV, Issue LXV, 22 December 1913, Page 4

The Star. Delivered every evening by 5 o'clock in Hawera, Manaia, Normanby, Okaiawa, Eltham, Mangatoki, Kaponga, Awatuna, Opunake, Otakeho, Manutahi, Alton, Hurleyville, Patea, Waverley. MONDAY, DECEMBER 22, 1913. A NEW INDUSTRIAL FACTOR.

The troubled waters of industrialism are likely ere long to be smoothed in a manner not yet generally expected, and v very appropriately by oil. One who has studied the subject points out that an oil-fired vessel ' needs - onlythirty greasers, as against the 300 or more stokers and trimmers needed for coal furnaces. This means in the entire British Navy a saving of many thousands of men, who will then be available for other branches of the service. There are also other considerations, for anyone familiar with the prevailing conditions in the stokehold of a vessel using coal as a fuel will not easily forget the first visit to the boiler-room of a ship burning oil in the furnaces. From great tanks placed at different stations the oil is brought by a pipe-line to the space, devoted to the storage of the material serving as fuel in the steamer. This from the commencement does away with transport, which takes time,. is very costly, and produces so much, dirt and dust. In a mere fraction of the time necessary to coal a steamer this is fully charged with oil fuel by means which are exclusively mechanical, for by means of the oil-tanks of the vessel the liquid fuel is brought under pres-^ sure by pipes to the steam boilers. Once the oil has been ignited the regulation of the flame which plays upon the lower portion of the steam boiler, and the surveillance of the temperature of the steam, are the only occupation of. the stoker, who can easily look after .several boilers without further assistance. Thus there js no longer need of hand-stoking, the furnace doors are no longer opened, the ashes and clinkers of coal are not cleaned out, and there no longer exists in the stokehold that heat which is so dangerous to human health. In fact, it is not an exaggeration when an English specialist compares remaining in such an oil-fuel stokehold to a paradise, while in a stokehold where steam has to be raised by coal he could not describe it save as literally hell. Where oil is. used as fuel, one man n comfortably clad and in dean surroundings, does the work of ten grimy firemen and coal-passesrs. Besides, while this is, happily, a great gain in the interest of the men actually employed, the change must become a powerful factor in connection with the cost of labor, and the now ever-increasing difficulty in controlling it, for surely few more effective answers to syndicalism could be imagined than the adoption of a system i which would at once cut down the numbers employed by nine-tenths. At this rate, how great would have been the difference in the conditions of the colonial sea-trade recently, or at any time with a strike on, were oil-fuel instead of coal used on steamers! Then, from another point of view, it cannot matter whether oil be derived from wells, from shales distillation, or from the treatment of coal, for the advantages of its use are, too great to admit of any idea, that it will not be made use of. In fact, it. may be said that coal-burning in ships or in factories, with all its attendant1 disadvantages, is now a survival of habit, and cannot hope to stand against the advantages of oil fuel with its incalculable prospective potentiality as., a new industrial factor