LOCAL AND GENERAL

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXV, Issue 3262, 3 February 1931, Page 4

LOCAL AND GENERAL

Schools resumed yesterday afte; the summer vacation.

A sitting of the Magistrate's Court will be held on Thursday next.

The annual meeting of the Te Kuiti Golf Club will be held on Friday next in the Municipal Hall.

The Te Kuiti and District Winter Show Association will hold its annual meeting in the office of the secretary (Mr. A. W. Whyte) this (Tuesday) evening at 8 p.m.

Schedules in connection with the K.C. A. and P. Association's annual show, to be held on Saturday, February 21, are now obtainable.

Offers of 12Jd. have been made in the Wanganui district by buyers of butter for February. This offer evidently showed -confidence in the market, for when the butter arrived Home it would practically be disposed of in the flush of the season.

An example of the audacity of the weasel was afforded to a farmer at Balance, near Pahiatua, recently. So intent was it on its task that the farmer was able to walk up quietly and destroy it by tramping on it. Weasels are fairly common in the district this year.

That the eyesight of children when they left scool would be stronger than it is to"-day if they went through school life writing on green paper, was a suggestion made by the Taranaki Education Board architect (Mr. C. H. Moore) at a meeting of the board.

During the week-end the Te Kuiti Rifle Club held its first shoot of the year. Twenty-one newly sworn in members participated, and judging by the enthusiasm shown to date, everything augurs well for the future of the club.

' A striking example of the value of topdressing hill country is shown on the property of C. Olsen, a Ballance (North Wairarapa) farmer. Before top-dressing, 42 cows were milked on the property. Now the farm carries 66 cows in milk, as well as 26 head of young stock and two horses, while last autumn Mr. Olsen fattened 150 lambs. The butterfat returns have increased from 80001 b to 11,0001 b last year, and this year Mr. Olsen expects them to reach 14,0001 b. For the past two years he has had on no occasion to feed hay to the cows until they come to profit in the spring, and the only crop grown on the property now is an acre of artichokes, on which the pigs are wintered. Basic slag is the manure favoured by Mr. Olsen, and 40 tons have been sown during the past three years at the rate of 4cwt. to the acre. v

A message from London states that a slight fire broke out on the Maloja on Sunday in No. 7 hold, containing wool, skins, wheat and wines from Australia. The hold was flooded and the fire extinguished in three hours. Only a few bales of wool were burned, but the remainder was damaged by water. The structure was not damaged. The Maloja is due at Aden on Wednesday.

Mr. George W. Russell, better known as A.E., the Irish poet and wit, gave a novel explanation of America's economic woes in an address in New York recently. "I've a complaint against the United States," said the poet. "It arises out of Longfellow's 'Psalm of Life.' That poem is drilled in the schools into every child in the country. And they never forget it, especially the line 'Let us then be up and doing,' and America has been 'up and doing' ever since it was published. That is the cause of all your economic problems. You are working people so hard that you have, naturally, overproduction. You should cultivate the adorable virtue of idleness. Your President and Congress, ought to gather on the steps of the White House and formally extract that poem from Longfellow's works and burn it, and then erect a statue to idleness." ' ~

A rumour, current in Christchurch on Friday (states the Times), that it was intended to reduce the number of wool sales in each centre by one, later became crystallised in the suggestion that it was proposed to postpone the Wanganui sale, arranged for February 23, until a later date. This was strongly denied by brokers, who deprecated the discussion of such rumours. It was authoritatively stated that the programme had not been altered and could not be changed without preliminary discussion by those concerned. The matter was referred to Mr. H. T. Milnes, chairman of the Buyers' Committee, who would make no statement, except that "if , any alteration is made to the programme it will be because the growers are not offering the wool."

Thus the Stratford correspondent of the Taranaki Herald: In 1905, a quarter of a century ago, the Cardiff Dairy Company, then making butter, paid out 9 Id. oh butter-fat, and the chairman, the late Mr. William Richards, "had the pleasure of reporting a satisfactory season." I am afraid 9Jd.j which at present looks like somewhere near the payout for this season, will not be hailed as satisfactory. It should be remarked, however, that the totfal butter-fat produced was less than half produced now. The , average test, 3.83, was then considered a high one. On the other hand manufacture and all costs to f.o.b. were only 1 4-5 d. per lb. butterfat. In the same year a neighbouring cheese factory paid out 9ld. with like satisfaction. Manufacturing costs to f.o.b. were only 1 4-sd. per lb butterfat. It now takes economical management to bring the same costs down to 3d. per lb. butterfat.

"Most people in the Dominions require no convincing that the prosperity of countries like New Zealand and Australia depends in the last resort upon primary production," said Professor J. L. Wrigley,- of Melbourne University, in an address to the teachers' summer school at Christchurch. "To-day in Australia world conditions in the first place and industrial legislation in the second are making it very hard, if not impossible, for the primary producer, especially of wheat, to secure an adequate return from his work. The condition of the farmer in the United States has long been a problem to himself and to the Government. The development of Russia may well render the export of wheat from Australia and the United States even more unprofitable, if not entirely impossible."