CURRENT TOPICS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CIX, Issue 13108, 23 April 1903, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS.

AMERICAN PUSIHTtfItSTESS.

We hear a great deal about the alleged superiority of American industrial methods

over British methods. It is really in commercial rather thai* industrial enterprises that.tho American " pushfulness" is most, pronounced. An admirable illustration of the manner in which our cousins set about their business is to be found in the prospectus of a remarkable company which has been formed for the purpose of distributing American commodities.throughoub the British Empire. The company undertakes the responsibility and the expense of sending its agents into all our possessions, where visits will be paid not only to the towns, but also to villages however small and remote. This preliminary ov«r, the

aim is to found central depots at large cities, aa, for example, Calcutta, Brisbane and Sydney. To these waxeiouses, alj classes of goods are to be consigned, and the result is that the firms dealing with the company will ba under no necessity of employing a special staff of travellers, and will, in addition, be suro'of their money. The financial basis of the company is eaid to be exceedingly simple. The manufacturing price of the goods in its list is first fixed by mutual arrangement. The " stuff " is then sold to the natives of India or, say, the Maoris of New Zealand, at whatever margin of profit the company is able to secure. The scheme is

plain enough, and British trading houses have shown -no disposition to combine for opening up new markets. A commercial traveller is sent out with a few samples, and;makes periodical tours. His headquarters are thousands of miles away. "Combination on tie American system," says one approving journal, "means that a corps of regular experts, organised from the great cities of the colonies themselves, instead of a& some point thousands of miles away, exerts a pressing and ceaseless influence on the developing trade of the country. In fact, the American system not only amalgamates exporting, selling arid debt-collecting, but it disperses a pri-„ vate army of commercial consuls through out the whole British, Empire." If the new company should seriously invade New : Zealand it would be a serious thing for local manufacturers and importers.

BOKNT7.

In the heart of Africa there ia a, .great, half-ex-plored tract of British terri-

tory called ! Bornu, whose native Sultan has: frequently of late made himself obnoxious to tha more peaceful tribes of Nigeria. A few months ago Colonel Morland, of the Nigerian Field Force, was scat with aa armed expedition to bring the offending, ■ slave-raiding Sultan to a proper appreciation of the law of Nigeria. One of the officer* of the expedition supplies a brief and striking account of the country traversed. Books of travel have made us tolerably familiar with the character of the country along the banks of the Niger, and occasional explorers have described the journey to Lake Chad. The expedition journeyed up the Beuue from Lokoja to Yola, and then struck north. A march of two hua-. dred miles brought it to Maidesguri. " The open, fiat country, sand dunea and. keen morning air," says the traveller, "remind-; ed me of the country about Rye. Ban' the cold nights appear to be the very thing)' to make this country habitable for white men. A hot, dry, sandy, shadeloss country ; open, without hill or river; sand and dust storms; increasing plagues of flies and dogs; water of a had quality, obtainalbls in quarts from holes vatrying in depiih. from, 50ft to 250 ft; such are the chief physical' characteristics. • All the water eeenxs to contain potash and to cause colic and stomach troubles. I v havo to keep a boy, iwith a fan going the whole day to "rniti« gaite the flies." The country,' we are told, "teems with robbery, murder, opthalmia, blindness, slave trade and such. delights." It is intended to establish a, permanent military post- in this region, and! the European pioneers will have a hard time of it. The tracks between the trading t centres are waterless, but the population is described as surprisingly large, in splt« of the absenoe of regular towns. Colonel Morland's .expedition found slave-tradinyr rampant. There was apparently a strong demand in British Bornu for slaves from German territory, presumably because tJha Germans were less strict in suppressing the evil. Batches of fifty a£ a time would be. seized and returned to their homes. Whca the letter was written—it took nearly four months to reach officer wag setting out from Maidesguri for Maigomu, the capital of the district, a five days' journey. Then he proposed to travel with ai strong escort along the shore of Lake Chad,, inspecting the ruins of Kaka, and then! along tha northern frontier of the.British' territory, through quite new country. His accounts of these journeys ought to ba ia« teresting reading.

Babies are, generally, why babies speaking, fat, and it has are fat. often puzzled people to know why they should be so. Ail sorts of explanations suggest themselves, but most of them fail lamentablj when thin parents have a fat lump of an infant who is absolutely certain to develop into a thin adult. If we attempt to go' back to the bush ancestors of the human' race for an explanation, we fail again, for the pithecoid arboreal first fathers 'and mothers assuredly had thin little babies. They had to scamper about among- the trees and carry their children with them,, and the children oould > not conveniently have been heavy. Dr Louis Robinson suggests in the "North American Review'' that the fat baby may be ai survival of tsha past ape period of "human development. For thousands of years humanity musb have lived in a state of savagery,,'compared with which present-day savagery would ba 'advanced civilisation. There would be long spells of absolute faming when babies would be left .to shift for themselves. Thus, the death of millions by stairvatiora caused those with the capacity for fattening rapidly and laying in storein time of plenty , to survive, just as the > bear, the and the dormouse fatten up before hibernating. Other signs tell of those long agea of starvation and neglect. The. baby's habit of picking up anything and putting it to his mouth does not conduce to his wclfaro now. But in all probability the* crawling cave-dweller h?.d a stomach, fatf more tolerant than those possessed by his! modern descendants. It is not a nice picture that- Dr Robinson paints—the fatheraway hunting, -the mother digging for roots in the forest, and the baby grubbing among debris on the cave floor. All would! bo grist that came to that mill. The habib of children of giving ".tastes" to motihera and nurses, and denying them to other children, may be due to instinct.. Babied would learn by experience—or by survival —-that adults ware reliablo guidos as to what was and what was not poisonous. Or the primitive child may have learnt, by sad experience, " that a policy of conciliation pays best with " grown-ups."