WELLINGTON NOTES.

Lyttelton Times, Volume CXV, Issue 13949, 4 January 1906, Page 8

WELLINGTON NOTES.

[From Our Correspondent.] WELLINGTON, January 3. The “Post” denounces the diversion of the New Zealand team of footballers to America as a wicked waste of public money. The “ Times ” defends it as a graceful compliment to a phenomenally successful team, and predicts that the departure will form a basis of more business-like methods of State advertisement. I hear that the Rugby Union authorities had practically determined on the return; of the team by way of America when they received the Government’s offer, which they naturally accepted. “ They were not going to refuse a good thing chucked at them,” as I heard to-day. By way of reply to the /Conservative cry of dull business and want of employment, Mr Mackay, of the Labour Department, has just made a statement that, during the past year, hundreds of artisans, labourers and c restio servants have been absorbed immediately on arrival in the colony, and there is still an unsatisfied demand for more. He puts down the failures of assisted immigration as 10 per cent, consisting mainly of persons naturally unfit. The tram traffic for the year ended December 31 reached nearly thirteen million persons, viz., 12,764,000.. The revenue for the week ending Monday night was £2027. [The special feature of the criminal records for Wellington during the year 1905, as entered through the Police Office and the Magistrate’s Court is the decided drop in the number of arrests for drunkenness. During 1904 the total number of cases of drunkenness dealt with was 2106, of which 281 were women, but during the year just closed there were 330 fewer arrests (1584 men, 192 women). Up till late this afternoon there were no signs of the unfortunate men lost from the Oban. Judge Haselden, who is now in Wellington, 1 is in accordance with a promise made to Mr Chamberlain, secretary of the Sailors’ Shipwreck Society of Dunedin, interviewing _ prominent citizens interested in shipping matters with the object of reviving the local branch, or bringing into existence an entirely new branch of that Society. The local branch died of apathy, but the sad story of the Oban may help the revival. The Tourist Department reports phenomenal traffic at all the tourist centres, Rotorua and Te Aroha having have been particularly “ rushed.” At the latter place 1700 were dumped down by a single train one evening. There has been everywhere a good deal of enforced picnicking.