CURRENT TOPICS.

Lyttelton Times, Volume XCVI, Issue 14310, 2 March 1907, Page 8

CURRENT TOPICS.

AMERICAS’ rovEßTvr.

It was reported the other day that Mr John D. Rockefeller was dis-

tressed by the exaggerated statements in circulation concerning his fortune, and we are assured now that his wealth does not- exceed £60,000,000 sterling, while his income has never been more than a paltry four millions sterling a year. Apparently the millionaires are all a little vexed by the suggestion that they are in comfortable circumstances, and a good number of them have convinced the New York Treasury Department that the amounts of their taxable ( property in the State are quite modest. There has been a good deal of comment upon what are termed the “ absurdly low valuations of the, millionaires’ estates.” Thus Mr Carnegie’s property in New York is assessed at a mere million sterling, and Mr J. D. Rockefeller’s at only half a million, while the total assessment of the Vanderbilts is £580,000. In the popular mind these amounts are ridiculously small, but then," as we have seen in the case of Sir Rockefeller, the popular estimates may be exaggerated. The New York correspondent of the “Standard,” writing on American wealth generally, quotes some amazing figures compiled by Mr L. G. Powers, Chief Statistician of the United States Census Bureau. The estimated value of the wealth of the United States, oxcliU sive of Alaska, Hawaii, Porto Rico and the Philippines, in 1900 wao £17,700,000,000, and in 1901 £21,400,000,000. “ The latest estimates of European national wealth,” he’says, “'those of Mulhall, are for 1896. In that year the wealth of Great Britain was estimated at £11,400,000,000, and -of Russia as £6,200,000,000. The total for the two was £17,600,000,000, which is practically identical with the estimate for the United States in 1900. All known facts tell of greater wealth accumulated in the United States since the years mentioned than in the countries named. Hence it is safe to' assume that the wealth of the United States differs but little from that of Great Britain and Russia combined, and is slightly in excess.” It seems that every time the sun make its daily course it finds the American 1 nation £2,000,000 richer when its last rays linger at the golden gates of California than when they lighted up the granite hills of Maine.. In the four years, 1900 to 1904, the estimates of the census recoi’ded an increase in the national wealth of £3,700,000,000, or as much as the estimated: total national wealth of Italy and Portugal, of Spain, Sweden, Norway and Denmark, or of 'Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, Greece and the Danubian States.

MR niLLKx’s OBSERVATIONS.

The letters which Mr F. T. Bullen contributed to the “ Stand-

ard,” describing his visit to New Zealand, are for the most part accurate and informative. But, like every other traveller, he is liable to err. The inevitable small errors may be excused, but ho might surely have avoided the bald declaration that " the New Zealand Government railway rolling stock is all American.” Visitors to the Exhibition, at least, will not fall into that error. On the whole, Mr Bullen enjoyed railway travelling in New Zealand. The line is usually single,” ho says, " and laid American fashion, that is. the rails are spiked down to the sleepers with hold-fast nails, in a way that to us at home seems quite casual and temporary. . The officials are genial, but being Government servants), which always seems to mean something different from public servants, they do not waste any time in superfluous civility, and they come j down with Draconian severity upon any hapless passenger who unwittingly infringes a by-law. But with all that they are courteous and gentle personi- ! fied when compared with the autocrat® on the American railways, who actually savagely resent being spoken civilly to, and proceed to insult a pas- 1 senger who is accustomed to speak to those whom he pays to servo him as he would like to be spoken to himself. Our colonial brethren do not make that grim mistake, though they are quick I to resent any needless assumption of superiority.” Later Mr Bullen ia moved to remark on the excellence of the food served on the southern express. "There is an-excellent dining-car,” ho observes, “with good and beautiful food at a low rate, compared with what is to be found in any other country in the Old World or America. And here I think it only just to say that where-

ever I have travelled out here I harV found the same thing'—the very best oi food, plainly but excellently cooked and nicely served, at a very low cost. 1 know that jny ideas in the matter ol food ai’e considered to be old-fashioneo and heterodox, but I cannot help that. My deliberate opinion is that in matter of food which is honest pH good, without being ambitiously messy and ostentatiously disguised, the Antipodes can challenger the world. So far as food is concerned, it is like travelling from one home to another.” Other travellers, it will be remembered, have been anything but complimentary to the quality of New Zealand cooking.

THE STAFF OF LIFE.

The great majority of these unfortunate people who are compelled by rebellious digestions to

take thought for the food they eat-have been content to accept well-baked bread as a tolerably safe part of their daily dietary. But the lady who writes on household matters 'in' “ The Clarion ” says some very disquieting things concerning the staff of life. The commercial white loaf, she asserts, consists of whit© flour (an unbalanced food), potatoes (which contain hardly any proteid and a great deal of water), and sametimes rice flour (made from polished rice), and alum. One of the chief reasons for defective and ricketty children Is that they are fed on this commercial bread. Hundreds of poor mothers are driven by poverty to feed their little ones on little ©lee than bread and butter, but this would not be followed by such disastrous consequences to the children if they could get real bread and some pure form of fat. W© have had plenty of advocates of whole-meal bread before,!of .course, but this authority does not stop at the condemnation of fine flour. She thinks yeast unwholesome and carbonate of soda and the other mineral substitutes that go by'the name of “baking powder” simply poisonous. She would have bread made of finely-ground wheat, without the removal of any of the bran, and pure, soft water. This sounds rather like a new edition of the familiar “ damper,” but the lady maintains that it may be made very presentable and highly palatable- The Jewish unleavened bread is made after this simple receipt, but it is eaten rather as a penance than as a luxury, and it probably would not be made any more tempting by the use of whole meal. The contributor to “The Clarion” thinks that the Biblical dietary of “corn, wine and oil ” is the best that can be devised for the average person, but she interprets it to mean cereals, grapes and olives, and though it is a little lacking ,iu variety it would doubtless sustain life very comfortably. The happy person, however, is the one that am eat what he pleases in moderation wit ho Lit consulting the prejudices of his digestion.