DUNEDIN NOTES.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2902, 17 January 1911, Page 4

DUNEDIN NOTES.

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

A section, at least, of the Dunedin City Council proposes to begin the New Year in tine style. It wants to borrow a further sum of £60,000 to spend on the Electric Power and Light Department. As this depaitnient has already borrowed and partly spent £329,000 in this direction the request is, to say the least, surprising. But the surprise becomes something very like alarm when the history of ibis unhappy investment is recalled. The city some five years ago purchased the right of the old Waipori Company for £12,000 and the citizens weie told that for an additional expenditure of £BO,OOO they would secure 4000 horse power in Dunedin or 6000 h.p. for a capital investment of £106,000. These were the estimates of the electrical engineer of the Company at the time. To-day we know that we have l>orrowed £329,000 to procure 4000 h.p. and that we were asked to spend £60,000 more in order to obtain GOOO h.p. Putting aside all questions of doubt as to whether we shall get what we are promised even though we oonsent to accept the new burden, and closing our eyes to the probability that the City is losing money on its investment, we have this amazing fact, viz : that the Engineer who is responsible for the first estimates is also responsible for the last! And yet there are some Councillors who remain obstinate and unconvinced. What, however, the Council as a whole may do with this preposterous demand is, at this hour of writing, undecided. We can only hope that there will be shown a trifle moie wisdom in the future than we have had in the past. A gentleman named Howling (Mr Peter Bowling of New South Wales) some twelve months ago plunged the industrial life of Australia into confusion, and inflicted a monetary loss of tens of thousands of poundß upon tho wage earners of Newcastle and elsewhere. Happily his virulent tongue brought bim within the meshes of the law and he was sentenced to a long term of imprisonment. To the lasting disgrace of the present gang of men, who, by pandering to the lawless elements of the State of Now South Wales, have got into power, they released Mr Peter Bowling a few hours after they were sworn in to govern the country faithfully and well. Then, having got Mr Peter Bowling out of gaol, ihey proceeded to get rid him at the earliest opportunity. Providence intervened in the form of the New Zealand Trades and Labor leaders who, very generously, offered Mr Peter Bowling £6 a week (so it was said) and travelling expenses to come and talk rubbish to the poor, benighted folk of this Dominion. he talked and he did not conquer. He had nothing to tell any intelligent working man that the worker did not already know; it was a piece of unmitigated impudence that he should for a moment have thought that he had anything to say that was woi th listening to, and he is now being treated here by those who know him much the same as the miners in New South Wales had recently treated him. In short, he is being turned down. At the fame time there are sufficient fools in this Dominion to want to engage Mr Peter Bowling as a sort of organiser in chief of labor (with an eye on the next elections). The suggestion is not likely to be adopted—there are possibly one or two New Zealanders who feel competent to tackle the job. To me the puzzle is why, if labor should be organised in order to force torn-fool legislation through Parliament, the labor people think it necessary and, therefore, beneficial to their cause, to import Mr Peter Bowling from New South Wales to tell them how to do it.

Mr Millar's policy of raising railway fares and revet si nu that of his predecessors in office does not appear to have checked the rush of visitors to the holiday resorts. The inference, too, is that these will become increasingly popular. This being bo I suggest that the local authorities in those places (Queenstown and Wakatipu for example) to which the tourists flock, should do something to mark their appreciation. There are many of the tracks on the hills and through the valleys that are simply not kept in order at all. They are overgrown with tussocks and thick with quagmires of mud and dirty water. A couple of men with a load of logs and armed with spade and scythe could (and should) put these in decent condition in less than a week. As an outsider who hears things I throw out this bint in the faint hope that it may be needed.

The death roll from carelessness, accident and mistakes has been a very long and a very melancholy one. It sometimes gives rise to a feeling of wonder why there should be, in a thinly populated country like our own*, such a terribly grim comment upon our methods and ways and habits as that furnished by the daily record of the daily press under the heading "accidents and deaths." Here in Dunedin the most horrible item in the list was the fate of au old woman who was burned to death. A glance down the evidence at the coroner's inquest does no give rise to a very large respect for the wisdom of th<t verdict " accidental death." As a matter of fact the death was the result, and outcome, of an ignoble, disgusting and repulsive drinking bout and its customary horrors. That no one intended to set the hovel on fire is true and, in this sense, death was " accidental." But something more was wanted. A stiff terra of forced labor in gaol might partially meets the 'needs of the ease.