NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 12736, 13 December 1904, Page 4

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

LABOUR AM) DBI.VK. j Mr. John- Bibxs, M.P., writing in the I Loudon* Daily Chronicle about labour and drink, says : — The general summary of my life's experience amongst the working classes of this and other countries, as a sentinel on the outworks of their social hopes, is that drink with too many of them is their bane, drunkenness is their curse excessive drinking is their greatest defect. Nationally, drink is the greatest item of our Imperial spending. The total estimated expenditure of the nation on intoxicating liquors inthe last 25 years amounts to £4,000,000,000, or an annual » average of jut,t upon £160,000,000. Taking £4 2s 4d per head in 1903, as the average expenditure over all the people, that yields from £16 to £17 per family; but it has been variously estimated that the drink bill is confined to 50 or 55 per cent, of the total population, and that being so, it. means that the average over all of £4 2s 4cl is nearly doubled, or, say, £8. Germany; with 56 millions of people, spends £150,000,000 on drink, and, compared with us, tney save and divert to better purposes £120,000,000 a year; the United States save on a, similar comparison £130,000,000, so that their joint annual advantage over us hi home and foreign markets is £250,000,000. This external handicap in our international trade with foreign competitors is bad enough,, hut the diminished demand on our Home trade, the best of our commerce, which the wasteful drinking habits of our people are responsible for, does incalculable harm to our industrial efficiency and supremacy. The trade unions are living monuments of what thrift, thought, and sober effort have secured for workmen and the nation. They would have been larger, more powerful, and of greater influence but for the drain upon their influence and resource which the drinking habits of the people inflict upon them. " In 1901 the. much-abused trades unions, with all their 648 strikes and lockouts, inflicted "a loss of half-a-day on all the working classes at work, for which they secured £24.000.000 in higher waged, and a net gain- of 11,000.000 reduced hours of work ; 'yet on drink, betting, and gambling, and the loss entailed thereby in time or money, from 30 to 50 days per annum are lost, with no advantage 'at all. There is restriction of output.! If wages are determined by standard of comfort, as generally they are", let workmen maintain and elevate that standard by deducting from what is now spent on drink, and diverting to better homes, clothing, food, holidays, pleasure, as the tendency now Ls t what is wasted to their undoing by going to the public-house. The workmen who spend the least on drink have the best homes, are the most regularly employed, and ate better prepared to resist encroachments on then wages. The drunkard blackleg invariably undersells his fellows in the labour market to the extent of the lowness of his tastes, which rarely rise 1 above treachery to his trade, disloyally tolas | home, and contempt for the elementary virtue.; of thrift, sobriety, and civic decency."

THE MIKADO. The Emperor of Japan, according to a native writer, is an early riser. At live o'clock punctually you may see Inn* astride one of his favourite mounts taking the fres'h air, and drawing inspiration from the grandeur of the .scenery. After a simple breakfast lie prepares himself for work at the Gakumonjo~~the place of study and inquiry. Here he sees the innumerable reports from the Cabinet Ministers and the committees of the Houses of Parliament, goes over the foreign cablegrams, or the " wires'' on the crops, and amends initials and criticises paper.-* of all kinds, from the regular reports of the Finance Office to the award of merit to a poor peasant woman for faithful attendance on a sick husband. He is so thorough is our Emperor. State functions are attended generally between ten in the morning and one or two in the afternoon, or in lieu thereof he will visit the schools, distribute prizes, listen to addresses by students at. the head of the list on scientific or other matters. In all this the Empress proves herself a true helpmeet, and sometimes takes the greater share of the work. As the Emperor says, "I am the committee of politics ; my wife is the committee of education." Out in the starry night, when the world lies folded in sleep, a tall figure of a man may be seen pacing steadily up and clown on the battlement, clad, in the coarse regulation, serge of the army, his hands in his pockets, and an tmlighted cigar perhaps in his mouth. The sentinels step aside into the dark recesses of the wall, or bide under the fchadow of the trees, so that their earthly forms may not obtrude on the vision of the solitary man. Then he dreams dreams; then ho soars among the spirits of the departed, listening intently to their wise monitions; then he moves among the heavenly hierarchy so much beyond the counsels (A this puny earth ; then he sees that dim outline of the future upo» the veil of night. Sometimes his wife walks by his —that simple., homely wife, clad not in any Paris confection, adorned with gems, but in the simple Court dress, consisting of a white blouse and scarlet skirt. She .walks by his side silently, perhaps not quite understanding the working of his thoughts, but trusting him implicitly, for she, of all the Dersone in Japan, knows him beet.