THINGS IN GENERAL.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLIV, Issue 13450, 29 May 1907, Page 9

THINGS IN GENERAL.

> THE NORTHERN LIGHTS. By the Northern Lights I' do not mean those mystic lights of the Arctic regions, ■ which some have heard of, but very few hare seen, but just those lights on our own northern coasts, planted by man for the i : guidance of ships. From the West King to Cape Palliser, ire are told, there are only eight lights,, and these include:Tiri, while in the South Island, from ;; Cape Campbell to the Bluff, there arc 13 lights. ..' In other words, down South there is a light for every 40, miles; up North, the average is a light for every 115 miles. It is high time the mariner.got a fair deal all round. : Tins is no question of North versus South ; it is a question of vital concern to the ' whole of Now Zealand. If the ships of the navy constitute the first line of defence, our commerce and material prosperity are bound up with our ships of trade. .And^ nowadays,.when we all travel more or less upon the sea, for our own sakes, if for no other reason, we .should see to it . that our coasts (ire properly lighted, and 'that the risks attending sea-travel are reduced to a minimum. But apart from that, we owe a duty to v our mariners, who ;; with brave heart* ; and cheery faces spend " their lives going ' " down to the sea in .ships," and oftentimes end them in a watery grave. We may bleep snugly in our beds, we star-at-homes, or sit by our fires on a winter's night, listening, and ; maybe shuddering, as the tempest gathers fury, and yet giving little thought to the captain on his bridge and the sailor before the mast. There is no day or night, there is no hour, no minute, but somewhere there I is a ship struggling with the elements. I Sometimes it is a hopeless straggle; the little ship is doomed, and all upon her % doomed; and the captain knows it, and the sailor knows it, and they go on doggedly ,and persistently giving their orders and taking them in the face of the odds. And then the final crash conies— the end-—and the brave hearts whom we can ill .spare beat no more. And very often it is our fault. In places that are notoriously /dangerous we have placed no lights. .It is false economy that saves the expense of a light and sends ii ship on the rocks. But if ii,' were only the ship that was lost, it would-not matter so much—it is the valuable freight in human lives that is too often lost With the ship that matters. It is the loss of many a breadwinner, it is ■ the plunging of many a house into mourning, the bereaving oil mother:', the widowing of Wives. Let the South have its lights, by all means, but let life bo held as sacred in the North as in the South, and let us have some lights up here as well. Justice calls for,it. Humanity implores. "PROGRESS AND POVERTY." It is a good many years since Henry George wrote his book, Progress and Poverty "—that book which many thought contained doctrines which were going to prove a panacea, for all the evils that flesh is heir to. It may have helped towards the betterment of conditions—who shall say?— for there is never a good deed done, there's never a good book written, there's never a good ac'iion wrought, bub it leaves its' mark 5 on the world. We may not see exactly how it happens, but the world.is the better for it.' There's always fruitful soil in which good seed will flourish. Yet, with all our progress—and 'we have progressed and are progressing— remains. "The poor , ji> ,iave always ~ with yon"— and over nineteen centuries since, the .words' Were uttered at Bethany, we have the poor with us even as they had them , then. .' All the efforts.of statesmen, economists, and philosophers have - failed to produce a world of , universal happiness.' We have tried our "New Australias," we have tried our socialistic colonies—all to no purpose. Utopia is not yet. And it will be so, perhaps, till the millennium. With all our moving onward, the earth is full of dark places, where life sieems hopeless, love seems dead, and the giant of despair reigns snpseme. Every city has its slums. Even Auckland. The public conscience must have been smitten sorely by the sordid details of the two old women who were removed from "a house in a quarter of this beautiful city, only a few clays sigo. Squalor and filth, such as we surely were not aware existed in our, midst, surrounded them. This is Dr. Pardy's report to the City Council: " This iioase is in a mart disgusting and filthy condition,. There is only . one means of entrance. ■, The floor is covered with ragged, dirty mats, which are so saturated with filth that they are stuck to the floor, which is rotten in places. . . . The two sisters, aged 82 and 86 years, were in an'abject state of neglect. One sister is bedridden, and the other just abb to nobble to the door. ... I have seldom seen premises in such an insanitary and filthy state, even "in native quarters;of Oriental towns. . . . These premises arc absolutely unfit for human habitation, and. m such an insanitary condition as to ■warrant immediate demolition." It is a piti- ■■= Jo-story—one of those stories which make aieu shudder. It is well, perhaps, we are not often brought face to face with the unhappy conditions which enwrap the lives- of some ; who dwell among us, for it would either turn our hearts into stone, or break them— and letting them break would do no good, anyway.,. '

c ,' ON MILLIONAIRES. : j '? These arc days of record-breaking. Every year now there's a, horse that runs faster than any animal ever did before; every year there 3 a man who swims faster than 'was ever done before. There has been record scoring in billiards, by means of the cannon"--and let us bo thankful ! it is -to-bo "barred." In all departments of I snort • records are being put up this year if® 1 beat the record's of last year. It is $\ same most ofcher departments of life. Aha now a record fine has been established »y the Standard Oil Trust, that great octopus Which has its ■ tentacles all over America and is trying to got them all over the world. A- cable the other day stated that this mammoth trust had been fined a total of something over £5,000,000 for accepting wibes in the shape of secret railway, rentes. And it is probable that a fine of ° 8 hits the ordinary drunk in Auckland as hard as this five millions-hits the Standard °'I -Trust, with its capital of £13,000,000 and its 40 per cent, dividends divided among less than a dozen people. Anyway, *.aave more sympathy with the drunk than | have with any oily, smooth-tongued trust that makeo millions of money out of wie.sweated workers, that buys up by sheer ■W of capital the wealth .of the earth, Wether in the nature of oil-wells or, any 'jWr form of wealth. And only yester- %■■ cam? the further announcement that Resident Roosevelt had ordered the procHtion of . two more great corporation— ." , International Harvester Trust and the in,** 0 Trust—on charges of restraining : *fW. America is the \ richest and most corrupt country in the world «>-%. Witness its Rockefellers and W' n ds * its Carnses . its Morgans and 'j?...UajTunanß, and witness its Tammany "rag. its 'Frisco municipal frauds, and its railway rebate scandals. Depend upon it, S e i come a reckoning day, and, if I mistake not, that, day is not far distant. Already there are signs qf the beginning of a ' great industrial upheaval such as the .world has never vet seen. What the end {» t- will be cannot be foretold. It may oe tua.t out 0 the struggle will rise up a "«w America from the ashes of the old, a new country, * new Atlantis, where Might is not Right, but where justice is done and It *? ? " 'entitled to a fair proportion <» the fruit of his labours. ' '

> ON MILLIONAIRES' SUICIDE.

There are even signs that these giants of finance themselves, these Carnegies •■ and Rockefellers, are tiring of their part. Is it that they see ' the coming conflict? or is it that ; their consciences, which were thought dead, are reasserting themselves? At any rate, they seem to be anxious now to get rid of some of the millions*)! money which they can never hope to spend. It's easy to be good, as Becky Sharp says, on five thousand a year, and it ought to be very easy to be good. on a few millions a year; so we can quite understand that Mr. Carnegie's munificent library donations (not forgetting his goodness /to New Zealand) and his ; ; efforts ,in ;■ the cause of peace among ' the nations, and Mr. J. D. Rockefeller's distribution of -huge sums for educational purposes and for the conversion of the, Chinese, are not giving them much occasion for anxiety. At all events, they know where the next meal is going to come from. Mr. Rockefeller is the "boss" of the Standard Oil Trust, and shows nc sigh of deserting its "What a charming reconciler and peacemaker money is!" And Pierpont Morgan has been buying rare pictures by old masters and * furnishing museums for the peopleall with his own money. And this is millionaires' ..suicide. By giving the people libraries and by making education easy they are cutting their own throats, for by their own weapons will they be destroyed. And every citizen in the new dynasty will have his own art gallery in * his own -home. And they will go about the conversion of the Chinese in another way, and not seek to CHristianise them with the aid of money "tainted" with the blood and sweat of white workers. For there is no virtue in, giving where, it entails no sacrifice.. ..When that blessed day comes for America, our Foster .Frasersi will have a different story. to tell when they go and study "America at Work." - " Where are your old men?" askedtFraser of the men "who stood at the , top < and watched their workers sweating out their life-blood. "I see all young I where are -the old?" And the answer was as callous as it was pathetic:, ' "In the cemetery" ■■• was the -reply. " : ;.'-'':.' ■:'"'■■'.:"■'-' : .'. The Genera!,.