NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XLVI, Issue 14220, 17 November 1909, Page 6

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

AMERICAN MANNERS. , , Ik St. Louis 1000 men are how enrolled in the League of Politeness, and are now wearing true blue buttons as a pledge that they are ready 10 surrender their .seats to women. ..Mr., Stafford, a St. Louis millionaire, declares -that he was delighted with the experiment, which he is confident will spread throughout the country, and counteract the public incivility which he believes is giving America a bad name throughout the civilised world. In issuing the buttons this inquiry is made :"Are you a gentleman? Are you willing to give your [seat to' any woman standing in a' street car ? - If you are, you may wear the Stafford true blue button, by which you are pledged to see that women are seated before men." Mr. Stafford says that if men do this for one week they may get into the habit and keep it. He has lived 'in New York, Chicago, and St. Louis, and he says St. Louis is the politest of the three towns, but he believes there is ample room for improvement everywhere. In New York, where the invasion, of business offices by women at high rate® of pay has rather nettled many men, there is admittedly an enormous field for Mr. Stafford's propaganda.

AN EVENTFUL CAREER. .. Few men, perhaps, have followed the progress of marine engineering so ;: intimately and for so long a period as Mr. James Bain, who has just retired from the position of general superintendent of the Cunard line. Serving an apprenticeship with Messrs. Robert Napier and Co., of Glasgow, he joined the Cunarder Arabia as sixth engineer in the year 1863. The Arabia was a wooden paddle-steamer, dependent on oscillating engines. Mr. Bain stayed with the Cunard '' Company until 1872, when he joined the White Star line, in order do become second, and then chief, "engineer of the Adriatic. Three years later he received an appoint-

ment as Lloyd's surveyor, which he held for ten years. Then, in 1885, he re-en-

tered the service of the Cunard Company as superintendent engineer, finally suc-

ceeding to the post from which he has now retired. ' The whole gamut of progress has been familiar .. to him. -He watched the advent of the compound en-

gine, followed by triple-expansion - and : quadruple-expansion engines, and, ultimately, the turbine engine -as exemplified in the Carmania. When the .Cunard

Company had to. decide the crucial problem as to whether the Lusitania and the Mauritania should be fitted with reciprocating engines or with turbines, it was' Mr. Bain who was called upon to preside over the committee which considered the subject. He remained in office sufficiently long to see the complete triumph of the new method of propulsion, and the

entire vindication of his judgment. Between the paddle-steamer Arabia of the 'sixties and the quadrupletturbine steamers Lusitania and Mauretania of the present century, lies a development which Mr. Bain may well be proud to look back upon. . , .