NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume L, Issue 15398, 5 September 1913, Page 6

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

LANCASHIRE MILL WORKERS. In connection with the recent tour of the King and Queen much has been said and written regarding the prosperity of Lancashire. Two of the newspapers touch a deeper note. "It would be a grave mistake to assume that the condition of Lancashire is a matter for unqualified satisfaction," says the Daily News. "The trade of that county is splendid, but the lives of the people are not splendid. The average manufacturing town is not a lovely spectacle, and the housing conditions in which the operatives live have little correspondence with the splendour of the trade returns. The labour of married women in the mills and factories is still an apparently unavoidable condition of the industry but' no one acquainted with the facte will suggest that it has anything but a disastrous influence on the home life and physique of the people. There has been great improvement in regard to child labour; but the little half-timer still exists. There has, in common with the rest of the country, been a remarkable fall lin the infantile death-rate of Lancashire, but it is still the highest of any county in the kingdom, and in towns like Burnley two children under one year of age still die where only one dies in Hampstead or any other place inhabited' by the comfortable classes. All this, and mjuch more,' should qualify the just enthusiasm one may feel at the industrial success of Lancashire ; for, after all, the true touchstone of a people is not the trade returns, important though they are, but the conditions of their physical and moral wellbeing." The Times also expresses concern for the weakness on the human side of Lancashire's industrial prosperity. " The visit is at an end, but it will not be soon forgotten in Lancashire/' says the Times. "Indeed, it suggests reflections which will often recur/'to many who do not live in that county or near it. In the districts through which the King and Queen nave been travelling are seen at once the good and the evil sides of modern industry, its mechanical perfection and its weakness on the human side. Modern industry and its accompaniments are generally grim or uncomely. The magio of our chemists can work wonderscan turn dross into gold or gold's worth. But their skill has limits ; they rarely fail also to turn out ugliness aE a by-product. Beauty and industry, often at war, are nowhere more so than in some parts of Lanca^tdrej"

AMERICAN SLANG. '' " The insidious growth of American words and expressions in Great Britain is becoming more and more perceptible," writes W. G. Faulkner in the London Daily Mail,and it is directly duo to the development of the moving-picture business. The patron of the picture palace learns to think of his railway station as a 'depot;' he has alternatives to one of our newest words, ' hooligan,' in ' hoodlum' and ' tough ;' he watches a ' dive,' which is a thieves' kitchen or a room in which bad characters meet, and whether the villain talks of ' dough' or ' sugar* he knows it is money to which he is referring. The musical ring of the word ' tramp' gives ,way jto the stodgy 'hobo' or 'dead-beat.' It may be that the plot reveals an attempt to deceive some simple-minded person. If it does, the innocent one is spoken of as a ''sucker,' a 'come-on,' a 'boob,' or a ' lobster' if he is stupid into the bargain. ... The meeting of cultivated with less polished people is described as ' the high-brows give the low-brows the icy hand,' .which no one can pretend to say is an improvement on a fair English equivalent. Nor is it easier or better to say ' frozen glance' when one I means disdain. We may tolerate the 'janitor,' the 'buggy,' the 'store,' or the ' dope,' but there is no need for us to follow the language on the screen and call a waterfall a ' flume,' leaflets ' dodgers,' meal times ' the eats,' inquisitive people ' rubbernecks,' a commercial traveller ' a drummer,' or describe bribery as 'graft,' a foolish person as a ' mutt,' a man or woman with a past as a ' dub,' a confidence trickster as a ' bunco-steerer,' a bachelor as a ' stag,' and effeminate man as ' Cissy,' an unlucky day as a ' Jonah day,' or the completion of our task as a 'clean up.' Our own words convey our meaning much bet' ter, but inasmuch as it seems to be the natural tendency of man to pervert language, probably because he likes to do what*he knows he should not do, the wholesale introduction of American slang through the medium of the picture theatres, which are largely frequented by young folks, can not be regarded without serious misgivings, if only because it generates and I encourages mental indiscipline so far as the [ choice of expressions is concerned."