NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXII, Issue 18950, 23 February 1925, Page 8

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

MILESTONE IN SHIPPING!. " The largest, fastest and highest powered motor-ship in the world," is the Motor Ship's description of the Aorangi. The journal says:—When at the end of September, 1922, an order was placed by the Union Steam Ship Company of New Zealand with the Fairfield Shipbuilding and Engineering Company, Govan, for the motor passenger liner Aorangi, it is not too much to say that a sensation was caused throughout the whole of the shipping and shipbuilding industries. And naturally so. Up to that time the biggest motor ship that had been constructed was a vessel of about 485 ft. long, equipped with machinery of. 4500 b.h.p. The Aorangi was to be a first-class passenger liner 600 ft long, displacing 23,000 tons, and propelled by oil engines totalling .13, 000 s.h.p. in service and 14,500 s.h.p. on trial. Such an outstanding advance in design and construction is not taken without a considerable amount of thought being given to the problem, but it must be more than encouraging to the builder and owners who had the temerity thus to mark another milestone in the history of shipbuilding to note that., afterwards, their example was freely followed, with the result that there are now about a dozen large motor liners in course of construction. In fact, since the order for the Aorangi was placed, .more contracts have been fixed for oil-engined vessels of this class than for those driven by steam machinery. It is perhaps not surprising that, the Union .Steam Ship Company should be the pioneers in this direction, since they were, we believe, the first to have Lloyd's and Board of Trade certificates for oil firing under boilers for large passenger vessels and among the first to adopt direct-driven and geared turbines for such vessels. "

LABOUR AND HOUSING. Much interest, has been aroused in Britain by Lord Weir's proposals for the relief of Ihe housing shortage by the erection of steel houses-—which are actually timber frames covered by steel plates—but the scheme has already been checked by the hostility of building industry unions. Lord Weir's contention is that ho is attempting to solve two problems—by special expedients—the want of houses on the part of tens of thousands of working people, and I he want of work on the part of tens of thousands of other artisansincluding carpenters, joiners, and others, who in happier times have found ample work in the shipyards. These men normally are paid at much lower rates than their fellows using the same tools, -th no greater skill, and working on the same material—wood—in the building industry. The one industry is exposed to the fiercest foreign competition,- while tho other is sheltered from such competition and has been able to extract higher wages. The building trades operatives, protesting that shipyard unions are going to be employed in house building, have urged that they must bo paid the "sheltered" and higher wage. Lord Weir, disclaiming any intention to mterfere with tho internal affairs of the building industry, argues that ho should be allowed to pay men engaged in this emergency house production as lie would do if they were building ships. He proposes to draw his labour from the unemployed craftsmen of the ship-building and steel industries, and to reward them in accordance with a system of payment- by results, which he claims is eminently Suitable for mass production. Unless his view prevails, the cost of steel houses will be so greatly increased that they will not be economically superior to brick houses, so that the country may lose both the bouses and the employment they would provide.

MODERN CIVILISATION. Civilisation undoubtedly has removed many barriers from our path, says the Morning Post. We can obtain cooked food from the grocer, artificial teeth from the dentist, easy travelling by the motor-car, the railway, and the tube, ready-made dresses, free education, and a whole array of wonderful innovations which save us from the necessity of thinking. But we still have to struggle until we reach the grave, and even in the hereafter, according to the spiritualists, wc may be called upon at any moment to answer baffling questions. Whatever tho machines havo given us, they most certainly have not brought us rest or made life easier. Is preaching easier to-day than it was in the Middle Ages or in the prosaic Sundays of the eighteenth century ? In view of the progress and vacillations of science, does not the effort to reconcile the great truths of religion with the new visions of the modern mind place a very great, strain upon the preachers of the twentieth century ? Is the journalism of to-day, with tho terrific pressure or. its time and the complexity and the number of the problems with which it has to deal, not much harder than the journalism of yesterday ? Tho general practitioner has now a hard task to obtain even a nodding acquaintance with tho latest advances of medical science. The banker and the tradesman, too, have to face problems and worries unknown to their predecessors. Even tho working man is hard put to it to earn a living, as tho melancholy figures of our unemployed returns show. Superficially life seems easier, but, in its essence, it is really as hard as, perhaps harder than, it was in the past. When wc get behind the pretences and really come face to face with life, wo are inclined to shudder at the tasks it sets us. But tho best men and women do not only shudder, they also set their teeth, even though they be supplied by a dentist, and say to themselves, "Very well, hero is a challenge, let us meet it." The year 1914 was not so very long ago,.