NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19274, 12 March 1926, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

THE PRICE OF RUBBER. The inquiry by the United States Congress has come sharply up against certain hard facts and the logic of the case, Bays the Christian Science Monitor. The raising of the alarm about the operations of monopolies under European control has quite naturally prompted the query, "What about monopolies in the United States?" The committee has voted to confine its investigation to crude rubber prices, or merely the foreign aspects of the problem, but committee members persist in inquiring why it is, if the increase in the cost of imported crude rubber going into a certain size tyre amounts to not more than £1 ss, that the price of that tyre should have been advanced from £5 10s to £ll by the American manufacturers and dealers. Others point to financial reports of American rubber companies showing new high levels of profits for the last year, and then ask whether this industry can be said either to be "suffering" or to be entirely free from responsibility for the high prices of the finished products of which the American consumers are said to be complaining. The journal also remarks upon the inconsistency of complaints against restriction of rubber exports, as "governmental interference with the free flow of the world's economic forces," in view of the United States' restriction of imports by its tariff, and adds that above all other questions stands the one of whether it is wise to precipitate the two great brandies of the English-speaking world into a ferment of bitter recriminations over the price of rubber or over any other commercial issue. EARTHQUAKES AND FIRES. The losses due to the great earthquake of September 1, 1923, in which all of Yokohama and one-half of Tokyo were destroyed, are seldom viewed in their true, perspective, says Engineering. The point overlooked is that 95 per cent, of the loss of property was due to fire. This is not strange considering the construction of Japanese dwellings—heavy roofs and light framework, the worst possible form to withstand an earthquake. ''Houses are so fragile that if a motor-car collides with one it kills the occupants" (of the house, not of the car). And then the water system failed. Professor Omori had often advised the citizens of Tokyo to improve the condition of the water pipes. The San Francisco earthquake of April 18, 19C6, was in many ways a parallel to that of Tokyo. The destruction wrought was almost wholly due to fire. The water mains were completely wrecked by earthquake shock, and the fire burned unchecked for three days, destroying an area of over four square miles. A report by the National Board of Fire Underwriters, issued less than a year before the earthquake, after enumerating several fire hazards of San Francisco says, "In fact, San Francisco has violated all underwriting traditions in not burning up." San Francisco was 90 per cent, timber construction, frame buildings of four and five stories were common. .The number of fireproof buildings in the city was about fifty.