NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19372, 6 July 1926, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

BRITAIN'S LATEST INDUSTRY. Artificial silk is a new stuff for a new age—the fabric of the future. Already fifty million flesh-tint stockings flaunt its prestige with the mothers of to-morrow. Soon we may all live and sleep in articial silk, says a correspondent of the London Spectator. It is a huge industry, this making of artificial-silk. One British fir pi, Messrs. Courtauld's, control a third of the total output ot the world and are capitalised—at market value of their holdings—at £88,000,000. • And more, it is a growing industry. Thirty new companies were registered last year with a total capital of £4,000,000. Only 12 months ago, no artificial silk was produced in Lancashire; now there are-50 merchants dealing in it. This material is not garnered from the kindly earth, nor sheared from beasts; it is.won by conflict, beaten out of nature with axe and hammer. Bombyx Mori produces silk out of two little holes after a quiet time for digestion; at Coventry there is a modern worm, several acres in size, 'that eats, not mulberry leaves, but pine forests with its 24 jaws, digesting the pulp with flails and paddles and producing seven miles of thread a second. There are two main processes for making artificial silk, first the viscose, by which wood pulp is treated by chemicals, forced through minute orifices, and then coagulated by acids. into the fibre from which the silk is spun. The other process is the celanese, by which cotton is combined with acetic acid to alter its organic composition. More than 90 per cent, of all materials used in either process come from the British Empire. "Artificial silk has come to stay," the writer adds. "It is better than real silk income ways, and worse in others, but, anyway, it can stand on its own pretty feet. It is a shame to call ii artificial: as well call stout artificial beer. Drapers have racked their brains to name this child of crucible and loom, with poor results so far. The future may necessitate a gloss on Flecker's 'Not on silk nor on samite we lie,' but I doubt whether 'rayon,' or "celline' (which won a prize for a good name) or the Jabberwockian 'glossamer' will find favour with our shimmering posterity. We may just call it silk."

TAXATION IN FRANCE. The influence of the Revolution has been cited by the Christian Science Monitor as an important factor in the protracted financial troubles of France, which arise chiefly from the hostility to direct taxation which observers consider essential to a sound budgetary position. Direct taxation is a charge upon income, indirect taxation a charge on expenditure, and the former is generally recognised as the best way of adjusting the burden to the individual's means. Tho Boston journal points out that one of the causes of the French revolution was the oppression of poor people by direct taxes, from which the rich were exempt. Forgetting that direct taxation was condemned because of its iniquitous application, France is slow to recognise that direct taxation without exemptions for privileged persons is far more democratic than indirect taxation. It is argued that even the income tax, which is essentially a direct tax, is eventually passed on to the consumer. It is above all argued that the tax on commodities, whether it b© called the turnover tax, the sales tax, or the tax on payments, is more easily collected than the direct tax a.nd cannot be as fraudulently evaded as the latter can. Again it is held that in present circumstances, with the franc depreciating, a tax on commodities produces immediate resources for the State without the erection of any special machinery and that if prices rise as the franc falls the receipts from taxes on commodities automatically increase. This, however, is why Finance Minister afterFinance Minister, in spite of the unmistakable hostility 6f the parties of the Left, refused to abandon the sales tax. Minister after Minister was overthrown on this issue, but his successor made the same propositions, perhaps with a change of name, perhaps with modifications Which were intended slightly to disguise their unpleasant and unpopular features, but still basically the same propositions. In the end the Government had its way and increased the taxes on commodities.