NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19563, 16 February 1927, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

.'ART AND INDUSTRY. A plea for greater co-operation between employers and schools of art was made by Mr. R. R. .Carter, of the School of Art, Walsall, in his presidential'address at the annual meeting of the National Society of Art Master, in London. He said that, looking back-over their the most striking alteration had been the gradual development and perfection of technical design. Formerly, most, if not all, of the schools were obsessed by the supreme importance of pictorial figure work. Now, not only had schools of art turned to the study of design, but they had done it in the proper manner—by technical production. They were beginning to see the influence of art schools on the style of commercial products, and although they were, even now, far from the full realisation of that industrial ideal which led to the foundation of their schools of art, it was something to be able to say that, after having followed strange gods, they had come to the right shrine. Much remained to be done, and the task was to secure the still greater co-operation of the manufacturer. In Germany there was complete official cohesion between all kinds of technical education and industry. There had vet to grow up in England a widespread system of direct co-operation between employers and schools by means of which young employees would attend a school, and particularly a school of art, during the day in the employer's time, and at the employer's cost. It was a system apparently ,as full of advantages to employer and employed that the long delay in its consummation seemed hard to understand. PERSIA'S AMERICAN TREASURER. For over four years the public finances of Persia have been under the complete control of Dr. A. C. Millspaugh, formerly economic adviser to the United States Department of State, and a staff of 13 Americans under a contract, signed in August, 1922, by which the former was appointed Administrator-General with the sanction of a law passed by the National Legislature, "They have control of all collection of revenue and al! expenditure of the Government," says Mr. Vincent Sheean, in the Asia Magazine. " They have assumed charge of the whole civil service; they have a decisive influence on foreign policy in so far as foreigD policy touches financial or commercial problems; and they have exercised a discretionary power in all enterprises of public works, improvement, or change in civil adminis tration. An idea of their importance may be gained from the simple fact that every official of the Persian Government, from the Shah and the Prime Minister down to the humblest lifckey, receives his monthly salary from {or by authority of) Dr. Millspaugh. He is, indeed, the only official in the Government who can draw on the Government's account from the Treasury or the Imperial Bank of Persia; any other personage, however important, can spend the people' 3 money only with Dr. Millspaugh's permission. No cheque is valid without his signature; and he or his assistants have, by virtue of this fact, the most effective possible control over appointments, extending to the highest offices of government, short of the Cabinet itself." The point upon which Dr. Millspaugh insisted from the outset was that the budget should be balanced; and even his fir,st budgft—which was also the first budget in the history of Persia —showed a balance of the estimated revenue and the estimated expenditure. Since then, his budgetary control has been so extended and fortified, and collection of revenue has been made so much more efficient and honest, that be has eliminated the actual deficit in the operation of the government, and at the close of the year 1925-1926 there was a surplus. These purely financial results of the work of the American administration have been j accomplished with relatively little change ifi the fiscal system.