NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 20115, 28 November 1928, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

LOQUACITY AS A PROFESSION. The world's loquacity record has, says tho Times, been established, and by a man. It was long overdue, but tho delay has proved worth while, for tho new champion, Herr Parlatus, of Berlin, has spoken for 120 hours on end. Ho is a professional, who rightly uses every advantage and performs in a beershop; but tho amateur championship may still bo talked for anywhere by thoso who cannot givo up so much of thoir lives to what is, after all, only a form of athletics. Yet tho notion that a man should not give up all his timo to sport is often unsound. It is plainly so in this case, and Herr Parlatus can hardly bo congratulated too warmly or at too great length. Ho has repaired a glaring weakness in tho general record of mankind, and has removed a painful anomaly. How is it that in an ago of wireless aud telephones wo liavo not learnt to talk any longer than tho men of tho Stono Ago; wo still tiro after a very few hours of monologue, and our talent for listening is, if anything, rather less. Tho dico aro loaded against long-winded-ness; yot it would bo a gravo pity if it became a lost art and there vanished with it tho wholo faculty of circumlocution and tho subsidiary arts of redundancy and repetition. To say nothing and to say it often is the golden rule, not only for embarrassed politicians, but for all sorts of public characters; and to-day anyone may find himself a public character. THE HEALTH OF THE PEOPLE. The importance of wise municipal government in relation to tho health of tho people was emphasised by Mr. Stanley Baldwin, tho British Prime Minister, in opening a new group of municipal buildings in the borough of Dudley iu Worcestershire. He said gradually responsibility for all those things that lay nearest the happiness and well-being of the people were being entrusted to the local authorities, particularly in health and education. It should bo their aim to turn whatever there was of a C 3 population into an A 1 population, and that could be done. Another work which lay before them was to begin a serious and earnest " push " in tho direction of maternity and infant welfare. Men and women were thinking to-day, and there was vision. In Sheffield the other day tho Lord Mayor told him of a dream they had in Sheffield, which they hoped might yet become an achievement and accomplishment, of getting tho hospitals out into tho country, where the pure air and quiet might help the surgeons and nurses in bringing health to the patients and of leaving i* the noisy city itself merely the out-patient work and the urgent work that needed to be done on the spot. In these days of modern transport such a thing was possible. That was one of the directions in which many a big city might be able in the near future to work for the greater health, comfort and happiness oi those who suffered within her boundaries. BRITISH WAGES RATES. Tho British Ministry of Labour has made a comparison of the relative levels of rates of wages at August, 1914, and September, 1928, and publishes the results in the current issue of the Ministry of Labour Gazette. It is shown that increases over the pro-war rates varied greatly. In some cases the increases in full-time weekly rates were equivalent to only about 20 per cent, on the 1914 rates. In other cases tho increases exceeded 100 per cent, on the pre-war rates. An exact calculation of the average percentage increase for all industries and occupations is not possible. The Ministry estimates, however, that at the end of September weekly full-time rates of wages for thoso classes of adult workpeople for which information is available averaged between 70 and 75 per cent, abovo the level of August, 1914. There have been substantial reductions of weekly working hours since tho war, and the percentage increase of hourly rates of wages is much greater than the percentage addition to the weekly rates. A precise calculation is again impossible, but it seems probable, the Ministry say?, that tho average level of hourly rates at the end of September was between 90 and 100 per cent, above that of August, 1914. Wages reached their highest level in December, 1920. Weekly full timo rates of wages were then between 170 and 100 per cent, above tho level of August, 1914. SKYSCRAPERS. A new city within a city is, says t New Vork correspondent, growing up in "niidtown," New York, a city with its head in the clouds and its feet in confusion and clamour. Around the Grand Central Station, in Forty-second Street, square towers, and pointed towers, and cubes of a monumental massiveness aro rising in reckless profusion. A storey a week and 50, even 60, storeys in a year—in no time at all there is a new "skymark." A real estato "operator" gels an idea, finds a few millions of dollars to back it, and presently a big hotel or a warehouse, built a generation ago to last for ever, is in the hands of tho housebreaker. An interesting building is tho New York Central Building, which has two streets passing directly through it, and which rises 35 storeys above tho. streets it bestrides. Thoso streets, though they run through tho very vitals of the building, nro physically separated from it so that no vibration from tho vehicular traffic may be felt in the ollices above and around them. Tho building itself, huge though it is, stands on stilts, for under it aro two levels of railway tracks, the lower of them being 50ft. below the street level. Tho tracks aro used by more than 700 trains daily, but. ono would never know in tho building above, from any sound or vibration, what was underneath it. With all this rapid growth around Forty-second Street a serious problem has arisen, which has only partly been solved by widening that street and Park Avenuo and by creating tho new traffic arteries through tho Grand Central Building. Tlicso great now structures, together with two or thrco others not so tall but with a larger acroago of lloor spaco, that liavo only lately been completed, nro bringing into the Grand Central Zone n daily influx of over 50,000 persons and 5000 motor-cars, in addition to thoso already there. Even now congestion of tho streets causes a hugo economic loss through the delays to traffic, but what will it bo in two years from now, when the last of tho new buildings is finished ? Only one of the schemes thus far suggested for dealing with tho congestion promises to bo a measure' of genuine relief; that is, the building of a moving footpath from Lexington Avenue, on the east, to Sixth Avenue, ou the west, under Forty-second Street.