NOTES AND COMMENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20302, 9 July 1929, Page 10

NOTES AND COMMENTS.

THE FUTURE NEW YORK. Plans to meot tho future needs of New York and contiguous areas within a radius of 50 miles were recently expounded by the Regional Town Planning Committee of New York, which has been sponsored and financed by tho Russell Sago Foundation at a cost of £200,000, and whose director of plans an (J sui*Cevs is Mr. Thomas Adams, tlie British town plan ning export. The plans, which are tho result of seven years' labour and study by 150 experts, contemplate the inclusion in their scope of an area of 5528 square miles, and propose to weld it into a comprehensive organic City State which will contain a population of 20,000,000 people by 1965. Tho essential feature of the schemo is tho spreading of tho population over a much wider area, with industries, shopping centres and recreation facilities so arranged that tho present acute congestion in tho centre of New York will disappear or diminish. It proposes town transportation schemes 011 an ambitious scale, with a system of belt lines embracing railway, tramway, highway and parkway communications and trunk line exten sions, while the whole network will be laced together with new bridges and tun nels where necessary, and parks, play grounds, golf courses, and aviation fields freely interspersed. Tho report lays special emphasia on tho need of provision for aerial traffic, and urges the acquisition of lb new air ports to reinforce the 2'X already existing. Tho report has receivod favourable commendation from the press and experts, and President Hoover has sent a message of congratulation which praises the far-sighted vision responsible for such a plan of enlightened development. EMPLOYEE SHAREHOLDERS. " The day when the working men of Great Britain will own and control their own factories—not through any form of nationalisation or Socialism, but by legitimate purchase of shares—is foreshadowed by an offer by a Sheffield steel firm, which enables employees to purchase shares on tho instalment system," writes Mr H. J. Hamblen, in tho Edinburgh Evening News. "It is not generally realised that in the United States of America the entiro capital of somo concerns is in the hands of employees, while in others tho employees form tho largest or second largest group of shareholders. Employee stock-ownership in the United States has thus developed to tho proportions of a movement which is of itself helping to solve tho problems of capital and labour. There are some hundreds of concerns which have sold or are selling stocks and shares to their employees under various plans, and these plans arc, in a number of instances, based upon the instalment method of purchase. The verdict of American oxporienco is that, in its best form and in tho most fortunate circumstance;., employee stock-ownership promotes a better spirit of work. The employee who knows that many employees have a stake in the property is moro likely to respect the property. It has deepened his sense of responsibility for tho success of the company as it has that of tho employer himself. The employee feels that he is serving not one interest merely, but that those who will gain include many like himself." THE VALUE OF RADIUM. "It may be wondered why such importance should ho attached to the emanation from radium element when tho most scrupulous caro is taken to screen off its peculiar rays, which consist of atomic particles or electrons, leaving only the gamma radiation, which so closely resembles well-screened hard X-rays that little if any difference has been detected between the action of tho one and the other," says tho Lancet. "Why pay millions for extracting a few grammes of radium from tons of foreign oro when their effect can bo closely simulated by electric moans when the high-tension apparatus has been brought to tho necessary pitch of perfection ? Tho reply is a simple one. The shorter the wave tho greater the penetrating power. Tho gamma rays from radium liavo about a quarter the wave-length of tho hardest rays yet produced, and. the apparatus designed to produce tho latter is not only very costly but undergoes rapid deterioration in use. To bring this artificial radiation up to the potency of the gamma radiation from radium would roquire apparatus which, if it were not beyond the wit of the electro-technician to make, would in the course of a few years cost at least as much in upkeep and replacement as the corresponding amount of radium element. For, incredible as it may appear to anyone except the hardened physicist, radium elomcnt can be employed for years without sensiblo loss. In 20 years tho deterioration is only 0.7 per cent.; radium is, in fact, an engine running continuously without working costs." MAN-POWER IN FRANCE. While neighbouring countries arc embarrassed by unemployment, France is handicapped by 11. shortage of labour. Even with the influx of foreign labour the position is such that in somo quarters it is suggested that tho large public and semi-public works in prospect should bo arranged in somo sort of programme so as to make use of tho labour availablo to the best national advantage. One of tlte most sorious aspects of the problem is tho drastic diminution in tho number of boys and adolescents from whom industry, in normal times, naturally recruits its share of workmen. The reduction in the birth-rate during the war years is now beginning to produce its maximum effect. For its recruits coming directly from the elementary schools industry is dependent on the children born in the first years of the war, so that this year and in tho years immediately succeeding tlie trades which employ a large proportion of young people will meet great inconveniences. Another labour difficulty at the moment arises indirectly from the diminution of tho period of military service. This measure, in the first instance, will permit young men to remain available for industrial employment for some months during which they would previously have been in military training. In order, howover, to render possible the reduction of the period of army service, tho military authorities have instituted a system by which certain non-combatant and administrative work connected with th 6 army will be performed, not by soldiers, but by organisations voluntarily recruited from among the civil population. More than 100,000 men will, it is stated, be ultimately recruited for this purpose, and voung men just returned from the army are said to be attracted in many cases by these new jobs, to the loss of ordinary industry.