LONDON GOSSIP.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1204, 29 March 1895, Page 17

LONDON GOSSIP.

From Our Special Correspondent. - London, February 9. , ACCIDENTS AT THE DCCKS. The casualties amongst the poor hardworked dockers seem to be as numerous as a modern battle. Last year the statistics of the Greenwich Hospital showed that 1800 men were killed or maimed at the Victoria and Albert Docks alone. At the London and India Docks there were 850 . more, and heaven only knows how many at the other riverside docks. So terrible is the wear and tear of human life and bone and muscle, that the dock authorities fear to publish the tally. At one deck it is said boys are kept at work 80 hours a week, and often fall asleep on their posts. The other day a deputation waited on Mr Bryce, the president ot tne Board of Trade, to urge the necessity tor increasing the number of official inspectors of machinery and appliances, and talcing steps to insure the presence of an official at coroners' inquests on men killed in tne docks. Mr Bryce thought fresh legislation would be required in order to comply witn the requests of the deputation, but increased vigilance would be exercised to present concealment of fatal accidents. There must be something brutalising m a branch of industry which is so fatal tnat the employers actually shrink from publishing the list of casualties.

FARM COLONIES FOR THE UNEMPLOYED. One of the things which excite the wonder of a stranger is the extraordinary attachment of the English people to the soil of their, country. There was a touch of pathos in the complaint of a docker s wife at the meeting of the unemployed in Trafalgar square, that the people sent to Canada were cruelly " transported from the native land. Part of the failure of General Booth's oversea colony scheme may be attributed to this. strange prejudice. But in spite of this example, there is a movement in favour of establishing farm colonies at home on the system described in Miss Sutter's "Colony ot Mercv," which has been so successfully tried in Germany. By this plan experiments in restoring the land to cultivation are being tried on a small, tentative, inexpensive scale' But inasmuch as it is admitted that the falling off in the demand for agricultural labour, which is driving the rural population into the towns, is largely due to the substitution of machinery for manual processes, it is difficult to see how these farm colonies, principally dependent on hand labour, are t« ► succeed. Meantime, the Land Nationalisation Society is urging the Government to assist the movement by commencing the afforestation and utilisation of waste lands, reclamation of foreshores and construction of harbours of refuge. Begarding the latter, some one with a taste for statistics has adduced figures to prove that the loss in value of shipping destroyed through lack of such Harbours more than exceeds the amount that would suffice to maintain the unemployed in remunerative work.

MR GLADSTONE'S VITALITY. The fact that Mr Gladstone spent the Saturday before he left England felling trees with extraordinary vigour has aroused dismal apprehensions in the Tory mind. Previous outbreaks of superabundant energy of this description have nearly always heralded some grand political cowhand everybody is asking everybody what it can possibly be going to be this time. I don't think myself the G.O.M. has really any great surprise in store for us. He simply wishes to show that he can still play a hand to support Lord Rosebery should occasion require it, and is very much alive, both physically and mentally. Tree-felling and strong speeches about Armenia don't somehow give the impres-sion-'that the ex-Premier has one leg in the grave.