SOUTH AFRICAN WOOL.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19615, 20 October 1925, Page 4

SOUTH AFRICAN WOOL.

RUSSIA SEEKING MERINO

(From Our Own Correspondent.)

PIETERMARITZBURG, Sept. 10. The Pretoria correspondent of Die Burger, the Capetown organ of the Union Government, states that the Government has received information from Mr A. Pienaar, tho Union Trade Commissioner on the Continent, that the Russian Government has expressed its readiness to take any quantity of fine South African merino wool up to an amount of £10,000,000 annually. The Russian Government is prepared immediately to buy £1,000,000 worth of wool under the condition that credits for a period of six months ho granted. Guarantees have to _he arranged, and the Trade Commissioner is busy, it is said, with the matter. It is known that Russia has deposited a large sum of money in the German banks for trade purposes, and. mainly on tho strength of these deposits, representatives of the Soviet trade delegation who have recently toured the English manufacturing centres claim to he authorised to offer textile contracts in Britain on tho basis of three years’ credit. These orders include fifteen million yards of cloth, a million pounds of yarn, and five hundred automatic looms and other machinery. The orders are so far unconfirmed, as the British manufacturers 'are not yet satisfied with tho securities.

THOUGHTFUL TESTIMONY

GENERAL EVASION AND OOR.RUPTION.

(By the Hon. Oscar Terry Crosty, author of “International War, Its Causes and Its Cure,” and other volumes.)

“Let iis assume that the power of government is to bo exercised in restraining the conduct of individuals when such conduct becomes injurious to others. Because a large number of citizens believe that this restraint is one not properly exercised by government, we now are witnessing a very general revolt against the law in question. “Those evasions of the Eighteenth Amendment (Prohibition) result in the sudden affluence of thousands of men otherwise not competent to earn more than the wages of the unskilled. They familiarise the industrious poor with the discouraging fact that, higher rewards are obtainable by illegal bootlogging than by the most assiduous and honest efforts in their various callings. “Thousands of officials throughout the land are being corrupted because they are undertaking the execution of laws which kro not approved by vast numbers of citizens who, in respect to other laws, stand for learning and light. And w© can scarcely cherish the hop© that, if present laws remain on the statute book, these bad conditions can be bettered. “The lure of the gin cocktail as forbidden fruit seems to have largely increased the number of young people of both sexes who turn to intoxicants in their social gatherings. “It is probable that the number of those now drinking injuriously is about what it was before prohibition days. “May wo not ask that our neighbours should not concern themselves with how wo spend oiir money, so long as we do not spend it in ways injurious to them? And when I say ‘we.’ let me include all classes of citizens. I, for one, shall take no part in +!»/* «.K*iirrlta cnrtfiKish n ff.i f-tirta nf mnnv

“May wo not ask that our neighbours should not concern themselves with how wo spend our money, so long as w'e do not spend it in ways injurious to them? And when I say ‘we.’ let mo include all classes of citizens. I, for one, shall take no part in the absurdly snobbish attitude of many people of my acquaintance, who excuse tho Eighteenth Amendment in all its tyranny, because it presumably imposes upon the socalled ‘working classes’ particular methods of spending their money. Heaven help us ! Let us have done with what may r oo indeed a sincere form of meddlesome-Mattie activity, but what often seems to bo a more affectation of superiority.”—North American Review, 1925.

Evidence from those who have had ACTUAL EXPERIENCE of prohibition is tho only evidence worth considering. Strike out tho two bottom lines.—Advt.