Overseas Mails

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23730, 10 February 1939, Page 8

Overseas Mails

The Empire mails despatched from Dunedin on January 23 reached London last Monday. The Monterey, due at Auckland on February 17. has 135 bags of American mail and English second class mail for Dunedin. This should reach the local office on Monday, February 20. French Merchant Ship The first French merchant ship to visit Auckland for some years, the motor ship Pierre L.D., arrived from Ghent on Wednesday night with a cargo of basic slag. The Pierre L.D., of 5795 tons gross, was built at Dunkirk in 1935 and is owned by LouisDreyfus and Co., of Paris, a line which has a number of cargo vessels in the trade between Australia and the Continent.

Tobacco Research

A drying kiln at Motueka, Nelson, will be completed by the end of this week, the first of three to be erected by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research for experimental purposes in connection with the local tobacco crop. Experiments will be made in order to ascertain the optimum conditions for the drying of the leaf, and the many varieties of tobacco which have been grown will be fully tested for their qualities. Ten years ago about 1000 acres were being utilised for growing tobacco, but at the present time that area has been more than doubled.

Magistrate’s Court At a brief sitting of the Magistrate’s Court yesterday Mr J. R. Bartholomew, S.M., gave judgment for the plaintiffs in the following undefended cases:— A. L. S. Cassie, Ltd., v. George Christen Thornicroft, claim £ls Os 3d, for goods supplied, with costs (£3 11s); Commissioner of Taxes v. John Francis Fairbairn, claim £7 9s 4d, for taxes due, with costs (17s). New Zealand Currency Returned The return of a New Zealand Reserve Bank £5 note to Mr J. L. Leslie, of Christchurch, by his mother in England. who says that she cannot cash it, seems to bear out the truth in the assertions of many travellers recently that they were experiencing difficulties in changing New Zealand money. Mr Leslie said that he had been in the habit of sending small remittances to England for some time, but this was the first occasion that a banknote had been returned. Mrs Leslie had made great efforts to change the £5 into English currency, but even the Bank of New Zealand had refused to handle the note. Centennial Memorial Proposal The Minister of Internal Affairs (Mr W. E. Parry) has intimated that, if the proposal to erect a swimming baths is adopted as a centennial memorial by the Dunedin Executive of the Otago provincial centennial organisation, and the project is recommended by the Otago Provincial Centennial Council and approved by the National Centennial Council and the Government, it will be competent for the executive to expend on it the subsidised in its centennial account. The position is that within the limits of the apportionment fixed by the National Centennial Council (Otago £14,242), the £1 for £3 subsidy will be payable in respect of the amount credited to a centennial account, with the proviso that such moneys can be expended only on approved centennial celebrations and (or) memorials. Value of Standardisation A few years ago the Russian Government ordered 700 locomotives, the different parts being manufactured by some 20 firms in Germany and one firm in Sweden, and subsequently these were transported to their destination and assembled into complete locomotives, though all the parts had been manufactured in separate factories. This was mentioned by Mr L. J. McDonald, secretary of the New Zealand Standards Institute, as an example of the value of standardisation, when speaking at the conference of grocers held in Timaru. It was due to standardisation, he added, that parts of the modern automobile could be manufactured, packed, and transported to their destination—in many cases over thousands of miles of distance —in the confident knowledge that they could be assembled at any time without any difficulty or anxiety. An enormous saving in costs and maintenance resulted from standardisation, the saving effected in the British steel industry, for Instance, being estimated at fully £1,000,000 per annum. Visitor Rebuked

A telegram strongly critical of his reported comments at Invercargill on Tuesday, when he gave the opinion that the Government’s policy of credit control was justified and would succeed, was sent on Wednesday to Mr Edmund Dwyer-Gray, Deputy Premier of Tasmania, by the Bureau of Importers. Addressed to “Mr DwyerGray, visiting politician,” the telegram read as follows:—” The remarks which you and other Australian politicians have made relative to the import control regulations obviously savour of political propaganda, and are bitterly resented by importers, their employees, and others engaged in the distribution business. Your statement shows that you obviously know nothing about the operations of the regulations. We trust that you and other Australians will in future refrain from commenting on New Zealand domestic matters, of which you obviously know very little.”