CURRENT TOPICS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2250, 15 April 1897, Page 3

CURRENT TOPICS.

In Switzerland recenbly a scheme was devised whereby * workman could iaa sure against want of employsdciALiSTic mebt. From a. Soeialwtio poiafc failure. olo l view the scheme was a brilliant one. A common fuud was to be established, asd from it men were to bs paid T?ageß wheu they chanced to bo out of employment. The Bcht-me was introduced iv two of the c union*. In Berne it was voluutwy, and in St. Gall it 'fas compulsory. It has, however,- been found neces«ary to abandon the idea, and the insurance fund against want of employment will be closed »t the end of June uext. It has been found that men whose work was steady and likely to continue so complained bitterly that they wer« compelled to mainbaiu in idleness those whose labour was uncertain, bub who tor that very reason were butter paid wheu they were ab work. The Amerioau Consul ab St. GaII thus reports :—": — " They found thab a bvitsm which insured against loss of work resulted in the promotion ot' lgziuess and idleness. In fact, a knowledge of the existence of this system of insurance had drawn to St. fUll a considerable number of unemployed from other parts of SwKz.rlund, with the object of obtaining support at the expense of resident labourers." It is no new .discovery which these amiable Swiss have made. Idleness increases with the tenapbation to remain idle. Socialists always seem to expect to have power to draw on an uulimited fuud of nclf-abuegabio'i. Animated in mosb cases by the moat s*lfdenying aspiratioua themselves, they assuw.e the existence of similar feelings iv others, and are pained and disillusionised when they discover thab the. average human being is only iribttal after all, and therefore animated only with mortal passion*. In the case under notice a direct inducement to bo idle produced idleness. The analysis of the census return showing the occupations of the people of the occupations colony, published by vi on Wedop thh needay morning, given *n inPEOPi/B. tert sting insigbt ii'to tbe social conditions under wh"ch Nt,w Zealanders live. Oub of a total population, as al, 12th April, 1896, of 743,214 xwrsons, ODly 292,932 were breadwinner*, and dspftudenb on these were 408,735 persons. Ib has to be observed, however, that this analysis takes no account of the Maori population of 39 234, not of Chinese The proportional number uf dependents i« gradually iacreasing, and will c >ntinue to do to until the sexes ansuuie a normal proportion to each other. In tha early d*ys of the colony mains preponderated, aotatequeutly dependents, in the shape of women and children, were few. At the last census the iaa!e3 atill oubnumbered the females by 39,470, aad as thn tendency is towards equalisation, tb« proportional number of dependents will correspondingly increase. As U naturally bo be expected in a young colony like this, the larger cla?s of breadwinners consists of those who are termed primiry producers — persons engaged in wresting sustenance from the soil. Next bo thene come the industrial bre&dwinnerg, who manipulate materials. In this class are included many women, mosb of whom ate probably engaged in the clothing trade and woollen factories. Nexb thers is the commercial cltus, promobing interchange, and then the professional class, who educate, defend, and generally admiuisber nffairs. There are. vrry few domestic!) — only 1 59 mileo and 693 females per cent, of the population respectively. Lastly, there are very few in the leisured cla'B, at there are only I'll per cent, of males and 0 - 73 of females to the whole population.

A young man of considerable means died afc Monte Carlo early last year A aiONTE after making his will in favour carlo of the flower girl at the Hotel romance Metropole in that, alluring city. His name was Charles Stuart Coningfmia, and it was shown that he terminated a misspent and wasted life afc the age of 23. It was evident that he was a young man no j devoid of good natural qualities of intallect and disposition, bu; from his boyhood to the date of his death the victim of his own excesses. He was addicted to drinking, and during his last years to the use of morphia. There could be little doubt that at many periods in the short time which elapeed between the attainment of his majority and his premature cad he wa3 not of sound disposing mind. His relatives therefore contested the will. By that will Coningham cut down legacies to his two aunt* to £5000 and £8000, lefb a legacy of £5000 to his executor, and the residue of the e&t ite, amounting at present to batween flfty and sixty thousand pounds, with a considerably greater prospective value, went to Miss Plutnmai 1 , who is thus raised Fr >m a condition ot servitude to one of sffiaence. Ib was fortunate for Mies Plummet 1 that the jury who heard the case on January 27 were of opinion that the will had been made in a lucid interval. Ths circumstances were such as to ciuse the gravest suspicion. Nothing disparaging, however, could be said of the girl's behaviour, and she emerged from the contest without any imputation other than that of having unduly influenced CoaiDgham. The

c\se naturally csiused considerable comment in London, and the Daily Cbroniciettnn moralises in referring to it :-— •• If a young tool, weak apparently by nature, and perhap-j in truth by inheritance, drifts into evil, self-indulgent, brutal ways, why whould we distort the facts aud a»y politely thsib he is nol responsible ? The crimm&l of tha ' lower orders ' is taken to be responsible withou*; any subtleties of psychological argument. Nobjdy takas the trouble to ask whether the common drunkard of the gutter is ' degenprate ' or • temporarily insaue.' Fortunately the Coninghams of the higher life are not as common as they used to ba ia the earlier decadet of the century ; bub there are still too many of tham in nvidence, and it is much fco be desired that they should ba taught, by public contempt, if not by (sterner methods, that the world ha 3 had enough of them."

Various causes have been anigned ts tha origin of the bubonic plague in Bombay, origin ov bub an ex&inm&tiou made by a the plague, local medical man, Dv Wafers,

has proved *U previously t'onnocl theorist! to ba baseless. At fuss the blame vtaa laid on the nuTrers. The bacteriological specialists, however, acou abandoned their search in that direction. Mandvie, a native suburb of Bombay, was composed of houces builfc in defiance of rII sanitary principles, as ia usual in Indian native quarters, but it was obFerved that the hi mates of the Ligher houses, especially those exposed to tbe prevailing bre z?, suffered most from the plague. The=e hou-e* ware nob more objeolionab'.e than "the others, which seemed to prove that the plagu» doss cot belong to the pythogenic or filbh-begotten class of ailments. This led to further inquiry, a>id Dr Waters soon found that the only thing which differentiated Maudvifl from other quarters wai that thuro were located there hugs gr*n«ks, and bo the leaward of these the plague was most severe. At the onset of the disease the gio.ne.ry employees were the only victims, while dead rats were found in numbers around aud between the aackH of grain. Thase indications convinced him that in fermentative emanations from the grain were to ba fouud the germs of plague. This bold hypothesis, however, kcks confirmation. It was found thab thorough whitewashing of the granaries lesaenad the virulence of tbe plague. The grain supposed to be affected is millet, long hoarded up and now produced in time of scarcity, for it has been ot>4er?ed that Europeans who eat wheat escape even in the most deadly quarters, and that tha Hindus, who use rice, are little affected.