CURRENT TOPICS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2360, 18 May 1899, Page 3

CURRENT TOPICS.

i The liberation of slaves in the United States lias not proved an uuASfERic.VN mixed blessing to the negio racial race. The line of demarcation troubles, which separates the white and black races in America is one that time only makes more distinct. The old feeling of slave and master has not died j out, notwithstanding the modicum of freej doni accorded to the erstwhile slaves. In almost all of the ordinary walks of life there is' absolutely no fusion of the races, which keep apart quite as much as they did in the old slave days. The feeling of repulsion for j the negro in the average American mind 'is not understood by us. The occasional contact with a " coloured person " is quite « different matter from having their presence obtruded upon one at every point in the , business of daily life. The American people 1 positively refuse to associate with the negroes, who have their own separate institu- , tions, and so keep apart from the dominant race. The innate hatred of the negro is given expression to in occasional outbursts of wild savagery, such as was evinced in , Georgia the other day, when a negro was burned to death amid a pile of wood soaked . with kerosene, while an excited crowd of 2000 men and women witnessed the fiendish acl. The victim was supposed to have outraged a woman ; but a negro preacher was lyi.ched the same day to appease the vengeance of the maddened crowd, and since then the work of lynching negroes has gone , merrily forward in Georgia. It is only in i the United States that such things could j be; for under British rule the lives of the humblest are as solicitously cared for as those of the highest. But in America the popular feeling again&t the negro is so pro- [ nouneed that public opinion virtually protects the perpetrators of feueh fiendish crimes. The American newspapers are clamouring for emigration of the negroes, whose marvellous fecundity threatens to destroy the balance of power between the two races, so that at the present rate of progression the black race will soon outnumber the whites in the Southern States. "When the negro , becomes the dominant race in point of numbers lie will not always calmly submit to the , racial disabilities and indignities that have i been reaped upon his head by the ruling j class. That the negroes would consent to wholesale deportation to Africa is more than doubtful, for to them the United States is ,as much their native land as to the average l American. The problem is a difficult one; • but surely it will never be solved by murder and outrage. There is always the danger of retaliation, and in acts of savagery the black man will not allow himself to be outdone by the white. It seems past understanding why, . in a civilised country, the subjects of the nation cannot Lo made amenable to law and

order ; but these outrages are not new to American people.

For some months past rumours have from

time to time been published the home to the effect that the formaof tion of a huge copper " trust " trusts. in America was in contempla-

tion. The new "combine" is now an accomplished fact, the cable having informed us a day or two ago of its forma-tion"-with a capital of 74,000,000d01, which, it is hinted, may probably be raised- to 400,000,000d01, op approximately £0 millions sterling. This stupendous capitalist development is one of the most .striking features of American commercial life at the present time. In 1893 there- were 90 odd trusts formed in the United xStates with a capital of between J,200,000,000d0l and 1,300,000,000 dol, and their bonded indebtedness would increase this amount to 1,500,000,000d01. Among the more recent combines are those of the woollen manufacturers, the maorufacturers of chewing gum, the growers of peanuts, and of broom corn. Sardine and coffee trusts have been 'formed, capitalised up in the millions. Even such a prime necessary of life as meat is con trolled -by "the " big four " of Chicago — four huge -firms which control the immense, stockyards of that city, and which actually fix the retail price of meat in Boston. The American Linseed Oil Company is capitalised at 16,750,000dol ; the American Potteries at 13,500,000dol ; American Tin Plate at 30.000,000dol ; Bessemer Ore at 20,000,000 dol ; Continental Tobacco Company afc 30,000,000dol ; Knit Goods Company at 15,000,000dol ; Consolidated Gas of Now York at 36,750,0000dol ; Federal Steel Company at 100,000,000dol ; Metropolitan Steel Railway Company at 40,000,000dol ; Writing Paper Company at 40,000,000dol ; and United States Biscuit Company at 32,000,000d01. The monopoly of the tin plate trade by the "combine" is absolute, 92' per cent, of the manufacturers joining at the start, and the remaining 8 per cent, coming in soon after. At the present time, in addition to the trusts mentioned, petro leum oil, sugar, cotton-seed oil, whisky, and other commodities, produced on a great scale, are all in the hands of trusts. What is a trust? The Spectator recently defined it as a kind of federation of joint-stock companies for preventing competition, maintaining profits, and controlling price and output. There are, however, trusts and trusts, for besides the monopoly trust there is the trust which aims at securing success by introducing economies in the cost of prodxiction. and distribution through consolidation. The monopoly trust is, however, the more common. The persons entering an agreement for the establishment of a trust hand over their several interests in the companies forming it, and receive from its treasurer corre sponding scrip in the trust. Thus, while the volume of American business is increasing by leaps and bounds every moment, 'the actual number of definite responsible business corporations is decreasing. This is not only ihe case in great industries formed into trusts, properly so-called, but it runs right through American business. In Chicago there were actually as many separate business firms in 1870, when the population was about 250,000, as there were a quarter of a century later, when the population had risen to one and a-half millions.

In covering the 3190 miles from Auckland to Apia and back the Tutanekai occupied 12 days 5 hours 10 minute 3.

Mr Hawkins, S.M., has not yet received any official intimation of his rumored transfer to Westland. The Free Press- says he is protesting agains-t his removal from his present district.