The Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. TUESDAY, MARCH 21, 1911. NOTES OF THE DAY.

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XV, Issue 3888, 21 March 1911, Page 4

The Herald. PUBLISHED EVERY EVENING. TUESDAY, MARCH 21, 1911. NOTES OF THE DAY.

Representations have been made to us that one or two buildings which serve the purpose of Lack of Fire boarding-houses in Escapes. Pahiatua are not equipped with proper fire escapes, or what there are are in a bad state of disrepair. Our informants state that should a hre break out at night and obtain a good hold of these buildings before it was discovered, the probabilities are that the inmates would either have to make a leap for life or perish in the flames. The complaints that have reached us are specmcally directed against certain buildings, and it is admitted that the escapes provided in the majority of the hotels and boarding-houses in town are quite satisfactory and adequate. The memory of recent fatal cases of are in Auckland must be suiiiciently fresh in the minds of borough councillors to spur them to action to discover the accuracy or otherwise of these complaints, and we would suggest that as a bare precaution the captain of the Pahiatua Fire Brigade should be asked to report on the escapes provideo in all hotels and boardinghouses. Under the Municipal Corporations Act Amendment of last session local authorities have ample powers to enforce the provision of escapes in buildings of even one storey, and the risk involved in insufficient escapes is so great that any trifling with this matter would bo highly culpable.

Mr Thomas A. Edison, the renowned inventor, sees wonderful visions of the uays to come. Mr Edison's He states, in the Dream. course of a magazine article, his belief that the next generation will possess metal machinery which will almost nival the brain in ingenuity and complexity. Cloth, buttons, thread, tissue paper and pasteboard will he fed into one end of a machine and suits of clothing, packed in boxes, will come out at the other end. Bound books will fall from the press, and the machine that takes in timber will supply lini,slu'd furniture. Mr Edison is convinced that the cost of arn aments will bring about universal revolution or universal peace, perhaps after one more great war. He does not think that the working classes

will be ready to continue very much longer the payment oi taxes for the purpose of maintaining huge instruments of destruction. If the governments of the world do not heed the new trend of public opinion, they will be “destroyed by their own peoples.” Industrial troubles of the kind that shake thrones may arise in Europe at any moment, adds the American inventor, and Brita-n will not escape for more than ten years. “I believe, ’ he says, “that all England will some day stop at the sound of one command, and that the command of a working man. There will be no moie poverty in the world one hundred years from now. There is no limit to the cheapness witu which things can be made. The world will soon be flooded with the cheap products of machinery; not the’ poor products—the cheap products. Poverty was for ,a world that used only its hands. AVhen men used nothing but their hands poverty was most intense. Now that men have begun to use their brains poverty is decreasing. Mr Edison’s prophecies sound Utopian, but it must be remembered that ten years ago he provoked sceptical smiles by announcing the coming of the fly-ing-machine.