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Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 17958, 9 December 1932, Page 4

Regarding the expenditure in 1931-32 by the works department of the Christchurch City Council, which amounted to 0258.880, the city engineer, Mr. A. R. Galbraith, in his annual report, states that the cost of administration was £5353, equal to £2 Is 4d per cent., the lowest for the past, eight years, there having been a consistent fall during seven years of that period.

Claims for £3OCO brought by a Wellington builder and his firm for libel against the New Zealand National Creditmen's Association, Limited, trade inquiry specialists, and John Joseph Domic Sul'ivan, company director, and Cervantes bison Bell, company secretary, came before the Chief Justice, Sir Michael Myers, and a special jury in the Wellington Supreme Court. After coutisel had conferred with His Honor in his room, leading counsel for plaintiff, on the case being called in court, intimated that a settlement had been come to satisfactory to all parties. It is understood that, apart from the question of costs, no money consideration entered 'nto the settlement.

A simple device for determining the exact temperature inside a bale of wool, and thus eliminating fire risks when wool is stored in ships’ holds, has been invented by an Auckland engineer, Air. E. Raton, who has been working on the idea since last April. The device consists of a special wire which i.s threaded through the centre of the bale and when each end of the wire is attached to a pyrometer, a measuring instrument registering in degrees Fahrenheit., the interior temperature of the Ixile is imineliutely indicated. Resides wool, it can he applied equally well to hemp, rice, wheat, sugar, coal, cotton and other produce.

“.As far as the general situation is concerned, a feeling of quiet optimism prevails in Australia to-day,” declared Mr. G. W. Thomson, of Dunedin, a mining engineer of world wide experience. on his return from a visit to the Commonwealth. “In conversation with one of the leading men in the steel industry, which is known to he a barometer of trade, mid almost an index t<> its tendency,” said Mr. Thomson, I was told by him that they were soiling three times as much stool now as m 19 7 0 The exchange rate, no doubt, has smoothing to do with it, but the expansion of trade is by no means due entirely to that. Melbourne is at present the most go-ahead place in Australia. There seems to lie a good deal of building activity, and the depression nnpears about to have been forgotten. People never mentioned the word."