WELLINGTON TOPICS.

Taranaki Daily News, 21 April 1922, Page 8

WELLINGTON TOPICS.

EASTER HOLIDAYS. IN FRUGAL MOOD. (From Our Own Corresponded) Wellington, April 17. Ideal weather has prevailed here for the holidays, and the Easter of 1922 will be long remembered by out-of-door people for °a succession of sunny days rarely experienced by the capital city and its suburbs at this season of the vear. Railway travelling has been rather less popular than it was in former years, even excursion fares looking big in these times of stress, but the trams have done good business and the picnickers and campers have been as numerous as ever. Wellington is not so well provided as Auckland is with holiday resorts, but duirng the last year or two some of its enterprising citizens have begun to exploit its latent resources in this direction with very encouraging results. One marked feature of the railway traf. I fie during the holidays has been the in- ; creased proportion of second-class i tickets issued. This surely is a sympi tom of frugality which should convey a • timely hint to the Prime Minister when Ihe comes to frame his new tariff. All I the authorities agree that the way to * make the railways popular is to make : them cheap as well as serviceable.

THREATS AND COUNTER THREATS. The holidays have suspended any active proceedings in the Post and Telegraph dispute. The position on Thursday was that the Postmaster-General had informed the secretary of the Officers’ Association that he was disinclined to hold the matter over till the quarterly meeting of the executive, and that to facilitate an earlier decision the Department would grant leave to the mem! bers and pay the cost of their immediate attendance in Wellington. It is stated to-day that the executive has accepted this arrangement, and that it will meet in Wellington at the earliest possible moment, probably at the end of the present week. Meanwhile the members of the executve on the spot are very reticent in regard to the whole business. The secretary declares that the resignations from the Association as a consequence of the determination of the members to affiliate with the Alliance of Labor are mu6h fewer than the executive expected, but he does not appear quite so confident of carrying the scheme through as he did when the result of the ballot was first announced.

ALLIANCE OF LABOR. If the Alliance of Labor is deprived of the victory it thought it had more than half won —as it probably will be—-it Will have only its constitution or its lack of candour concerning its constitution to blame. The public is not nearly so easily alarmed by the cry of “unionism” to-day as it was a few years ago. but it wants to know exactly what kind of unionism is implied by the term. The secretary of the Officers’ Association has been assuring the rank and file of the department that in no conceivable circumstances will they be called out on strike or asked to repudiate their obligations to the State in a single particular. But in the same breath he has been telling them that affiliation with the Alliance will largely improve the status of the Association and add materially to its efficiency. He never, how- ; ever, has attempted to refute the reiterl ated assertion that affiliation means subI mission to the domination of the Alliance, and the Alliance itself lias Boairt- ; tained a silence which the public at large | regards as extremely suspicious.

UNEMPLOYMENT AND IMMIGRATION.

Mr. George Mitchell, the very live member for Wellington South, has submitted a report to the Central Progress League, in which he discusses the questions of unemployment and immigration with characteristic force and candour. “The present system of immigration under the overseas settlement scheme, where men land in a new country without work being definitely provided for them,” he says, “can only embitter the lives of the immigrants and injure the name of the Dominion. From this generalisation Mr. Mitchell proceeds to demand that the old inefficient policy of dumping immigrants on the wharf and leaving them there to shift for themselves shall be abandoned and that “State stock jobs” on reproductive works shall be established in each centre so that there shall be no idle capable hands in the country. It is not quite exact, of course, to imply that the Government is taking no thought whatever for the unemployed immigrant, but it is true that some better provision should be made than any that exists at present for employing willing hands upon reproductive work. Mr. Mitchell is doing his part in an effort, to direct public attention to this necessity very manfully.