LOCAL AND GENERAL

Taranaki Daily News, 14 February 1931, Page 6

LOCAL AND GENERAL

The Taranaki County Council decided yesterday that a contract for the formation and metalling of 45 chains of Atkinson Road should be let to Fitzroy Quarries, Ltd.

“I am satisfied that the adjustment of the present economic conditions will not come about by peaceable means, butonly by necessity and force,” remarked Mr. J. S. Tosland at the meeting of tjie Opunake Power Board yesterday during a discussion on the exchange rates.

It is reported that valuables of varying descriptions are being recovered by the searth parties at Napier. From the ruins of the Nurses’ Home medicinal and surgical instruments of considerable worth have been retrieved.

There were about 12 men in New Plymouth oil the committee’s list who were not able to do the ordinary relief work, said Mr. P. E. Stainton, chairman of the North Taranaki Unemployment Relief Committee, yesterday. To find lighter work for these men he had been in touch with the park boards.

The disputes committee had dealt with certain cases, said Mr. P. E. Stainton at a meeting of the North Taranaki Unemployment Committee at New Plymouth yesterday. The Act provided for penalties for misbehaviour. The committee had gone into the cases but he did not think it likely that there would be many more. Wednesday of this week, the Manawatu Standard remarks, was the first Wednesday for six weeks on which outdoor pastimes could be indulged in locally with pleasure. The weather was beautifully fine and cool, and the playing fields were well patronised by devotees of various branches of sport.

Two lorry loads of Maori refugees arrived at Katana on Wednesday night from Tangoio, near Napier. They experienced a very trying trip and had to walk 16 miles on one part of the journey. There was a bridge down near Napier and they had to cross an area of dry land that at one-time had been a lake.

Major R. M. McFarlane is not dismayed by the suggestion that the diamonds he found in the North Island are zircons, reports the Dunedin correspondent of the Auckland- Star. He states that the stones have been tested and declared to be true, and he is. arranging to go to Africa shortly to confer personally with leading diamond ■ merchants.' ” A heavy fall of snow was found to have occurred, on the upper slopes of Mount Egmont when the heavy clouds which had enshrouded it lifted yesterday morning. The weather had been very cold, since the morning of the previous day and the fall apparently occurred during Thursday night when hail fell at the North Egmont hostel. The snow reaches as far down the slopes as Humphries’ Castle, tlie altitude of which is about 5000 feet.

Fifty-one pounds was added io the earthquake relief fund last night as the result of a dance in the Oaonui hall. That excellent sum was made up of door receipts £l9, subscriptions £3O 16s. and school children £1 10s. The hall was free, Henderson’s Orchestra played the music free, and the ladies of the district provided an excellent supper, for which the committee especially thanked them. Such expenses as the bus from Opunake and advertising were paid by settlers.

The area of 400 acres at Glfen Afton, originally reserved as a village site in connection with the MacDonald mine, will revert to its original status as Crown land, according to advice’ received by Mr. W. Lee Martin,. M.P. for Raglan, from the Minister of Mines, the Hon. A. J. Murdoch. The Department will be able to dispose of the land as it thinks fit, but Mr. Lee Martin’s suggestion was that it should be opened for selection "by the miners as agricultural sections.

W?? there any safeguard against a farmer dismissing his men and then taking them on again with the subsidy under the relief scheme? asked Mr. S. Flood at the meeting of the North Taranaki Unemployment Relief Committee yesterday. The only safeguard at present, said Mr. P. E. Stainton, was for members of the committee to make enquiries from responsible officials in the district. The Minister of Labour, the Hon. S. G. Smith, stated, that under the No. 4A scheme the farmer would, have to sign a declaration. If it were false he would be prosecuted. Mr. McDowell, driver of a charabanc, had a narrow escape from fatal injuries on Sunday, says the Fqxton correspondent of the Manawatu Standard. He was driving a charabanc, which contained a number of passengers, to Palmerston North from Foxton, and when travelling along the highway between Karere and Longburn he heard something strike the bus hear his seat and immediately the glass in the door on the opposite side of him was shattered. Mr. McDowell immediately applied the brakes, thinking that someone must have run into him. On investigating, however, it was discovered that a bullet had struck the charabanc on a level jqst behind Mr. McDowell’s head, travelled through the bus and passed out the opposite side through the glass in the dpbr, which it shattered. Neither the passengers nor Mr. McDowell could see anyone about in the paddocks adjacent. A sample-room on wheels is the latest innovation on the main trunk railway. An Auckland firm of hardware .and ironmongers, sent a huge red business car down the line this week Ikdep with samples. On arrival at Taumarunui the car was sifle-txacked, and. later the traveller in charge was bijsy showing his 'customers round his wares, states the Taumarunui Press. A number of the articles are held by clips, and on the whole journey nothing was disturbed, not even glassware and crockery. The outside of the car is painted a bright vermilion, and the lettering is so large that it can be read a long distance away. Extending from one end of the double ear to the other, along the top, is the one word, “Progress.”

Judges were very loath to grant probation in cases of breaches of tlie Bankruptcy Act, said Mr. Justice Smith, in sentencing a prisoner in the Supreme Court at Auckland. He added: “In fact, it is a rule that probation is not granted. The court assumes there is a definite failure on the part of the trader to live up to what is required of ordinary, reasonable, people.” Explaining the provisions of the Act as to probable or reasonable expectation by a trader that he would be able to meet his debts when they beca: io due, his Honour said these provisions must b? interpreted reasonably and not allowed to check enterprise in business.

Details are advertised of a. concert in Pukekura Park, New Plymouth, to-mor-row (Sunday) evening to be given by the Citizens’ Bund a nd assisting artists. The proceeds will be for "the Earthquake Relief Fund.

Mr. Cyril Winfield, LL.B., gon of Mr. J. Winfield, Mayor of Inglewood, has commenced practice in Inglewood as barrister and solicitor in partnership with Messrs; Moss and Spence. Mr. Winfield graduated at Victoria University College in 1922 and after some years’ experience in Wellington joined Christensen and Stamford, solicitor's, Marton, as managing clerk, where he hag been in practice for the past four years.