OTHER PAPERS’ OPINIONS.

Thames Star, Volume LIX, Issue 16736, 12 March 1926, Page 4

OTHER PAPERS’ OPINIONS.

LAND OP BIG THINGS. America is the land of big things, especially of big tideas. The latest of these is referred to in the cablegrams as the nucleus of the world-wide cooperative society—for primary producers only. It is proposed to be financial by the Union, for Congress is to be 250,000,000 dollars of public money for the purpose. This gigantic association will have power to purchase all exportable produce at cost of production, plus 5 per cent, profit; and to buy and distribute all farmers’ requirements. One of the objects is “to effect the union of societies of the world in an international organisation having the same common purpose.” The experience of the consumer of that "common purpose” is exaction from him of the last fraction of farthing or cent that the business will bear. Great combines. ti'usts, rings, associations, by whatever name they may be called, bode no good .to the unorganised consumer, and eventually no good for Government lending themselves to their formation.-- They constitute a serious menace to society at large, that any Government, irrespective, of politics, must be prepared to tackle, and to do it soon. —Post, Wellington. |

IS IT REACTION? Is a reaction at baud? Reports are coining in daily of panic-quittance ot shares on the New York market. Sales on one day ran into nearly four million shares. What they are and what they are worth is not stated with any degree of precision, but high-grade industrial and railways investments are mentioned. The United States closed a period of seven “fat’’ years on December 31st- last. Are “lean’’ years to come? The .fear 1925 seemsdikely to be regarded as a “boom year,” for their primary producing industries were never in better shape, activity in the motor and building trades was unprecedented, and money was available for expansion and new business in quantities and at rates without parallel within the past quarter of a century. Some industries, it is true, were not partakers in this era of unexampled prosperity, and bad all they could do to keep going, but in general America was never before so prosperous. Could this state of things last? That was the question many concerned with commerce and finance asked ,themselves and one another. Now this Stock Exchange panic has come. Does it mean reaction? If it. does, New Zealand must be prepared.* 1 The relations between the two countries are more intimate than m a unpeople imagine.—Evening Post, Wellington.

GENERATION OF ELECTRICITY. The low efficiency of small generating stations was emphasised by Mr. Stanley Baldwin, in announcing the Government’s plans for the co-ordinatpm of electricity supply in Britain. A committee was appointed to act with the Minister of Transport and the Electricity Commissioners in examining the present position. “They reported to us,” said Mr. Baldwin, “that there were 584- public utility generating stations in Great Britain —and that number is now increased—most of them all very small. Last year 42 of those stations were responsible for more than half of the total output, and the remaining 542 dealt .with less than half of the output between them. * Thus, while some of our stations are the finest in the world, we have an abnormal number of small stations producing at an unnecessarily high cost'. There is a startling difference in the cost of generation between a. large efficient station and a small local concern. In 1923, the working- cost per unit, exclusive of capital charges, varied in those different stations from .44d to lOd and lid, and the amount of coal used to generate one unit varied from l.Slbs. to lOlbs. and over.” The proposals include the reduction of the generating stations to 60, and' the constitution of a central board to purchase electricity from them and sell it to local distributors, the whole scheme of generation and distribution to be based on a system of limitation of profits.