TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8104, 26 March 1906, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

The Customs Department in Sydney possesses a great number of certificates granted to local Chinese who have gone abroad, and which would have allowed th6m to return without paying the poll-tax. But the celestials to whom they were issued evidently trafficked in them, and, other Chinese presenting the certificates, the documents were impounded, and the bearers sent back to China. The system now in vogue for identifying Chinese who leave Australia and want to return (and they are numerous) is that of finger-print photographs. This was adopted first in Sydney, and was copied from South Afrioa, where the Germans now identify natives in this way. Under the present system of allowing Chinese in and out of Australia, the only chance of fraud would lie in a case where there was collusion between the would-be immigrant and Customs officers, a contingency which is regarded by the Department as a very remote possibility.

The new departure in the work of the New South Wales Immigration League in using visitors from the State to Great Britain as volunteer agents for the immigration movement has met with surprising success, says the Sydney Daily Telegraph. Daily gentlemen oall at the leagues offices and obtain copies of booklets and general literature in regard to the State, to take to their friends at Home, and there is no doubt that much more can be done by the direct evidence of people who know our conditions of life than by indiscriminate advertising through customary journals. Further, the action of the leading shipping companies in promising to distribute the league's literature on board their boats after leaving Fremantle, will bring the question of encouraging immigration before many of our business men at a time when they have leisure to thoroughly think over the matter. Many people will be thus intimately approaohed who in the bustle of business life find it diffioult to give due consideration to such matters.

The Hon. T. Duncan, Minister for Lands, interviewed by a reporter in Ohristchuroh, last week, on the land value question, said the Government, and most of the public bodies, saw the advantages of ha ving only one valuation tor colonial and local purposes, and an effort should be made to remove any cause for dissatisfaction. It seemed to him that it would be a very good plan to associate a local man with the Government valuer in eaob district. This would ensure proper attention being given to local conditions and circumstances. Under the present system it was possible for an outside valuer to go into a district, and on the strength of the sale ot a farm at a fancy price ralise the valuations all through the district. The object of everyone connected with the valuations should be to fix a fair figure, against which there could be no reasonable objections.

Mr Booth, In his reoent address at Christchurch, waa loud in his praise of the American workmen. From what he saw he considered they were not driven. "They made the most of their wits and their hands," he said, "and I tell you in all honesty and frankness that the average workman in my own line in America will turn out double as much as the colonial workman or the English workman, using the same tools in the same kind of work." This he attributed largely to the method of payment, the bonus system being largely in vogue, and also to the ambition of the men, as "they knew there was always room at the top and ample opportunity for advancement."

Mr W. Udy and H. Humphries are canvassing for signatures to a petition to the Premier asking that the Government acquire 20,000 or 30,000 acres of land on the eastern side of the Ruamahanga River, says the Wairarapa Standard. The lists are being rapidly filled. There is no doubt that the Premier will do his utmost to assist GreytOwn in this matter. The burden of his song when he addressed a public meeting here on the eve of the general election was "settlement of the land." The member for the district also took up the cry of oloser settlement of the land if Greytown was to progress. The opportunity will soon be given the Premier and the member for this district to urge our claims for oioser settlement, and demonstrate to those who attended their political meetings that their promises will be fulfiled.

New Zealand affords ever facility for the propogution of weeds, noxious and otherwise, but one of tbe worst is at present taken little notice of, says the North Otago Times. It is tbe cloverburr, which a few years ago was first detected in the river sand balJast, discharged from a vessel that had arrived at Oamaru from a South American port. It has since then spread along some of the railway lines. It is as far south aa Moeraki, and is carried by dogs and men in various directions, for the burrs adhere firmly to a coat or to the rough'hair of a dog. When it has gained an extended hold in the oountry, the value of wool will be considerably depreciated. It was stated by a gentleman who bad experience of it -in South America, that it at first depreciated, the value of wool by 4d per lb, owing to the difficulty of extracting the burrs from the wool. The plant bears a plentiful crop of burrs each year, which are worse in their adhesive qualities than the biddy-bid, whioh, however, does not grow out in the open fields like the burr.