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THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, MARCH 27, 1906.

The General Manager of the Paoiflo Gable, who is at present in Australia, has made the interesting statement that there has been a considerable increase of business lately. The importance of this, remarks a Northern contemporary, lies in the fact that until the traffic passing over the cable expands to such an extent as to reduce the existing heavy loss to a minimum there can be little likelihood of any substantial lowering of rates. The CabJe has now been open for the transmission of messages for more than three years, but owing in a great measure to the aotion of some of the

Australan States it has not secured as large a share of business, more particularly in New South Wales and Victoria, as was anticipated. This action, which was prompted by the rival cnble company, atill continues to exercise a fro, judicial effect on the Pacific Cable. But notwithstanding the drawbacks to which ft is subjected from this cause the business of the Cable is steadily, if somewhat slowly, growing, and as the advantages of the service become more widely known will go on expanding. We cannot, however, look for any phenomenal increase until the present rates, low as they are when compared with the extortionate charges that formerly ruled, are brought down very much lower. At present the cable is used almost exclusively for commercial, political and journalistic purposes. Were the cost of cabling cheapened and made as inexpensive as telegraphing the use of the cable- for social pat-poetwould at once spring into popularity and we should witness" an enormous increase of business. It may not be possible to bring about this radical chaage fur many years yet, but we have no doubt that it will some day be realised. The Pacific Gable bas been instrumental' in cheapening cable rates, and we beilbve it is destined to play a still greater part in that direotion.

A parallel; cynical, daring, yet weighted with a truth none can disregard, published in' the Paris Figaro,, compares the United States under Theodore Roosevelt with the Roman Empire' under Augustus that Roman Empire rotted to the oore by the vice which follows in the train 1 of untold wealth and degrading luxury. The wonderful picture whioh line by line traces the struggle of a man against the encroachments on the one 1 side of'the appalling power- of riches, and cn the other against the devitalising of a nation., is painted by a hand no less authoritative than that of Guglielmo Ferreo, the famous historian ofj the Roman State. He shows how 20 centuries aeo, in the heart of an immense Empire, a mail toiled- day and night to solve the problem on which: depended :< yreafr people's fate. Rome had eaten of the forbidden fruit. Unlawful riches and soft'delights had sapped vitality. The stoic had given way to the epicurean. The Augustas, striving to beat down thesociarand political 1 power of money, saw crowded into the Senate the dsisolute of wealth by force of the fact that commerce was the strength of the State. So with Roosevelt.. The Italian historian points out that between two jarring conceptions of State duty he is calling, his people back to primitive simplicity,, while at the same time aiming at territorial: and commercial expansion. "Only a short time ago," says Ferroo "Roosevelt reedited for his Yankees, exactly as Augustus did, an. old speech of Mfetellus Macedunicus on augmenting the population. Hfe frowned down celibacy, sterility, the frequency of divorces, and all' the vices and egoisms of civilisation tottering under wealth. Like- Augustus, he has striven to set 1 up again the powerful simplicity aad' noble traditions of the early fathers. Yet, the President-Apostle of old-time frugality and republican severity must in duty hurry the cutting of the Panama Canal,: which will double American commerce, the riches of the towns, and" the luxury of social magnates. Like Rome under Augustus, America now cam support neither its vices nor their remedies."

The raosfc romantic figure in the whole group of Labour M.'sP. in the House of Commons is Mr John Thomas Maoplwson, M.P. for Preston. Hia strenuous life-story may be summed up as follows:—Afc 12, cabin boy in a sailing ship; at 18, a Middlesborough steel smelter; ac 21, founder of the Steel Smelters' Sooiety; at 32, an Oxford graduate and-a member of Parliament. Mr MoPherson is the youngest of the Labour M.'sP. From the foundation of the Steel Smelters' Sooiety in 1892, Mr McPherson went rapidly up the ladder. By his activity he soon became u leader of men, and, securing their support, he was made assistant-secretary of the union. He refused to be tied to office, however, and went out as an organ-

iser, achieving conspicuous success. Still he was not satisfied. He wished to be better equipped for the battle of life. And so his society decided to send him to the Kuskin College at Oxford. Mr MoPherson's society paid £52 per annum, which covered board, lodging, and tuition, and he hegan a course of training whioh included constitutional, industrial, and social history, logic, questions of local government, and political economy. He emerged from Oxford a different man—with a wider and broader outlook on sooiaJ and labour problems. The Ruskin College is destined to become a tremendous educational force. It is the training ground of the future M.'sP., trade union organisers and secretaries, and those who are to be the leaders, of the reform movement of the future, and this young Labour M.P. is the first of the students to enter Parliamejt.

Permanent link to this item

https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/WAG19060327.2.12

Bibliographic details

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8105, 27 March 1906, Page 4

Word Count
934

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, MARCH 27, 1906. Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8105, 27 March 1906, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. TUESDAY, MARCH 27, 1906. Wairarapa Age, Volume XXVIII, Issue 8105, 27 March 1906, Page 4

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