TOPICAL READING.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3119, 19 February 1909, Page 4

TOPICAL READING.

ANTI-SUICIDE BUREAU.

It is interesting to note, says a London psper, that during the past year over 1,000 men have, sought the assistance of .the Salvation Army Suicide Bureau, which was formed two years ago in order to turn intending suicides from their purpose and give them material help. Financial embarrassment or hopeless poverty is responsible tor over 50 per cent, of the cases which have come to the Bureau's notice. General causes, such as accidents sickness, and other misfortunes are responsible for about 21 per cent, and drink, drugs, and disease are responsible fjr 11 per cent.; melancholia proceeding from loneliness and other causes is accountable for 9 par cent; and forgery, embezzlement, and other crimes for about 5 per cent. Last year the applicants for advice or assistance included clergymen, military officer?, doctors, actors, solicitors, journalists, architects and surveyo-s, builders and contractors, chemists, and artists.

PENDEREL OAK. When in flight from the battle of Worcester, in 1651, Cnarles 11., as everybody knows, was hidden in an oak tree. The King was assisted to his hiding-place by a farmer, Richard Pdnderel. There was a curious sequel to this historical fact recently, at the office of a firm of solicitors (Messrs Petch and Co.), near Grey's Inn-road. Grateful to Mr Penderel for his attentions, King Charles granted to the farmer's family six perpetual legacies, two of £IOO per annum, and the others something over £SO a year. Nine years ago a London fruit porter, Richard Pendere!, died, and left a little daughter, four years old, unprovided for. His sister, Mrs Cassin, wife of a London cab-driver, in the usual way of the poor, took her little niece under her charge, thougn she had a family of ber own, for which it was difficult enough to provide. Mrs Cassin had heard of the legacy of King Charles 11. (as a sort of myth), but seeing it mentioned in the Press recently, plucked up courage, and made tentative inquiries. She was amazed to find that her niece was actually entitled to £1 per week for life; and more tha" that, a sum of £2OO, accumulated pension, was handed to her —for the tru&tees of the legacy made Mrs Cassin the guardian of Miss Penderel—to-day's representative of the farmer Penderel, who hid the King in the oak tree.

AMERICA'S HEALTH

A number of interesting addresses and reports were presented at the conferences of the National Conservation Commission, which met a few months ago in Washington. More than 30 States were represented by their chief eAecutives, and the reports dealt largely with mineral, forest, land, and water resources. It was estimated that the annual value of the minerals raised in the United States now exceeded £400,000,000, and was second only to agriculture in importance. The coal supply, available and easily accessible, was estimated at 1,463 billion tons; and the known supplies of high-grade iron ores were estimated at 3,840 million (

tons, which, at the present growing rate of consumption cannot be ex- | pected to last beyond the middle of the present century, [n submittne the report Senator Flint predicted that the supplies of high grade iron ores will be consumed by the middle of the present century, high-grade available coal by the middle of the , next century, copper, lead, zinc, and precious metals by the end of the present century, and phosphate rock, so essential to soil fertilisation, within 25 vears at the pesent rate of use and waste. The subject of the forest resources of the United States was dealt wich in a report by Senator Reed Smoot. He said that the United States forests now cover 550 million acres or about one fourth of J the total area of the country whereas the original forests covered 850 million acres or nearly one-half. The yearly growth does not average more than 12 cubic feet per acre or less than seven billion cubic feet in all whereas the annual consumption is estimated at 23 billion cubic feet. Every year the United States uses 100 million cords of firewood, 40 billion feet of lumbar, more than a billion posts, poles, and fence rails, 113 million hewn ties, 1,500 million staves, nearly 500 million barrel hoops, three million cords of native pulpwood. 165 million cubic feet of round mine timbers, and 1,125 million : cords of wood for distillation.

LABOUR AND WHITE AUSTRALIA.

The Australian Workers' Union Conference has announced itself "totally opposed to State-aided immigration of any kind." To this mast be conceded the msrit of frankness, a rare characteristic of declarations of Labour policy with regard to immigration. But there is scant reason for allowing the policy itself the merit of wisdom. .The A.W.U. is, r.f course, in favour of a White Australia; that, in fact, is a primary article in the, Labour declaration of faith. How does it propose to keep Australia white? "We are neighboured on our north," says the Sydney "Daily Telegraph," "by countries where the more aggressive and farthest-developed coloured peoples swarm in hundreds of millions, must of them within short steaming distance. And Australia, just across the water from some of them—parts of it much nearer to them than to us in Sydney—is an almost empty continent. How long that suggestive conjunction can continue—the gaping continent on the one shore, the overcrowded millions on the other—as it stands now, is a problem we must wait in risk for timg to solve unless we can make a safe solution of it for ourselves by garrisoning our country with an industrious and patriotic and numerous people. That is the only sure method of keeping Australia white, and it is just what organised Labour blindly seeks to -prevent being effectuated. For to op pose State-aided immigration, is to be against all immigration, o-ing to the fast that in these days of competitive eagerness to get more people into the new countries some aH, in the way of either a reduction in passage m.;ney or special facilities for settlement on the land, must be given by the State which would make itself attractive. To rely on the immigration which came voluntarily and without any encouragement would be to keep immigrants out of any country—as Labour evidently desires to see them kept out of Australia. What it either loses sight of or ignores is that by that attitude' it is increasing the possibility of a coloured Australia."