under currents

Waikato Times, Volume 108, Issue 18157, 23 October 1930, Page 6

under currents

HERE, THERE & EVERYWHERE.

(By “ Gleaner.”)

IMPOSITIONS 2400 YEARS AGO.. The fact that schoolchildren were given “ lines ” to write as punishment as far back at 530 B.C. was disclosed by Mr C. Leonard Woolley, the archaeologist, who has been director of the excavations at Ur since 1922- “ I have found at Ur,” he said, “ dating back to about 530 8.C., the ruins of a school building which was run in a,nunnery and the head of which was a sister of Belshazzar. Among the discoveries were copybooks of the Old World. You. could see on the one side the teacher's fair copy and on the other side the 'Student’s bungled efforts to imitate it. We found some dictionaries, one of them endorsed as the property of the senior boys’ class.” Mr Woolley described how another tablet had been found inscribed with the words, “ Great is Nannar, the Lord of Ur," line upon line down the page the writing gradually getting Worse as the writer neared the bottom of the tablet.

MAORI MORTALITY. The latest statistics prove further the somewhat dubious , benefits civilisation has conferred on the Maori race. The diseases Europeans brought with them, diseases which the Maoris had not previously experienced, killed off more than all their playful little scraps did. During the period 1920-29, 42.13 deaths from tuberculosis and respiratory diseases occurred per 1000 of Maori live births; the European figure was 4.47. The Maori figure for tuberculosis decreased slightly, and that for respiratory diseases increased. The European returns showed the opposite in each case, an increase and a decrease respectively. Statistics for the period quoted show that the Maori baby is born healthy enough, 4.75 dying under one day old against the Europeans’ 7.G3 per 1000. This superiority is maintained until after the first week, when the Maori figures begin the draw level and eventually outstrip the European, the deaths for one to twelve months reaching the alarming figure of 95.66 per 1000 to the Europeans’ 13.56. These figures would seem to prove that 'the diverting of the Maoris from their natural healthy mode of life to the unnatural one of modern civilisation has caused havoc among them, a sad feature common to all primitive peoples who have come in contact witli the European.

UNEMPLOYMENT FUNDS. Dissatisfaction with the Unemployment Fund as merely a source of maintenance for the unemployed and a desire to turn the fund to productive uses have inspired many proposals for maintaining men and women in employment rather than in unemployment by its aid. A pamphlet by Mr Comyns Carr merits .discussion not only on its own account but because it reflects a widespread conviction that the fund can be used curat-ively. He proposes that the British Government should guarantee to pay out of the Unemployment Fund the-loss (if any) up to a fixed limit which' may result from a firm either undertaking a specific contract or working to full capacity with a full staff for a fixed period in some or all of its factories or departments, if it has more than one. The offer should v be open in substantially the same terms, to every firm in each trade to which it applies, including those which might be said not to need it because they are already fully occupied on profitable business . . Fairness demands that they should get it, especially as a sffnilar guarantee would be helping their competitors. As the scheme would be experimental it might be limited in the first place to the trades with the highest percentage of unemployment. A number of conditions are laid down. Mr Carr proposes two kinds of subsidy. One would be paid to a firm which, without sufficient orders to fulfil, kept its workpeople in one or all of its departments in full employment! Such a firm would receive as a subsidy a maximum amount equal to the unemplovment benefit of that proportion of workpeople in the department or works corresponding to the percentage of unemployment in the trade during the preceding 12 months. With the aid- of this subsidy the firm would be able to manufacture more cheaply, but the output would go into stock unless the reduction in price made possible by tiie subsidy resulted in an increase of the effective demand. The second use of 'the subsidy would be to finance particular contracts which could not otherwise be undertaken without loss.

A NEW CATHEDRAL. A gathering, officially estimated at 250,000 persons, assembled in Thingweli Park, Liverpool, for an openair service of thanksgiving for the securing of the site desired for a new Roman Catholic ■ Cathedral. The Archbishop of Liverpool, in his address, said the site of their North of England Cathedral would compare even with the ideal spots chosen for the renowned Gothic cathedrals ot that golden period of Catholicism, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It was not their privilege to restore the shattered glories of their ancient English cathedrals, but it was their duty to replace them. A cathedral was at least a counterblast to the materialism of industrialism It served to arrest the attention of the thoughtless throng. The Cathedral which they proposed to build was to be the Metropolitan Cathedral of the North of England, the rallying point for the Archdiocese of Liverpool with its Suffragan Sees of Leeds, Middlesbrough, Hexham and Newcastle, Lancaster and Salford. It was to be to them what York Minster was to their forefathers. It was to make Liverpool a great ecclesiastical centre like Rheims or Cologne, where men of all nations might unite under one roof, in one common worship.

* * CIVILISATION

Sydney has long been amused with the cavemen stuff put across at the wrestling matches, remarks the Sydney Sun. One enthusiastic citizen remarked to his friend, as they left the building after one particularly gruelling match, “ I’ll remember this bout, I will; I got some of his foot in me face.” The other nodded agreement, “An’ so’ll I; I got some of ’is ear in me pocket.