TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Waikato Times, Volume 113, Issue 18929, 26 April 1933, Page 6

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

Lancashire “ Full Speed ” Ahead. Final settlement of the Lancashire weavers’ Avages dispute, ■ following recently upon a similar agreement for the spinners of the same area, means the ending of a series of industrial disturbances which for many months have kept the British cotton industry from competing effectually in the markets of the Avorld., says the Times. In recent months the business of supplying tho clothing worn by 800,000,000 people in India, China, and Japan, which Manchester once monopolised, has passed increasingly to the mills of Bombay, the Yangtse Valley and Osaka. Asia for more than a generation has been groivinsr in self-sufficiency in regard to the coarser kinds of cotton goods it uses. Lancashire nevertheless feels itself still unbeaten where the best goods and the most up-to-date methods of manufacture are involved. It has also of late considerably strengthened its position by the adoption of methods of mass production and unity of control Avhich have reduced manufacturing costs. Its 300,000 spinners and AVcavers, in agreeing ns they have noAV done to reductions in an already low scale of living, have shown those characteristics of grit and self-denial Avhich have often in other fields of enterprise turned failure into success. It is by no accident, therefore, that quotations for British textile investments have already risen substantially on the London Stock Exchange. Lancashire lias an age-old boast that Avliat its people say to-day Avill elsewhere he said to-morrow. Its cheerful signal, “ Full speed ahead,” uoav flying in smoky banners from 10,000 chimneys that have long been cold, may avcll find response beyond the farthest cliffs of a misty island in the grey North Sea. For if Lancashire can get busy again, many other industrial areas can assuredly do the same. * ! The Air-taxi Will Come. I The prophecy of the pilot Avho secs A'isions of air-taxis carrying I business-men lo and from their Avork, as tin? car carries them to- ! f ]av, is not, after all, to he regarded ns visionary, says a Sydney j paper. Actually there are air-taxis to-day, hut one has to go out to the aerodrome to fake them. The ideal is the light machine Avliieh can land on fiat roofs at low speeds, and take the passenger right to his address. The wildest prophecy of all. perhaps, was written in the ’sixties of (lie old century: “ Heard the heavens fill with shouting. and there mined a ghastly dew i prom Ihc nations’ airy navies grappling In the eenlral blue.” Alas, for mankind ! That prophecy was fulfilled, for all its wildness, in tho second decade of the new century. An air-taxi landing on one's room, or at one's door, is a lit tie tiling to believe after that.