The Week in Review.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLV, Issue 19, 9 November 1910, Page 1

The Week in Review.

NOTICE. The Editor will be pleased to receive for consideration Short Stories and Descriptive Articles, illustrated With photos, or suggestions from contributors. Bright, terse contributions are wanted dealing with Dominion life and questions. Unless stamps are sent, the Editor Cannot guarantee the return of unsuit, able MSS. The Bullfinch Find. THE Bullfinch find has thrown the community of West Australia into a delirium of speculation. The sleepy, slow old town Of iSouthem Cross has been galvanised into life, the hotels are crowded, motor cars rush through the streets, the telegraph officials are overwhelmed by the rush of urgent work, and the mining office is packed with men applying for leases, or transacting other mining business. There seems no doubt that the Bullfinch is marvellously rich. Already n crushing of 324 tons has resulted in a yield of 23040 z., worth £9789, and it is stated ithat an offer of £300,000 for the mine has been refused. But however rich the mine may he, there is certain to be heavy loss and much disappointment in store for a large proportion of those who are taking part in the present rush. 'Prices in a boom camp are always above any sort of industrial warrant. Thousands of' pounds are often poured into claims which have never had any careful examination by competent men. Fortunes are frequently made by local promoters and operators out of claims .which cannot show ten feet of actual work. There is a danger also in the best and most stable of mines. In the majority of cases, a mine ought- to pay annually perhaps twenty per cent of the investment to be profitable. That is to say, the actual value of any mine is rarely over five times actual dividends, paid after expenses of operation. How many mines are capitalised on any such real basis as that? Gambling in Stocks. For answer we have only to remember how stocks that are the best divi-dend-payers often sell at ten or twelve times the face value of the annual dividends. If the mine hits a brief stroke of luck the stocks will climb yet higher. In most other investments we do not look to the interest to pay us back our principal; in a mine we must look to dividends to pay us ’back our principal and interest also. When the mine is done our principal is gone. Investors do not always etop to reflect on this point. In all booms, whether mining, land, or rubber, Ithe main idea is to get rich as quickly as possible while the boom lasts. It has been estimated that in the firet four months of the present year £14,000,000 were invested in different rubber companies, and ithe people of England are already pledged to supply some

£■10,000,000 to this strange market. Veryfew people who buy expect to pay for the shares; they simply buy to sell again. For it is a gamble in which you may go far without much cash. You buy your stock and pledge yourself «to pay for it at a settlement day, weeks, or months ahead, with no present liability at all. Then you go home and hope that the price will go up. An English writer has vividly de<s.cribed the scene: “Every day, long hours after and before the regular market is at work, a money-mad erowd of all sorts and conditions of men besieges the offices of Mincing-lane and the other little streets where men deal in paper tokens of value. Gamblers from the race-tracks jostle clergymen from the provinces; silk-hat-ted peers touch elbows with little clerks from the mercantile rows; priest and courltesan stand side by side to sign contracts for shares of stock in unknown companies. There is no class in England that has not been infected—the clergy, as usual, leading the race.” 'J* Ruinous Speculation. The gambling mania has always carried disaster in its train. The South Sea Bubble brought ruin to thousands, the mining and industrial gamble of 1825 ended in a panic in which more than seventy London banks went down, while the railway madness of twenty years later was more disastrous in the results than anything that had preceded it. A writer of the period has thus portrayed the results of this gamble in railway stock:—“lt is the conviction of those who are best informed that no other panic was ever so fatal to the middle class. It readied every hearth; it saddened every heart in the metropolis. There was scarcely an important town in England but what beheld some wretched suicide. Daughters delicately nurtured went out to seek their bread: sons were recalled from academies; households were separated; homes were desecrated by the emissaries of the law. There was a disruption of every social tie. The debtors’ gaols were filled with promoters; Whitecross-street was filled with speculators; and the Queen’s Bench was full to overflowing. Men who had lived comfortably and independently found themselves suddenly responsible for sums they had no means of paying. In some cases they yielded their all and began the world anew; in others they left the country, laughed at their creditors, and defied pursuit.” J* J* The Gaming Bill. In New Zealand gambling is said to be the national vice, and certainly the amount of money spent on horse racing would seem to bear this out. We give this week a full-page map of New Zealand, showing all the registered racing and trotting clubs dn existence. From this it will be seen that there is hardly a township of any size but has its meeting for trotting or racing. The totalieator investments for 1909-1910 amounted to no less a sum than £1,540.000. The uumj>er of racing days for the same period was 323, and the number of

■totalisator permits 167. From this it

will be seen, as the Prime Minister pointed out, that if Sundays are left out, there is more than one racing meeting for every day in the year in New Zealand. The Gaming Bill sought to remedy some of the great evils of our present system by abolishing credit betting, by abolishing the bookmaker, and by curtailing the issue of totalisator licenses. Then it seemed that the matter was in danger of being shelved, and many thought that some loophole would Ire found for the bookmaker, who was the worst feature of our system, and who had been unreservedly condemned by racing men, judges, business men, and police. Suggested Reforms. lhe country was none too pleased at the delay which took place over the matter of the Gaming Bill, nor was the composition of tue Special Committee of the House, to whom the Government referred the Bill, considered entirely satisfactory. There were said to be on it many men who had no real knowledge of the ethics of racing, whilst Mr. Carroll, who has a complete grip of the issues, was omitted. In one point our racing laws urgently needed amendment. We want ed the number of racing da vs reduced, not merely the number of totalisator permits. Everybody recognised that the number- of racing days could easily be curtailed by one-third, and it was felt that this would cause less irritation in sporting circles than the whittling down of permits. The people have declared that there is far too much racing in NewZealand; that sport in general, and racing in particular, eats too much into the daily life of the people, and that immediate remedial action is called for. The Dunedin “ Evening Star ” proposed that so far as the racing clubs are concerned, no club which could not afford to give £3OO per diem by way of stakes should be allowed to enrich itself through the medium of the totalisator, also that no club should race more than nine days in one year, and that the number of sprint races should be considerably curtailed. These races are provided mainly in tlie interests of the machine, and if our bloodstock is to be improved, races that encourage quality and endurance must be the mainstays of future programmes.

The Committee's Report. Above all, is it necessary that the bookmaker qua bookmaker must be passed out absolutely and entirely. No possible loophole must be left by which he can carry on his business either in the by wavs of our cities or on courses where there is no machine. The Select Committee reported that it should be made the duty of every racing club (not only the clubs authorised to use the totalisator) to use all lawful means to prevent bookmakers from plying their calling on the course. 'This is necessary in view of the fact that immense sums are wagered with bookmakers at small meetings which have no totalisator permits. It is said that £25,000 were wagered last year with bookmakers at some half-dozen of these smaller meetings. The penalty for making or offering to make any bet or wager on any racecourse is to be a fine of not less than £2O and not more than .£lOO for a first offence, and imprisonment for a period not exceeding three months for any subsequent offence. All the clauses to restrict the issue of totalisator permits were struck out, and the number of days on which the totalisator may be used was limited to 250 days a year. The Committee has thus followed the popular desire to reduce the number of racing days rather than the number of permits. The suggestion of the Dunedin ‘■Star” has been followed in regard to restricting the number of racing days for any one elub, by a clause enacting that no race meeting shall extend, over a longer period than eight days. It will be pretty generally conceded that the Special Committee has met the wishes of the people, and those who objected to the personnel of the Committee will admit that it has acted wisely by declining to restrict the issue of licenses a course that was bound to cause friction, and that it has done its best to abolish the bookmaker and curtail the operations of the machine. Extremists will not be entirely pleased, but the moderate man will feel that the worst features of racecourse gambling have been eliminated. J* The Dullness of Life. One reason for the prevalence of gambling may probably be found in the dullness of life in many parts of New Zealand. In some bi\sh camps the men have nothing to do when the day’s work is finished except play cards or reiyi the weekly paper. They get tired of the eternal cribbage and euchre, and when they have read the weekly paper

through from cover io cover, they read any odd scrape of newspaper they can Borne across or, even the labels on jam and meat tins. We want good libraries for our country places, with a good supply of novels and magazines. At present ■we strive, and rightly strive, to suppress evil by legislative enactments. But that is not everything. We must supply something to take the place of unhealthy forms of recreation. Reading Is one of the best forms of recreation after a hard day of bodily toil. Books are eheap, and a library ean be formed at small cost. That men will read if they get the chance is proved by the following letter sent by a lady correspondent of the Lyttelton “Times”:—

“I have never seen any body of New Zealand working men reading so much and so solidly as the West Coast coal miners. Their keen interest in science, nationalism and economies is appalling on all sides, but even in literature they pre soakers, inclined to read a good deal more than they can digest, and apt in debate to fire off speeches that are (splodged as thick as the star-spangled banner with such phrases as ‘craft Unionism,’ ‘class consciousness,’ ‘the aims of the burgeoisie,’ and ‘the rights of the patriot.’ Never mind, they are , a nice body of men.”

The Shearers Hut. It is not, of . course, always possible jto get the quiet-necessary for enjoying a book. Judging from some descriptions of shearers’ huts these places must be anything but quiet. One who has had some experience of them has Sent the following graphic account of what he endured to the “Bulletin”:—To a quiet fnan, or one who is fond of reading; the ■shearers’ hut is a den of horror. There ere men whose tongues are never still, and, as might be expected, these are the ones who seldom say anything worth hearing. There is the rattling of dice and the shuffling and chatter of cardplayers; the repetition of “fifteen-two, fifteen four”; and the euchre-players* everlasting "Pass!” .“I’m. away!” _ “»She’s down!” “By me!” and so forth. The man who bangs his fist on the table with every winning card Ire plays is particularly obnoxious. Occasionally he gets his deserts in the form of a flying boot. There are draught-players, domino enthusiasts, noughts-and-erosses cranks and ifox-and-goose lunatics; there are loud 'discussions, arguments —mostly about dogs and horses, yarning, singing and whistling, all to the accompaniment of half-a-dozen mouth-organs, tin whistles and Jews’ harps and a eracked concertina. It's. hard to follow the adventures of Reginald de Clancy through the jungles of the Punjaub under such disturbing conditions; it is harder still to compose a soulful epistle to yo.ur best girl, pining for her shearer boy down Booth. When the lights go out you learn the sleeping characters of your shed mates. There are several asthmatical nuisances who cough intermittently; Hbout a dozen go pig-hunting, and are pursuing the spotted one nearly all night; others fidget and kick and roll have nightmares and . other nocturnal (visitations, and yell blue murder in their Bleep; a few are troubled with insomnia, and get up at frequent intervals to fill and light their pipes. And there are the town-goers, who come stumbling in about midnight, with noise enough to awaken the cemetery. When that row has subsided, the 30 or 40 dogs tied up outside begin to eorroboree in dismal and melancholy tones. Somebody yells at them to lie down, and one or two arise to throw firewood and jam-tins at them. The nights are pretty near all alike, so ■you don't wonder- at the number, of tents and bush gunyahs that are scattered about the neighbourhood,

An English Knyvett. Lieutenant A. Sutor, of the Royal [Artillery, has been removed from the (Army for criticising certain, irregularities and speaking disparagingly of people in high places. At the court•lartial he made a speech containing

some very telling criticisms on Army methods in general. He went into the Artillery (he told the Court) because he was told it was the most dangerous branch, and, that he was terrified at the idea of getting a big shell in his stomach. But he found he had next to nothing to do in the Army. On his first day his captain, a charming fellow, gravely took him to see his gold' lace wrapped up in tissue paper. After that the lieutenant was set to work. His work occupied him for about thirty minutes each day, and even that small amount was absolutely futile and inane. It consisted in signing papers which he did not understand and which nobody else understood. He enjoyed it very much, but his enjoyment, keen and intense as it was, did not blind him to the absurdity of it. By half-past ten in the morning his work for the day was over. Secretaries of War, added the irreverent officer, had not yet begun to deliver speeches, on the magnificent reforms which they had introduced into the Army, otherwise he might have epent his afternoons reading them. So it went on for ten years. The life was “mighty comfortable, infinitely pleasant,” and he knew the big forces arrayed against him if he rebelled against the system. After two years’ service at home he was sent abroad, and spent eight years in service out of England. Things were better abroad, except when inspector-generals came to inspect them or other inspectors came to. reduce the defences, <2* An Enterprising Governor. Lieutenant Sutor spoke at great length, and held the attention of the court throughout. In the course of his speech, he told a good story of a Governor of Malta who made a little money by selling the vegetables out of hie back garden. “I would really have admired the Governor for that,” he said, “if he had only had the courage to go round with the cart himself.” The lieutenant went on to say that en re; turning from abroad, he found the Army system at Honre worse ,than ever, and decided to speak his mind and take "the consequences. He wrote a pamphlet called “The Army System; or, Why muddle through .thirty millions a year , during peace?” Mr. Haldane, he’ said," was “as much at sea with his land forces as Mr. McKenna is on land with his nucleus, fleet.” He audaciously described Mr. Haldane as “the most . marvellous War Minister who has ever been inflicted on a long-suffering country.” ' He -was sorry, he said, to see British officers humiliated by being told that they had the sympathy of the British War Minister. Unfortunately, his candid criticism of War Office methods was not appreciated by the authorities, and he has been informed that the King has no further need of his services. Blessed Be Bumble. The English papere have been commenting on an amazing instance of the essential brutality of the Poor Law system as exemplified by the action of the Camberwell Guardians in the case of a man named Afford. It would appear that all his life the man has had a struggle to live. According to all accounts, even in the brightest of his days/ he has never earned more than 18/- a week; and in the darkest, as so often happens in these days of keen competition among the unskilled, he earned nothing. A few weeks ago he lost his job. He and his wife and five children then came to the verge of starvation. A fried fish dealer, touched to the heart, gave Afford a parcel to take home. Afford himself ate little of it;, his wife and children, who consumed' almost all, were next day attacked by ptomaine poisoning. . The wife died. The . children were just saved from death. Afford himsejf was confined to bed. By the time the wife had been buried and the children saved, Afford was without a home and without a stick of furniture. This was the great moment for the Guardians of Camberwell. They sent him a demand for £4 15/-, cost of treating his children in the infirmary, and gave him notice to take his baby but of the workhouse. How they hope to get the £4 15/-, we cannot conceive. Perhaps they will issue a warrant, and send him to prison for failure to pay.