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CHURCH NOTICESSUNDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 1919. CHURCH OF ENGLAND.21st. Sunday after Trinity. Holy Communion 8 and 1 r.Evening Prayer 7-30.Tipperary 3-15 p.m.Rev. Sydney S. Bullen.METHODIST CHURCH.Wesley Church,. York—11 a.m. and 7-30 p.m.Rrv. A. S. J. Fry.THE SALVATION ARMY.Sunday morning 11 a.m. ,Sunday night 7-31 p.m.Capt. G. Austin.AND YORK TIMES.~ ■■ - m — ■ - 1 ■ .SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 8, I919.THK POLICY OF HONESTV—THK MIGHT OF RIGHT—THE EXPEDIENCY OF PRINCIPLEOUT AND ABOUT.. A PLEDGE.1 promise to purchase only Brltish*made floods.Last week-end the cablecrammer told us that Sam Copley, acting as intermediary, had bought the Rams-den estate, Huddersfield, for the Huddersfield Corporation for the sum of ,£1,300,000. This was cabled out to us because friend Sam was so well-known in this State, What tlie real inwardness of it is at the other end only one here and there will know.The Ramsden family have owned the land on which the town of Huddersfield stands for some hundreds of years, and as the town grew with the advent of woollen manufacture, so did the fortunes of the Ramsdeus. At present the town has a population of about 125,000. and a rateable value of something over £600,000.I should say that the ground rents of the to x1 will be anything from £*oq,-000 to £200,000 a year, and what thiswill mean to a progressive municipality, with no vested interests to consider and consult can best be imagined. I can see whole streets of slum dwellings- being promptly cleaved, with a free hand in the erection of artisan dwellings. The town is a big co operative centre, wi‘.h twenty branches and a turnover of more than a million pounds a year, whilst the I'own Council spends nver £30,000 a year on education. It was in one of the wards of the town that the first attempt was made of a baby bonus, when Alderman Broadbent signalised his term of mayor by offering £ 1 to the mother ol every child born during that year ou attaining its first birthday, and already referred to in this column. In connection with the Peace Loan in England. Huddersfield raised over £4,000,000 (tuur million pounds in one week.To-day the borough of Huddersfield has an area of about nine square miles, but the Huddersfield of say forty years ago would probably be contained within two square miles, and at that time Sir John Ramsden owned nearly all the freehold. I say nearly, because there was a small plot of about an acre in the heart of the town which Sir John did not own, and that fact hurt his pride, for he very much wanted to say that he owned the whole of Huddersfield. The odd acre belonged to an old Quaker named Thomas Firth, and many were the efforts made by Sir John to buy the Quaker out. On the land was an old house in which the Quaker lived, whilst adjoining was a wooden hut about 8x8 used as a butcher’s shop. One day, Sir John Ramsden and the Quaker were having their usual wrangle about this plot of land, and finally Sir John offered to cover the floor of the wooden hut with sovereigns laid flat as the purchase price of the land. After some demur, the Quaker agreed to sell on those terms, and a day was fixed on which to carry it out, not with a foot rule and a few calculations on paper, and a cheque for the resulting amount, but by the rule ol finger and thumb, covering the floor with the actual coins.The two men met on an appointed day, Sir John driving up from Long-Jey Hall with the necessary supply of sovereigns, and these two old codgers set to work, the baronet planning the quids whilst Quaker Tommy saw that every coin touched its neighbour. The floor :f the hut was about half covered when the Quaker called a halt. He had been making a mental calculation, and either the result did not satisfy him, or he saw there would be a lot of gold left over. Anyway, he told Sir John he was not going to sell at that price. The bart. said a bargain was a bargain, besides he was paying for the land far more than it was worth. What did he want more ? The Quaker said he would only sell on condition Sir John laid the sovereigns on edge instead of flat! This Sir John refused to do. Then originated a well-known Yorkshire saying of to-day, when the Quaker said, “ Well, it’ll stop thine and mine,” meaning that theownership of the town would be divided between them. Since that time Huddersfield has ^rown by absorbing surrounding country, much of which belonged to the Ramsden family. I own a small block of freehold land which was brought within the municipal area, so that I can also join'in the retrain with a few others and say Huddersfield is ” thine and mine.”There has just been held a Co-operative Congress at Carlisle in England, when the President reviewed the growth ot the movement during the war. In 1914 there were three million co-operators in Great Britain. To-day these have increased to four million members. There are 1,400 societies, and some of these societies have a score or more of . branches. The sales for last year were £150,-000,000, whilst the two wholesale societies have a turnover of £66,000,-000 per annum. The wholesale societies are aiming to cut out the middle man. They have bought wheat lands in Canada and the wheat is ground in their own flour mills. They have tea plantations in India, whilst in West Africa they own a tract of country equal to about half the~ size of Europe for the production of hides, skins, palm oil, cocoa, coffee, spices, etc., which are carried mostly in co-operative-owned ships and treated at their own mills. They own woollen mills, cotton mills, tanneries, and employ about 3000 people at their boot factories. And they are all owned and worked by working men for the benefit of the working-class-When the Justices Act Amendment Bill now before the State Parliament was being considered in Committee, the Hon. W. C. Angwin, member for North-East Fremantle, mover of the Bill was speaking to the clause for the appointment of women magistrates, when the following dialogue took place :Mr. Pickering : The member tor North-East Fremantle is out to gain favour with the ladies of his constituency.Hon. W. C. Angwin : Oh, no ! 1 am too old.The Hon. Minister : You mean he is pulling their legs.Mr. Pickering : I would not suggest that. That might apply to the electors in Nelson.Hon. W. C. Angwin : I never pull ladies’ legs.The Federal Government is truly an old-hen-with-one-chicken sort of Government. The tariff, being a man’s-size job, and a heavy one at that,- goes overboard till next Federal Parliament meets, when, if the present crowd of side-steppers is still in office, it will.come up for consideration on the sixth Friday of the month when the blue moon rises in the west. But the Government got into a congenial atmosphere when it removed the jjd tax on children’s threepenny picture-show tickets, a child being any person under 16, and also the tax on adults’ threepenny tickets except when a person aged over 16 is going into a “ continuous ” show, said show being one which gives more than two shows in a day on more than two days a week. Now when the Cabinet gets through with its Bill providing that eggs shall always be broken at the big end it can go to the country with a light heart and let tariffs and shipbuilding programmes slide.His Ex. the Governor of this State must have trembled when he saw the result of the division in the Leg. Ass. on Willcock’s motion to reduce the Governor’s screw by £12. Sixteen Labourites, Ayes, walked into one lobby, and sixteen Lib.-Lab. and C.P. including Jack Scaddan^ late Labour Premier, voted Na Then Syd. Stubbs,''wfro happened to be chairman, had the pleasure of giving his casting vote in (he Governor’s tavour. So he will draw his full pay as usual. Although that did not finish the matter, for J. B. Holman tried to get £5 knocked off Macartney’s pay but the House threw Holman out on his ear. It is surprising, that members of Parliament will waste time nn such silly motions, particularly when they know they are of no use. Here are fitly members of Par liainent who will fight till they drop to protect the sovereign rights of the State, who will refuse to let Pri-minister Hughes have the additional powers he asks for under a revised Constitution, yet they object to the retention of a State Governor who is here as the vice-gerant of the King-Emperor. We can't well have it both ways. By all means dispense with the services of the imported Governor, biit carry that idea out to its logical conclusion, by abolishing all sovereign rights, and create one central government, with provincial governments as in India, each with its Legislative Assembly presided over by the Lieutenant-Governor, and so dispense with all the flummery of State Parliaments. The L.G. of an Indian Province and his dozen special advisers have the care of an average of fifty million people each, whilst the Imperial Council under the Viceroy attends to all matters affecting the country as a whole. And that is how it might be and should be in Australia. -Should there be anything in these notes the Federal Government takes exception to under the silly Electoral Act, the responsibility is taken byE. W. BUCKLEY.
Newspaper Details
York Avon Gazette and York Times
York, Western Australia, AU
Sat, Nov 08, 1919
Page 2
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
AU 19 Jan 2021
Other Publications Near York, Western Australia
York Eastern Districts Chronicle
York Avon Gazette and York Times
York Advocate
