Penistone, Stocksbridge and Hoyland Express, etc. — 1920-09-04 (Penistone, South Yorkshire, England)

AUTOLYCUS.")  Autonomy.  The Ilexboro' Local War Pensions Committee are pressing the Ministry of Pensions to give them autonomy, and to free them from the overseership of the -West Riding Committee. They have a very good case, and the Ministry are sending inspectors down to bear it. The Committee deals with Mexboro', Swinton, liiinhurst, Denaby and Conisboro', and has on its books 2,300 exService men, as well as 400 or 500 widows and other dependents. It disburses about £lOOO weekly, and the amount is steadily increasing. There is no justification for delay in dealing with pensions anywhere, but ,in a compact and convenient district like this a committee dealing with so large a number of cases has a special right to be freed from the irritating delays and uncertainties which are set up by the necessity of referring everything to Wakefield and awaiting confirmation from there. The West Riding Committee's prestige is touched, and, of course, they are resisting the Mexboro' movement, but Wakefield's `amour propre' is a -small matter compared with the convenience of the people affected. I hope the Ministry of Pensions will take this view.  Doncaster Races. Everything promises fair for Doncaster Races. There is summer-like weather at hand, if not immediately present at the moment, and the chances are that we shall all have a glorious week on Town Moor. For, of course, we shall all be there. We may groan bitterly under the burden of prices, and find the utmost difficulty in making ends meet; we may, on that account. have had to cut down our charities, if eveir we let any of tlnmn grow up; we may be about to be under the unpleasant necessity of extorting higher wages from the Government (or the people who find the wages, no matter who); we may have had to miss the war memorial fund, or the cap that went round the other day for that ex-soldier's widow; but we shall find a pound or two from somewhere for Spion Kop or Orpheus or. Allenby; and between us we shall find the means to send some of those poor, intellectual, consumptive-looking bookmakers away to a sanatorium for the steeple-chasing season. 'sonic salubrious, 'retired place where they may build pp again and devote themselves to quiet Study and healthy recreation before they have to ply their distasteful calling for very bread. What asses we are! We talk of the dignity Of labour, and we toil and moil for wages to pour them into the laps of those fat brutes who stand on the boxes, or of the furtive illegal gentlemen Who bring the trade nearer home for our convenience. If our employiers abstracted our earnings and wanted to build hospitals or reading rooms with thew, we should 6/et up and hit the public,  The Mayor of Cork. The Mayor of Cork has got it into his head that it is expedient that one man should die for the people, and he is very determinedly doing it. But, indeed, it is not expedient that Alderman McSwiney should die for anybody; nobody and no cause will be a whit better for his death. nis suicide will prove nothing, except that there is in human fanaticism possibilities of the most extreme and courageous determination, and all that has been proved before, always in a bad or illogical cause. If the Mayor of Cork dies, he will have added very considerably by his act to the wretched confusion of Irish politics and to the shocking inflammation of pro-Irish and anti-Irish feeling. You cannot dress up suicide in the romance of martyrdom. There is no true martyrdom in self-destruction. The real martyrs, although they held not their lives dear unto themselves, were destroyed against their will, believing that it was better, if it could be, to live for their cause, than to die for it. If a man destroys himself, though he does it with impressive courage, and in a passion of devotion to his country or his people or his cause or his faitli, he is none the less a self-murderer, and an impious rebel against God.  More Rent Controversy. There seems to be some uncertainty in the minds of local authorities as to whether they shall adjust their assessable values to the new increases in rents, or whether they shall let the property 'owners iet away .with the full thirty per cent., ultimately the full forty per cent., as the Rent Act evidently intends, since it makes no mention of liability to re-assessment. As the rating law at present stands, overseers are clearly entitled re-vtilue, for assessment purposes, the income, of which has Aaried. property If they do se,—and I understand that some overseers in this district are preparing to do 50,,--when they are m,ulcted in the increased rate, will the landlords declare it post-war "excess" and Pass it to the tenant? Will the tenant have to pay the thirty per cent. '(and next year the forty par cent.) and tax on it as well? Property owners would be unwise to bring about such a toss_ tion, but then, the cynical reflection occurs to me that property Owners are neisarily unwise or they would not be PrePerty owners.  The Harvest. What Mr. Mantalini would call the deinned unpleasant moisture has come back afar only a week of perfect harvest weather. It has, however, been a most valuable intermission of the cold and the rain, and much has been done in the fields. The last remnant of the hay has been gathered, and in spite of everything has been recovered in fairly good condition. The corn has been. perfectly ripened, and just another spell of. fine weather will serve to see the beet harvest for years safely ingathered. Of courge, the farmers will tell you that there never was and never can .be a "best harvest." Indeed, the perfect harvest has "yet to be," to use Councillor Cliff's darling phrase; but then, so has the perfect farmer. We have to take both farmers and harvests as we find them, and we arc very well pleased with this harvest, whatever may be our private sentiments about the farmers.