Letters to Editor May 4 1895

*THE WORKER*

BRISBANE, MAY 4, 1895.

Mail Bag.

WANTED – (to prepare way for Socialism in out Time):

One Adult One Vote.

Land Tax.

Income Tax.

State Bank.

Shops and Factories Act.

Eight hours day where practicable.

Referendum and Initiative.

Taxation of every person according to ability to pay.

The State to find work for unemployed.

The State to fix a minimum wage.

Free railways. Free administration of Justice.

The WORKER does not hold itself responsible for the opinions of its correspondents.

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ANDREW GEO. HOEY – Received yours of the 3^rd or 4^th April, but could make neither head nor tail of it. What have we done to merit your displeasure?

Bill S – Hardly of sufficient interest to our readers considering that most of them never saw the paper referred to.

E.Y. I. - Held over.

CLARE – Next week.

J. H. LUNDAGER, Mount Morgan – Timothy battle will be about Cunnamulla for the next five or six weeks. Write to him, care Post Office, Cunnamulla.

TRUTHFUL DICK – Thank you.

H. B. - The censor thinks there is much in you, and requests that if you can write more of the same quality you will send it along.

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ED. WORKER – I beg to say that the shearers of Charlotte Plains have taken up the case of one Joe Short, a shearer, who met with an accident from a horse and is now in a critical state, having a wife and two children depending on him. Kindly let this be known through your columns, as the amount subscribed here will be forwarded to your office. - J. S. Charlotte Plains shed.

ED. WORKER – I left Warwick on Friday, 12^th April humping bluey, and made two days to Stanthorpe. I met between 30 and 40 travellers, all foot-men, and as I spoke to them I found out they were sent by train from Sydney, getting a free pass and a little rations to Tenterfield. The poor fellows were actually lost, some without swag or even billy, and some barefoot. - ALPHA.

ED. WORKER – In your issue of the 13^th April you wish to hear of the wages earned by contract cane-cutters. As I was in Mackay last year I am able to give you some facts. There were men cane-cutting at Albana who made for five week's work 33s. after paying for their tucker. Another party at Tekowrey averaged about 9s. per week clear; and the best that I heard of was 27s. per week. This wage was made at Homebush – JOHN PARSONS, Muttaburra.

ED. WORKER – Premier Nelson asked the Longreach deputation: “Where were their wives?” The average bushman has no wife, and no hopes of ever having one, living being too uncertain out here when a man has to battle three parts of the year looking for good fish holes to keep body and soul together, or beating up into the trade winds when a few early sheds start. He finds a wife too embarrassing to have on the track, leading a water bag along. No! the average bushman is too frightened to marry. He knows what it means-more misery, more knuckling down to the Fat Man. When Nelson can show us how to earn enough to eat and drink and clothes to wear; when he scours our country clean of leprosy and quadrooms and octoroon’s, then let him ring his marriage bells and ask about our wives. We'll be there all right – JAMES O. HAMILTON, Surat.

ED. WORKER – In your issue of April 13^th in “Smoke-ho” column you dispensed a very obnoxious pill – obnoxious, bear in mind, to a large section of your readers: “Liberty of thinking and expressing our thoughts is always fatal to priestly power and to those pious frauds on which it is commonly founded. - HUME, celebrated English historian and philosophical writer.” Can you not quote a better authority than one who was the inveterate and malignant enemy of the Catholic religion, actuated by the inflammatory spirit of the so-called reformation period. Prior to the reformation, those grand monuments of this enlightened age-workhouses, with degraded inmates or paupers – did not exist in England under priestly power, the poor being provided for in hospitable freedom. In Ireland, through ages of dark persecution the (Soggarth Aroon) priest, in the dark glens and lonely valleys, has helped to inspire the people with freedom's hope and liberty's golden dream. Priests are opposed to the expression of thoughts-the material that drives men and women to suicide and brothels. - BEN NOONAN, Childers, Isis Scrub.

ED. WORKER – I read in last Saturday's Courier that at the Brisbane Literary Circle on “Problems of Poverty” the Rev. Osborne Lilley referred to his experience in the East End of London as tending “to convince him that the poor are much happier than is generally supposed. The world, he contended, was a very good world.” Anyone that knows the reverend gentleman would draw the inference from his pompous bearing, &c., that he would never lower his dignity and so bemean himself by visiting the East End of London. But be that as it may, his statement is contradictory to the one the Rev. A. C. Hoggins made in the Trades Hall the other night about the poor of London, viz, that their poverty was of such a horrible nature that if he described it to us we would not believe him. It appears to me that one of these rev. gentlemen is telling a falsehood about the wretchedness and misery of the slums of London, and I am willing to bet my bottom dollar it is not the last-named gentleman. Mr. Lilley contends that “ the world is a very good world.” No doubt it is for him. But what about the poor wage slaves and sweated ones in foul dens. - TASMAN.

ED. WORKER – A reward very justly deserved by the champion sweater of this district has fallen on his own shoulders. It is well known fact that working at a boiling downs is not by far the cleanest or easiest job offering now-a-day. This man was employed as a butcher when the boiling downs commenced operations. He was an importation to our midst, and was not by any means the most competent butcher there. Still, some underhand proceedings were resorted to, and the manager left. Blank brought influence to bear and got the position of manger at a less salary than his predecessor. It is said this man attended a meeting of the directors some couple of months ago and said that times were not so good as before; there was plenty of labour offering, and he could get men to work for 6s. 6d. per day, a reduction of 6d. per day on the rate then paid. The directors replied he was manager informed the men soon after, and as no other work was available they were obliged to accept the reduction. At a subsequent meeting Blank was present, and one of the directors said that as he (Blank) got the men to accept a power remuneration than that formerly paid they came to the conclusion the manger could like wise stand a reduction. They would, in future, allow him a wage of £4 per week when the works were occupied, and half the amount when hung up. Blank, previous to his acting the kanaka-driver, was in receipt of £4 10s. per week, whether the works were occupied or otherwise; consequently, when the works are going, he gets 10s. per week less, and when not in operation 50s. per week less than when he was the instrument through whom the working men were deprived of a portion of the daily wage hitherto paid them. SAMSON.