*THE
WORKER*
BRISBANE,
July 13, 1895.
Australian
Unemployed.
The report of the superintendent of the N.S.W.
Government labour Bureau for the month of June shows that to the
houseless and homeless 7426 shelter tickets were issued for June as
against 7663 for May. The number of men working for rations at the
Centennial Park, Sydney, on June 1st. was 2398, since when
the daily average had been from 600 to 800, the number never
exceeding 830. The total rations issued for the June month of five
weeks was 31,076 to 12,472 persons, costing £2777
18s. 71/2d. This total for the month does not represent distinct
individuals, however, as about 75 per cent of the men are relieved
day after day. Many of the men so employed are described by the
superintendent as respectable and decent. A large number, too, are
business men, clerks, and accountants who have seen better days, and
who express gratification at being allowed to work in preference to
receiving pauper rations. [Labour papers in Great Britain please
publish as a set-off to the statements of colonial Agent Generals in
London about the States of the Labour markets in Australia.]
______________
Smoko-Ho.
IT is said that a certain Queensland newspaper offered
to go into mourning for a defunct local magnate; price £2.
POLITICS in N.S.W.
at the present time look like a fight to a finish between the
Legislative Assembly and the crusted fogies of the Upper Chamber.
THE American beef
trust, consisting of the firms of Armour and Co., Nelson, Morris and
Co., and Swift and Co., is said to make an annual profit of
£1,300,000.
THE general
secretary of the A.L.F. Has received the sum of £5
5s., collected by Mr. J. M'Veity, at Evesham, in aid of an old friend
in distress named W. Adams.
ON Michael Davitt's
arrival in Sydney the Australasian Labour Federation, the Federated
Seaman's Union, together with other societies, presented him with
addresses of welcome.
THE squatters are
jubilant over the rise in the price of wool in the London market.
They should let the rouseabouts wages rise also, and then the
jubilation would be more general.
IN Greeley colony,
Colorado, US., anyone, who sells intoxicating liquor invalidates his
title to the soil. The Queensland whisky party would not get on very
well in that part of the world.
WHEN the
collection-plate was being handed round in a Melbourne Church on last
Sunday a man seized a handful of the silver coins and tried to bolt
with them. The forced loan did not come off.
AT the sheep show
held in Sydney during this week the president, in an opening speech,
stated that 90 years ago there were only 1531 sheep in Australia. At
the present time there are 120,000,000 out of a total of 520,000,000
in the whole world.
“It is pleasant
to think, too, that her Majesty the Queen pays the postage on every
private letter she sends away,”- London paper. Rather liberal of
the old lady, certainly, considering she receives somewhere about
£600,000 per year as
salary. What say you, Grimes?
THE Privy Council of
Great Britain has upheld the appeal of the Japanese Government, in
which the latter claimed £170,000,
damages against the P. and O. Co. for the sinking of a torpedo
cruiser by one of the company's steamers during the late war. The
coolie crews will have to work harder to pull up the dividends.
LABOUR Member
M'Donald informed the Legislative Assembly last week that during the
1891 bush strike there was a kind of leg-iron introduced for the use
of union prisoners which is known as the “Lyre-bird leg-iron.”
Readers of the WORKER who don't see the print are requested to
communicate with Colonial Secretary Tozer.
MICHAEL Davitt
arrived in Sydney last Saturday and met with a splendid reception.
Over 10,000 persons assembled at the railway station and cheered the
Irish patriot. A procession of the Hibernian Society and trade unions
conveyed him to the Grosvener Hotel, from the balcony of which he
delivered an address to a large concourse of people.
THE N.Z. Observer
of the 8th June, in giving a favourable criticism to a
clever little sketch appearing in the WORKER, over the signature of
“Victor Zeal,” states that the author is “Mrs. J. Hawker
Wilson, of Rotorua, a lady who is gifted with considerable literary
ability.” The N.Z. Observer is
wrong. The author is a New Zealander, but not the lady in question.
WAR-WHOOP of the
N.S.W. Premier to the electors of the King division, Sydney: “How
can the MacLaurine, the O'Connors, the Heydone, the Jacobs, the
Salomons, the Davis and the Dangers of our Upper House imagine that
men sprung from a race which Plantagenets, and Tudors, and Stuarts
could not subdue will bow the knees to them? Do they think
Australians so degenerate as to be afraid of puppets of their own
creation?”
“C” WRITES under
date June 17: “From St. George to the Boatman station, with the
little township of the Bollon in a very sleepy state between, is a
good tramp of 170 miles. The only place between where work is going
on is at Bindy Bangs station. When I passed three contracts for
ringbarking were let. On two the men were getting 20s. and on the
other, that of Broomfield and Sullivan, 25s. The men here are, I
believe, guaranteed their wages.”
IN the evidence
given before the Victorian Banking Commission one of the witnesses,
referring to the number and manner in which many struggling farmers
were evicted by the banks, said: “If all these men who had been
subjected to this treatment lived closer together there would have
been such a row as there was in Ireland. What had prevented this was
the fact that they were all isolated. If he were one of these men he
would simply say to these bank men, 'I am doing my best to pay, and
my storekeeper has offered you your interest.'”
THE
re-union of the churches and the activity of religious missionaries
is causing a lot of discussion in Sydney just now. Lecturing on this
matter one clergyman, describing the spiritual enterprise of the
missionaries of another denomination, said; “We have heard of
missionary vessels whose bills of lading showed a spiritual cargo
indeed, but spiritual in the sense of casks of whisky and wine and
rum, much more than in the number of Bibles. A Sydney paper of March
27, 1880, gives the following bill of lading of the missionary ship
John Williams, of which we have heard a good deal lately, then
sailing from the port of Sydney: '1 case wine, 1 case port, 2 cases
ale and stout, 25 cases claret, 25 casks whisky, 65 cases beer.'”
This spiritual impeachment is stoutly denied by the clergymen in the
opposite camp, and the printer's devil is blamed as the cause of the
false charge. Poor devil!
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