OUR AUCKLAND LETTER.

Franklin Times, Volume 9, Issue 785, 17 November 1922, Page 5

OUR AUCKLAND LETTER.

(THE WATER FRONT RAILWAY. (From Our Own Correspondent.) Auckland November 16, Despite the indignant protests ot" a considerable section of the public and the strong- opposition of the Auckland evening paper, there ap. pears to be every prospect at tue time of writing- of the railway connecting the wharves along the waterfront becoming an accomplished fact at an early .elate. Quay Streejt. as everyone knows, is) at certain hours of the day,, one of the busiest of our city thoroughfares, and when the passengers are discharged from the numerous ferry boats in the morning and are 'hastening to board them again between 4 -and 5 p,m. the crowding in the vicinity of the ferry buildings is pretty considerable. When the great Stephenson was asked in pre-railway days what would happen in the event of one of his engines colliding with a cow y he replied tfoat it would be ‘'all the worse (for the coo.” The result of a collision between the water-front railway trucks and hurrying ferry passengers is hardly likely to be any pleasanter for the Matter than a similar collision would be for the “coo/’ Possibly,, after the killing or maiming of a few people and the resulting claims for damages the Board, may decide tb,at the game is not worth the candle. RED TAPE. It was but the other day that John Fuller —Auckland’s own “silvery voiced tenor,” as he was kn-own of yore* returning to this city from the other side, voiced an indignant pro. test re.the red tape regulations qbtaining" at this port in connection with the landing of passengers from Australia, John let the authorities here know what he thought of them in the plainest of plain English. Since then another erstwhile Aucklander, Mr R. T. Michaels, to wit, has followed suit to Mr Fuller. AH the fuss that is made before passengers are allowed to set foot in NX declared! Mr Michaels, “may have been necessary before the war, but surely the time has now arrived when we’ can .dispense with the trouble of answering a lot of questions and of declaring otfr loyalty to the King.” New Zealanders ,and. others who land 4n Australia are not subjected to alii this tomfoolery and why it should be necessary here any longer it is not easy to see. The declaration of loyalty to King George, which overseas passengers are called upon to sign in New Zealand is, qf course, .as Mr Michaels says, no guarantee of loyalty rt all. Besides, took at the waste of money involved in salarying officials ! THE GENTLE BOLSHIE. If some of the gentlemen who hold extreme views on Labour questions could have heard Miss lonoff, daughter qf General lonoff, and who pxljived in Auckland recently with her father,, mother and sifter!, tell, the tale of what the family endured in Soviet Russia they might possibly have come to the conclusion that life in that unhappy country jusit now is not the picnic they profess t 0 believe it isj The young l'adly told, in her simple, unaffected way, of shockingly overcrowded prisons, of hundreds qf wretched prisoners dying every day, of starvation and disease, of the toriture of little chiland of how they (the ladies of the lonoff family) were constantly being threatened with a violent dqath. Happily they got away from 'that accursed country and from the Bolsheviks, whose methods and whose aims are so much admired by a section of the Labour Party in New Zealand. FIF)TY SHILLINGS A WEEK ! A country djairy company advertised iin the Auckland Herald a day or two ago for a senior cleirk who was required to be a stenographer and capable of undertaking correspondency. Wagey, £2 10s/ 1 ’ What a rush of applicants (there must have been ! Fancy fifty shillings a week for taking down notes of letters in shorthand jind then licking the said notes into shape and neatly typing or transcribing then. (Hours, presumably, from. 9 to s—or5 —or 6 —with perhaps an hour off for lunch —and eight and fourpence per diem. Vvhy, carpenters and bricklayers qan make, even now, in these- dull) times, their 18s or pound, a day, And they are at little expense in the matter of clothes. But a clerk must be neat and natty in his appearance, well-dressed in fact;, if he expects to hold his billet. Some two or three years ago there was a clerks’ union formed in Auckland. As 1 have not heard of it for a long time I conclude it has fizzled out,. What else was to be expected/? The clerks are not strong enough to combine and demand better pay and improved conditions. The clerk markets is overstocked and like.y to remain so.