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Gisborne Times, Volume X, Issue 932, 3 July 1903, Page 3

The brilliant and lamented Dekkcr, of Sydney Evening News, was a singularly tired man. Once, when writing an article on the Australian’s sad 1 want of enterprise and vigor, the draught from an open window annoyed him. Being too tired to shift, he rang his bell, and, pointing to the window, languidly said “ down ” to the boy, and went on writing. As the window was easily within the editor’s reach, the . boy didn’t quite take in the tiredness of his chief j 'also, he thought the editor said “ jammed,” and informed the foreman to that effect. Dekker was slightly amazed to see a muscular “ hand,” and two weaker men, heavily laden with tools of the screw-jack variety, bustle into the room. After a noisy and critical inspection, the myrmidons got their shoulders under the window, ami with a cheery “ All together, boys!j” sent the frame nearly through the roof aad themselves amongst the editor and inkpots. For a time, the den was a wilderness of astonished curses, and the editor tacked another paragraph on his article about the Australian’s waste of energy this time.

One of the best proofs of the excellence of the organisation amongst the Victorian railway men was the way in which the Melbourne daily press was kept in absolute ignorance as to the engine-drivers’ intentions right up to the actual delivery of their ultimatum on May 8. • That .was at 9.15 a.m., and in their issues of that morning both Age and Argus discounted the possibility of a strike —the former distinguishing itself by printing a couple of columns of testimony from “ well-informed ” sources in support of its own vehement i declaration, as set forth in a staring headline, that a strike was out o£ | ■the question. An Argus representative, who has since boyhood been a friend o£ one o£ the strikers’ executive, waiked home with the latter after the final meeting on the night . of May 7, when the last touches had 'been put to the strike campaign arrangements, but in spite of persistent and more or less adroit ques- , tioning he could not extract even a hint of an intended strike. Another man on the same staff nearly tumbled on to the well-kept secret through overhearing a telephone message from a railway man, in which, explaining his all-night absence from home, he said, lhe fat’s in the fire” ; hut, through inability to follow, up the clue and obtain information, the c^?- nc ® . wa ? missed of making one of the biggest “ scoops ” in Australian journalism. r A’ Sydney Radical paper comments as follows W. T. Stead’s spookish ‘ Julia ’ foretold, as early as March last, the murder of the faervian king. Why don’t these people back their spooks? Stead, if he had any confidence m Julia, might have insured Alexander s Me for a quarter of a million or so. lhe same with the American fain-fakir, Dr. McCarthy, who isn t going to make 3in. of rain at Broken Hill because that town won t put up £2500 ! Why, McCarthy can make £IOO 000 inside a month by backing his spook. All he has to'do is to buy a few thousand Water Co. and mining shares, then strßak irlong and fill everything in Broken Hill that will hold water, and call hackto lift the 25 per cent, rise that will havc taken place in the price of stocks Or lie might buy up the middle of Australia S for a farthing or two per square mile, and sell it in 80-acre farm and garden blocks, each block furnished with a fake of guaranteed 25in. rain power, at about £5 an acre Yet Stead wastes his time hawking a sixpenny magazine, and McCarthy cadges round for more thousands and doesn t get them.