DEAD DARWIN

Hokitika Guardian, 21 January 1921, Page 3

DEAD DARWIN

- WHAT INDUSTRIAL EXTREMISM HAS DONE.

SYDNEY, January 10.

A .visitor from Darwin—a. man with big pastoral interests up that way—lias been giving the newspapers some interesting matter about the paralysis that has been brought upon that* town by the industrial extremists who nave been permitted to gather there.

Some .five years ago the firm of Vestey, impressed by the large output of the cattle stations in the Northern Territory, spent £1,250,000 on the establishment of meat freezing wtarks, and £1,000,000 on the purchase of cattle stations. Operations wtere commenced, and the future "of the Territory began to look" better. But all the scum of industrialism seem la gather in Darwin, and in no time at all there was sufficient of these undesirables at tlie works and the port to about take possession of the place. Wages are forced ’up and up until ordinary unskilled laliourers about the .vorks were receiving £OO a fortnight-and spending it in the hotel bars. Finally, the wharf men made it so hot that it cost 30s. per toil to load the beef alone. Tndustry could not stand this, and Yestev’s a few months ago, when tne Imperial meat contract ran out, suddenly closed the works. The Bolsheviks of Darwin were in precisely the position in which the carousing vermin on the-hog’s back found themselves when the hog died. They tried to live, like the famous people of fiction, by taking in each other’s washing, and when they did not work, they gently hinted that they ought to be a charge upon the State, Lately, they have been sneaking away from Darwin on every steamer —and it is possible that presently, when the town is a little cleaner, and there 'is a chance of importing a decent class of citizen, the works will re-open. Meanwhile, the town and the pastoral industry at the back df it, aro almost remarkably and pathetically dead.