MINERS’ PAY.

Hokitika Guardian, 19 July 1926, Page 3

MINERS’ PAY.

FOOLISH FLAUNTING. SYDNEY, July 8. Minors on the South Maitland coal fields have found to their cost that it is a mistake sometimes to flaunt one s wealth. Some of these men, from the Ohl Country, sent Home among their friends copies of a photograph showing one of the miners seated^ at a table with £~, and £1 notes scattered about, and bearing the alluring inscription, '• Last Fortnight’s Pay.” This in itself was enogh to cause much excitement amongst British coalminers who saw it, but, to make matters worse, a.nothcu photograph was sent from the coalfields to Shields, in England. This portrayed a miner, his wife, and their youngsters, al holding hank notes, described as “ A Month’s Pay.” Only one interpretation was ,of course, placed upon the photographs by those who saw them, and that was the British coalminers who had migrated to New South Wales had found a new Eldorado and that, by Miday-like magic, everything they were tout-bin# was turning to glittering gold.

i That so many migrants are now arriving on the fields as to overload t >■ labour market there, is not at all surprising. To ask coalminers of the Old .Country to disregard conditions porVrayed' by these photographs and equally alluring letters, would he much like offering strawberries to pigs and expecting them to refuse them. I'or one field alone at South Maitland there are now 300 migrants on the high seas. Like hasty, ill-considered words, letters and photographs sent through the post cannot he recalled. Some of the residents of South Maitland are now wishing that they could have been retrieved before reaching their destination.