READING TO MEN AT THEIR WORK.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIII, Issue 4368, 20 January 1922, Page 4

READING TO MEN AT THEIR WORK.

Upon an island in the azure Caribbean there exists a calling that must rank among the queerest of this.or any age. Men are .actually paid 5s an hour to read to other men translations from the works of H, G. Wells and other popular authors. The other men are the workercraftsmen pf Havana, who fashion brown tobacco-leaf into \jigais of every length and strength. One can imagine some Gradgrind fluming mightily that fiction should invade those galleries crossed with benches like a schoolroom. The islanders, indeed, will, with .their Latin gravity, tell you how a fore igm er coming among them did indignantly suppress a custom so unbusinesslike. Whereupon, haying nobody else to listen to, they took to listening to one another. They argued; they raised the forefinger of expostulation to the. forehead of'surprise; around them everywhere lay tobacco-leaf unrolled and forlorn. Grunting, the alien gentleman gave in, conquered by gesticulation. In effect—that is to say, in crude output—the efforts of this factory reader do resemble the welfare work inaugurated elsewhere by solemn professors ; in essence, there is a vital difference.

The reader is not sent as a sort of industrial missionary to the workers ; he is their own idea. They appoint him themselves; they pay him themselves ; they choose by ballot what he is to read to them.

Now and .again a Cuban M.P. may ascend the tribuna, or workshop puli pit, for an hour’s oration; the regular readers are generally students seeking to eke out meagre means at the National University on their way to “finish” in England if they be veterinary students, in Rome or Paris if they be architects or artists, in the United, States if they be dentists or engineers.

After a light breakfast of bread and coffee the tobacco worker is at his bench by seven o’clock. The reader is already there with a pile of daily newspapers—excellent journals that scan .the nations ofl the world. In the quiet cadence of the Cuban tongue he recites the story of the day’s of rhe recites the story of the day’s news — the luck of the sugar market, the doings of the National Theatre, the fortunes in Europe’s J.ai Alia (or racquets) game, the opinions of leader writers upon things in general. Deftly and silently the while tobacco leaves are being selected, held in the left hand, rolled on a hard board, clad in silken wrapper-leaves, rolled again and again, twirled into shape between tlhe fingers. At eleven o’clock the workers troop off to their mid-day meal, a tremendous repast in the Spanish manner, with plenty bf meat, beans, and Cuban sweet potatoes.

During the afternoon other readers mount the pulpit to conduct a session of a more “high-brow” nature. Translations of French and Spanish novelists, of Charlotte Bronte, H. G. Wells, and Tennyson are the lighter side of a programme that includes works on Roman history, sociology, and political science, liberally mingled with readings from Cuba’s myriad native novelists and poets.