MINERS' PARADISE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVII, Issue 5007, 30 July 1926, Page 3

MINERS' PARADISE.

FLAUNTING THEIR WEALTH.

OTHERS WANT TO SHARE IT.

Miners on the South Maitland coalfields have found to their 'cost that it is; a mistake .sometimes to flaunt one’s wealth. Some df these men, from the Old Country, sent Home among their friends copies off a photograph showinn one of the miners seated at a table with £5 a£id £1 notes scattered about and bearing the alluring inscription “Last fortnight’s pay.’’ This in itself enough to cause; much excitement among Briitish: coalminers who saw it, but, to make l matters, worse, another .photograph was sent from the coalfields to Shields, in England. This portrayed a’ miner his wife, and their youngsters all hoding banknotes, described as “A month’s pay,”

Only one interpretation, wiysi, of course, placed , upon the photolgraphs by those who’ saw them, and'that was thafc the. British coalminers who had migrated to New South Wales had found a new Eldorado, and that, by Midas-like magics everything they were .touching was* turning to glittering gold. Tha,t so many migrants, are arrviing on the fields as; to Overload the, labour market there is not .at all surprising. To ask coalminers of the Old Country to disregard conditions portrayed by these photographs and equally alluring letters would be much like offering strawberries to pigs and expecting them to refuse them.

For one field 'alone at'South Maitland there are now 300 migrants, on the high seas? Like hasty, ill-consid-ered words, letters and photographs sent through the post cannot be' recalled. Some of the residents, of South Maitland are now wishing that they could have been retrieved before reaching their destination.