LIFE’S HAZARDS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXX, Issue 5392, 25 February 1929, Page 3

LIFE’S HAZARDS.

SOME DANGEROUS JOBS. The tact,'as revealed by the latest annual report of the Government Statistician, that premium income in the insurance business has arisen from £515,201 in 1922-23 to £1,746,934 in 1927-28, in respect to employers’ liability and workers’ compensation in New South Wales, is not in itself very interesting. But. behind it is the story of life’s hazards in a big city like Sydney. The dogmen, who, with supers calm and audacious sangfroid, thrill the “ rubbernecks ” eji the crowded pavements as they are drawn aloft to the tops of the city’s skyscrapers and sway about at the end of giant steel r.opes, are generally credited with holding down Sydney’s most, dangerous. job. This distinction, however, taking any pine big class of workers a s a risk under the Workers’ Compensation Act, actually belongs to the wharf labourer. The next most dangerous, job under the Act is that of the muscular gentleman who stands with pick * n hand and with statuesque; poise on t-m top of the city’s old buildings and demolishes them with ruthless encgy. The dogman, to the disappointment of an idolatrous, public, come simplv under a flat rate under the Ac,t along with the plebeian labourer, as far a=> risks are concerned.' In fact, he gets only'about 2s 6d a week moire than the ordinary labourer. So much for jazzing about in .the air at dizzy heights with an apparent contempt of death and with a calm which thrills the crowds below. So much' f° r t ie debonair dogman, whose job, after all, is not the most, dangerpus in Syd-

ney. Technically Sydney’s most, danger - ous job, taking workers’ compensation risks, is that of aeroplane testers -the young fellows who climb into the sky to test ’planes before they are pul into ordinary use. Wha ; t, in short, are known as the; “try-out” mem who, as a guarantee of their work, have, to test in the air .machines which they themselves have repaired. But these men, numcr.ically, and in proportion to either classes of workers, are fcjw as 'to cut little ice, and they do not therefore enter into any basis ot calculation under the Act. Several insurance authorities give pride of place to the wharf labourers as the men with life s biggest e\eiy~ day hazards in Sydney—that is, ot course, when they are not cmsstr ike. Their job is regarded, from the practical actuarial standpoint, as the most dangerous because of their numerical strength as distinct from, say, the isolated aeroplane tester, and because; of the fact that these aggressive aristocrats of the waterfront run ma.ny risks, and at all hetirs. Another costly risk under the Act is the steeplejack, but he is the type of workejr of whom one sees very little in Sydney. An ‘other, hazardous pursuit under the 'Ac is that of the steeplechase jockey.