REMARKS ON THE CUSTODY OF EXPLOSIVES, &c.

Kumara Times, Issue 2335, 21 February 1884, Page 2

REMARKS ON THE CUSTODY OF EXPLOSIVES, &c.

[to the editor.] Sir—-I see in a late issue of the Kumara Times there was a letter signed “ Carl Yortt,” in which he severely takes the miners of Dillman’s Town to task for the careless way they keep their explosives, such as dyuamite caps and fusees. The charge is one that he and every parent in the district should be ashamed of, for it shows a very gross state of immoral training when a father complains through the Press of miners not being more careful in securing their huts, so that their boys could not get in to steal the property of the miners in said huts. Now, sir, the miner’s hut where the dynamite cap that injured Yortt’s boy is supposed to have come from was, under ordinary circumstances, secure enough, that is to say, where children are honest. But, unfortunately, that is not the case about Dillman’s Town, for there are continual complaints of boys robbing fowl-houses of the eggs, and in one case of the hen that was sitting in her nest. These are the dear little innocents Mr Yortt calls on all the gods to protect from the explosives thrown broadcast in their houses, and in their tool-houses, down fifty or more feet in their claims. And if these houses are locked, these same innocent babies will force the boards off the side of the tool-house and carry away anything they may fancy. But they are not to blame, for they are taught nothing better. As to the child four years old entering the miner’s house and taking the cap, it is impossible, as the canister that they were in was on a shelf fully five feet from the floor, with a tight-fitting lid on it that takes a good wrench of a man’s hand to take it off; and when the said miner examined it, be found the lid on the canister just as be left it; so that if the cap came uom there, it was a bigger boy than a four-year-old that took them. But if it had been five shillings that these boys took, and the said miner went to their parents Oh, no! my boy 1 no! never! I; _■ would not go into any man’s hut; no, nor take caps nor anything else! But when they take something that bites them, then it is the miner’s fault for forming a volcano to blow these youn» hopefuls with. B.r, • bring up a child

in the way it ought to go.” If this was done, Yortt’s boy would not be lying in agony, and his father calling ou the thunderbolts of Jove against the miners who cannot work without the aid of dynamite. The greatest sympathy was felt for Yortt, but his terrible charge and calling on the gods for vengeance on those that keep caps or dynamite in their claims or houses has lessened it greatly, for there is no carelessness used by the miners.—Yours, A Miner. Dillman’s Town, February 20, 1884.