NOTES FROM NELSON.

Lyell Times and Central Buller Gazette, Volume VI, Issue 289, 4 September 1886, Page 2

NOTES FROM NELSON.

♦ (from our own correspondent.) On the Wallaby. tfhe undersigned, owing to circunv stances over which he has no control, and which like all other crooked things in this world has a woman at the bottom of it, is leaving Nelson, but desires it to be understood that if absent in the flesh he will still be there or thereabouts in the spirit, and the readers of this reliable journal need not dread that my opinions will not be expressed. There will be this difference, my contributions for the future will be headed " Notes from a Back Gully," in lieu of "No tes from Nelson.''

Tne Unemployed. Nelson has for, I think, the first time had an unemployed meeting. It was a harmless sort of business. A few hundred people, mostly of the larrikin persuasion, collected on the church steps. The weather had been damp, the grass was uncomfortably wet, and the preliminary business had a sort of wet-blanket feel about it. After a while somebody plucked up courage to propose a chairman in the person of Salvation Brown. The party in question has, I understand, no connection with the Harmy, haying seceded some months ago, but he at one time held the honourable, if not lucrative, position of treasurer to the blood and fire Saints. Well, Salvation Brown took possession of the tipprr tier steps, (for chair there was none.) and his preaching and praying experiences stood fhiin in good stead; for he gave a lecture, from his point of view, of what the duties of Mayor and Councillors, Merchants and Storekeepers, and all and sundry was to find employment for their fellow men. He was fervent, but the odour of Salvation sanctity pervaded the atmosphere, and certainly that*!tnd the damp weather still further prevented any other season on the part of the meeting. Then an unemployed got up and proposed a deputation to wait on the Mayor, and another seconded it: and both of them were, I sincerely believe, men who were willing to work but who could not get a job; and I quite sympathise with them, but there are thousands more of then class in this Colony who have hollowed themselves hoarse for the sake of sending Vogel and his supporters to Parliament, and who if they only had sufficient knowledge of what just retribution means would only look back and confess that they only had themselves to blame for the present condition of the Colony. Up to this period of the meeting the sympathies of the audience went with them. But with the advent of the next speaker a sense of the ludicrous came. Councillor J. A. Harley came forward and very seriously lectured the meeting. He said he felt the position keenly, but speaking as one of the corporation he could tell them they could do nothing for the unemployed. He was one of themselves; he felt the times worse than they did; he had been in business eight nine or ten years, and was a worse man than when he started; ho came there as one of the unemployed. Here an indignant howl was raised and Councillor Joe retired. Then Salvation Brown asked for a shew of hands of the genuine unemployed, and about 16 hands were held up, and some one shouted out that Harley had his hand up. Then Salvation Brown asked them to come on his steps and put their names down which they did, to the number of a dozen or so collected the irrepressible Joe being still among them, and then they retired at the chairman's request to the ex-Sal-vationists' cabbage shop, and there made up their programme for a deputation to wait on the Mayor on the morrow. Next day the Works Committee had their usual meeting. Now this body has as a rule been a sort of chorus to the City Surveyor. But since last elections a change has come o'er the spirit of its dream. The Works Committee can now think for itself, at least some of its members can. And so it came about that this unemployed meeting was th-3 cause of a complete revolution in the executive work of the corporation. There has been a legend in Nelson for many years that the Bolder Bank is Tapu. That it would be high treason to remove a single boulder from it for any purpose whatever, but that to attempt to convert any portion of a boulder into road metal would be rank sacrilege. A Councillor of an enquiring turn of mind, who also had a sort of repugnance to the soft maitar slate which wa3 used for road metal, turned up the correspondence on the subject, now yellow with age, and he found that the only prohibition was that boulders should not be taken where they would imJerniine the lighthouse. A resolution was at once carried to the effect that a quantity of these pebbles

should be boated over and the unemployed set to work at converting them into H inch metal at 4/6 per yard. Thus it one fell blow were the unemployed question, the empire of the City Surveyor, and the sanctity of the Bolder Bank settled. Verily by their work shall ye know them. The public of Nelson have much to be thankful for—to the Lyell Times especially. Korari.