The Manawatu Herald. Thursday, November 27, 1913. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 1177, 27 November 1913, Page 2

The Manawatu Herald. Thursday, November 27, 1913. NOTES AND COMMENTS.

Elsewhere in this issue we publish an article on the local port reproduced from the Feildiug Star, in which our contemporary expresses suiprise that no steps are being taken to open the port. It points out that Foxton is the only port in the Dominion not being worked. We referred to the alleged cause of this in our last issue and repeat that those responsible for local shipping are the victims of a colossal piece of bluff by a lew irresponsibles who have, apparently, succeeded in causing considerable inconvenience and loss to millers, trrdesmen and the public. How much longer are they going to suffer this humiliation by a handful of men whose services are in no wise indispensible to the working of the port ? The public surely have some right to consideration. But this by the way. Our contemporary says ; ‘‘There are a large number of settlers who are enabled to save a considerable amount of money in freight by the cheaper transit by sea, and there are some lines in every day use which must be loaded with the extra freight by rail if the present state of affairs is to continue.” SoFeilding, through the unfortunate hold-up has, at last, come to admit the importance of the local port as a distributing and freight-saving centre. It is only a short time back that the Feildiug Borough Council refused to have anything to do with the wharf purchase question, and together with its public men instructed its Parliamentary representative to rigorously oppose the passing of the local Board’s Bill. Feildiug and district now feel th 3 pinch of the hold-up, and are the first to squeal ; they are prepared to accept the benefits of the port, but point blank refuse to share the cost of added shipping facilities and wouldn’t stir a finger to assist the Board in its strenuous fight to break the Go vernment’s iniquitous claim to the wharfages. We are not blaming our contemporary in this connection, because it has not shared the opinion of some of Feildiug’s short-sighted business men, who are now compelled to recognise the local port as a vital factor in their commercial activities. The Board should pigeon-hole the above for future reference.

Thk borror, tbe brutality, the appalling misery and distress that follow in tbe wake of strikes is vividly portrayed in an article contributed to a London paper by a special commissioner who was recently sent to Dublin. Tbe commissioner only bad the courage to visit a score of the hundreds of dreadful tenement homes and heaped-up one-room slum dwellings, where lived locked-out men with their families. After the visit he understood why a man went out to meet death under a policeman’s bludgeon, while his wife and children sat in the travesty ot a home to await a slower undertaking. He went to a oneroomed house, where he was told that he should find a striker, his wife and two children. It was at the top of a tenement building, where humans live who have to herd like pigs. Haggard, halfclothed women, and hungry, almost naked children stared from evil-smelling dens as he climbed the greasy, quaking stairs. The door he sought was opened by a girl of n, with-a whimpering baby in her arms. On the uncovered floor were two little tots in the last stages of foodless misery. They looked up enquiringly, then went on searching the corners for scraps of food. The atmosphere of the place was unbearable. The one had a mattress, but no clothes. Damp strips of paper hung from the walls. There was a table and a broken chair. On the table some half-gnawed crusts were all the food. The crusts looked as though they had been gathered from dustbins. The rest of tbe family were also out. “Twelve of us live here,” said the eleven-year-old girl, and then she went on comforting the baby. Tbe newspaper man hurried away from the tragedy and its odors. The sanitary arrangements of these tenements are inhuman, and to the last degree revolting. In another building was the mother of two children, lying on a mattress, dressed in a few rags. 1 he only bed covering she had was an old skirt. A week previous she was walking across the fl° or i when one of her feet went through, piercing the ceiling of the room below. Just by the bed the plaster of the wall had given way, and light came through a sheet ot paper, Xu Ibis dwelling is a

secoud room. The walls and the floor were broken, and the place was absolutely bare. The rent ol the premises is 2s 6J per week. Just theu the husband came in. The correspondent asked him why he lived in such a place. “It’s hard to get another place when you’ve no money,” was his simple reply. Thank heaven, we have nothing in New Zealand comparable to the state of things in the Old World.