ABOUT A LIBRARY AND A BOOK.

Maoriland Worker, Volume I, Issue 7, 20 March 1911, Page 9

ABOUT A LIBRARY AND A BOOK.

CBy G. McKnight.) Shortly after the "Queensland Worker'" was established a book department was inaugurated by that \paper. The (idea was. fto supply fcp workers good books at a. cheap rate. The venture was a success. Not only did the books sell well at all labour meetings, but men out in the bush founded the greatest circulating library ever known. ISach man carried a, book, and at siheaa-ing sheds, wool washing, fencing and dam-sink-ing camps these books were exchanged. The men of the bush unions became great readers. Even on the back fringe of the Never Never the first question traveller asked traveller was, '■Jrlave you read your booky" The second query elicited the date of the ■'Worker" he carried. This system of book lending did many tilings. It fostered a i'eehng of friendship and true unionism among busilimen. It led to discussions on books and the deep things, of life : to debates at waterhole;? and camping places. Wherever two

men met they talked of the things that matter. T/hus books and the '•Worker" found their way into every corner of the country. The solitary reader at a lonely camping place would carefully place the "Worker" in such a position that the next comer would be sure to find it. In this way seed was sown thart in after years bore good fruit. Ail who wished the unions well saw the amazing change coming over the men of tihe bush, a change that made an intelligent Federation of Labour possible, and which, has left and will leave its mark on the history of Australia. At tlhe beginning of this movement Andrew Fisner worked in a Gympie mine, now he is Premier of a great Grinmonwealth Then the "Worker" w-s a John the Baptist., now Labour papers are many in the land. Since tlhose days Labour has opened wide the gate "of progress and great possibilities loom large upon the horizon. It was by this bools: exchange I first became possessed of Kingsley's "Alton Locke" —a book which t-lie student of character and history can read again an J again with increasing profit. Many ltuo-w the book, more do not. It can be had for one shilling and sixpence, post free from the "Aiaokiland \\oi;kek" ofhce. 'Get it. It is not a book on dry economics. It teems with realities of the Chartist time, and is so full of noble, lovable characters, that- one feels better for having read, of them. To the young reader 1 say get it. To the old: Go and do likewise. "Alton Locke. Tailor axb Poet." A child living with, his widowed mother, a strong-minded, earnest Puritan, who loves iier children. Alton and his sister, almost as much as she fears, her God- Keluctaiiftly .she takes iuri- boy—for they are poor and he must work —and places him among the sweated tailors, to be a tailor and sweated in ins turn. Here you make the acquaintance of Crossthwaite, aiso a tailor and a Chartist. A quiet determined man who lias learnt life's lesson in a 'hard school, and so well that lie neither fears nor courts favour of any man. Calm, self reliant, willing to give his last shilling and Jiis last thought, to the great movement that is all in all to liim. You meet Sandy Mackaye, an old shrewd Scots bookseller, with his humour a keen jibes, and great knowledge of men and of tihe world —yet altogether self-sacrificing ani lovable. iou will read the theology of the poetical temperament as Alton hurls it red not at the parsons wiiiO' frequent 'his mother's dwelling, and which ends eventually in that stern believer driving her boy from her door. I'ou will also* learn how a boy of the people sat in bed far into the nigilrt reading, and stitching as he read, in order to be tibie. to pay for his books. How Sandy Mackaye educated him and w;hat came of it. ¥ou will see slums, sweaters, and sweaters] , dens, ana ail the awfulness of London life at the time of the Chartists. The poverty of the country side in the grip of a cruel winter, and also riot and burning. You will meet the cultured dean and !his daughter and niece. See the inside life of a complaisant place-hunt-ing parson; see him die with the coveted prize within his grasp. Ivingsley will guide you through art galleries and noble historic buildings ; show you the> beauties of landscape and pleasures of life. But he will also show you the heroic self-denial and sacrifice of the poor, and the avarice, fraud, and dcccit —both in the mansions of the rich and the fever-stricken ■hovels of the exploitedThe thought will strike you : How diJ Ivingsley, a canon of the Established Church of England, gain the experience vvhidhi enabled him to enter into and depict with such realistic vividness the characters in this wonderful book V Perhaips he possessed that great quality—known but undefi nable —which enables its poissessors to live in one< hour more intensely in any surroundings than the denizens theiein do in a lifetime. Be that as it may, one is sure tlhait having read "Alton Locke" you will part with tiie book never again. [Note. —Arrangements have been entered into with, a leading firm of booksellers whereby any book may be supplied to "Maokiland Woekek" readers at trade prices plus postage.— Ed. M.W.]