The Underground Worker

Maoriland Worker, Volume 3, Issue 91, 13 December 1912, Page 3

The Underground Worker

A SPLENDID FELLOW.

The Fat press discovers the.worker to be a splendid fellow on occasions like the Mount Lyell catastrophe, and praises his courage and other fine human qualities with superlatives; but the adulation merits a sniff. In the first place, public sentiment has to be recognised as a matter of business; in the second place, it is necessary by enthusiastic, applause to divert attention from the gentlemanly proprietors, whose cupidity may have been responsible for the horror. In this noble cause public subscriptions and general hullabaloo about the horny-handed heroes are extremely useful. Compare the lukewarm, or wholly unconcerned, attitude of the same papers when that splendid fellow, the underground worker, is demanding laws arid reforms that will serve to give security to life and limb in the mines, wiiih their hectio enthusiasm over the afflicted diggers after the' mischief is done. The only time the worker gets hearty praise is when he is dead and incapable of presuming upon «litorial generosity. Even then he has t>o be dead in large quantities. —"Bulletin."