PREMIER AND PEOPLE. Why should they not Mix?

Free Lance, Volume VI, Issue 281, 18 November 1905, Page 6

PREMIER AND PEOPLE. Why should they not Mix ?

A PICTURE drifts across our mental vision. First, thers is a second-class railway car riage. In it are three ladies, witii four children each. They arc feeding them with bread and jam, and the children are squabbling for the jammiest bit. Over in the corner is a Maori lady of large proportions. She has been eating shark, and is smoking torore from a ripe pipe. With a blanket spread across their knees are four men, playing cards. They are saying words about "one for his nob," and other scientific things. • • ♦ Jambed up against the far side are two< gentlemen m frock coats Above them, m the rack, are their resplendent bell-topp_ers. There is another person, too, whom we had almost forgotten. It is the Premier of Mr. Hmdmarsh's dream, "who should ride in a second-class carriage and mix with the people. u One of the gentlemen wearing frocK coats is agitating a typewriter, and the Maori lady is breathing on him in astonishment. He finds that, as he takes notes from the dictation ot the Premier, they run something like this : "Tell them I shall take the duty off tobacco " — Taipo, I think ; kapai the little piano^-Your lead !" • » • Then, one of the youngsters caresses the Premier with a jam sandwich. The Premier is pleased. He is doing what Mr Hmdmarsh told him to do — mix n° with the people. He has so little to do that shark, and torore, and jam, and cards give interest to his flying passages. His railway ride done, there is a steamer. Thank goodness here, too, he can mix with the people, and not be haughtily exclusive. The travelling jockey can go right into the cabin, slap him on the back, and play dice with him for drinks, or the stokers off shift get him to sm s "The Weann' o' the Green," while they ioin m the chorus This overbearing haughtiness won't do. The other day "one of the' people ' rushed up to the stand-off Premier and said • "Hello ' Seen 'Red Jack" yet ? " With tremendous haughtiness the man who' has the axidacity to have a carriage to' himself, wher^ he can scribble a bit, replied : "Yes, and 'Liverpool Bob,' too ' Hello, Joe l What ho. Jack' How do, Bill?" There's aristocratic exclusiveness for you. The Premier is not entitled to any privacy of any kind. He should see a depn ■ tation every two minutes, and liav? a telephone strapped to his ear all night. The railway carriages he travels in should have no' doors, and should be labelled "Dick," so tha. folks: could know they might crowd right m for him to mix with them. • • * The fact that Mr. Seddon is known to employ nearly all the time he travels m furious> work doesn't count. Lawyers and thos^ kind of persons don't have offices to themselves when they work. They just let the door stay open, and mix with the people. Work is of no consequence. Sociability is the watchword of the profession On the other hand, one might make a sporting wager that if the Premier entered a second-class railway car-

riage, with his secretaries, and got to work, the average passenger wouldn't disturb him, and the "mixing with the people" wouldn't corns off. Of course, political candidates have got to say something new. Some say the Arbitration Act should be wiped out, others are m favom of medical inspection of schoolchildren, and all want to purify politics from the roots up. Ijp till now, we were under the impression that Mr. Seddon "mixed with the people" every spare moment he Had and often went without sleep on this account. But, now we know he refuses to "mix with the people," because he isn't in the habit of travelling m second-class carriages. Wo feel very angry indeed with him We haven't seen him on a workman's tram lately. Why is this? Surely, it will about upset his chances of election