THE PREMIER’S COLLAR.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 51, 24 February 1912, Page 2

THE PREMIER’S COLLAR.

A- QUEENSLAND IDYLL. (Sydney Sun.) “Could you oblige me with a collar?” The rabbinical-looking gentleman, harmless as water, smiling blandly up at the verandah roofs, with his hands behind him and finger-tips benignantly touching, came down from the clouds with a start.

Brisbane is in the throes. Food is not; beer is not, most other things are not; and among them laundries are not. A Sydney pressman who rushed off to catch his train for the scone of the strike packed his bag hurriedly, carefully turned out all the clean collars in his wardrobe, rolled them together, placed them in his collar-box—and loft them behind. And every day after ho arrived in Brisbane ho worried the soul-case out of every man he met—for a collar. Surly gentlemen advised him to whitewash his nock. Fantastically-minded people suggested that he ought to borrow a piece of moire ribbon and tie that where the collar ought to be. Bullnecked persons who wore sevonteens cheerfully offered to lend him a collar, knowing full well that it would go about twice round the worried pressman’s wizen.

But the rabbinical old gentleman looked down and smiled. Then he tore off a bit of the smile, looked again, and removed the smile altogether. “Young man,” lie said, “you trille at a most i serious time. Are you aware that Brisbane is under the thrall of the rod rag and the working man?” “Yes,” said the pressman, “but I don’t want a red collar. I want an ordinary circular, two-and-a-balf-inch, double linen, up and down—or up °nly, if you haven’t an up and down—collar.”

“God bless my soul! Do you mean to tell mo you haven’t a collar?” replied the old gentleman. “That is strange.” Ho raised his beard and showed an expanse of scraggy neck. “Curiously enough, neither have I,” ho continued. And the smile returned to his face and spread right down to where the collar might have been. “The washing hasn’t come home,” he said, sadly. “I don’t think it’ll over come home.”

Brisbane is a collarless* city. Business men turn out in the morning wearing cricket shirts or sweaters, or cravats that did duty in the days of their grandfathers. But to return to the pressman. He buttonholed a strike leader at the Trades Hall one morning. “Tou’re a very nice chap,” said the agitator; “but what’s the matter with your neck?” He evidently had a soul for humour. Then’the weight of his' importance swept over him like a flood, and ho l6t out the equivalent of three stud-holes in his tongue and started in. “As T told them up at the Trades Hall this morning,” he said, “it doesn’t matter what you wear round your neck so long as your heart’s "good. It’s a great fight, my lad. We’ll draw the ‘Badger’ or we’ll break him. Ha! Ha! It’s been a tyrannical, ghastly, low-down game that they have been playing on the working man. The working man! The backhone of the country. The man who runs the politician, the man who is everything that matters in this sunny land of ours, the man who is going to beat the band in this very Brisbane, the man ”

\es,” interrupted the pressman; “but what about that collar?” “Collar be buttoned!” was the strike leader’s reply. “Run away home.” Later in the day the pressman wont out to “Ingleside,” to interview the Premier, Mr Denham, on the strike questions that were burning at the time. Casually the collar question came up as well. “What size do you wear?” asked Queensland’s political loader. “fifteen and a half,” was the answer. “I fancy I have a dozen or two left,” said Mr Denham, and forthwith ho produced from his room a whole galaxy, a bouquet, a plethora of shiny, snowy, lovely collars. “Take what you want,’ ’he went on. Gaspingly incoherent, the searcher after news and a collar took one. Reverently ho wrapped it up in a leaf or two of his copy paper: 'Tenderly ho boro it away, seriously considering the possibility of wearing it inside out, to show the Premier’s laundry mark. It is a relic of the strike now.