FOUL PLAY.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 77, 27 March 1912, Page 2

FOUL PLAY.

The Minister for Works (said the Sydney Morning Herald on the 2nd instant) declares that he believer there has been foul play at the brickworks on more than one occasion, when attempts were made to spoil the kilns. A number of men have been ■lately dismissed as the result of the Minister’s suspicions. Speaking at a later date, Mr Griffith said: “.Recently, at the request of the Victorian Government, the manager of the brickworks, Mr Hutton, was sent to Victoria to inspect the State brick manufacturing plant, and report about it. Before leaving ho took every possible precaution to have the work carried on during Ins absence. On his return he found that the fires had been allowed to go down ,in the kilns, with the result that a large proportion of the bricks in one of them was not properly burned. Fortunately, ho returned a day or two .before lie was expected, and in time to retrieve what would otherwise have been a disaster. The fires in both kilim would have been completely out, and the contents spoiled, if he had re-

rained away as long as lie expected to.” Mr Griffith went on to say that lie had been able to prove nothing; but he felt that this, considered alongside other circumstances, pointed to “deliberate foul play on the part of somebody.” “Fortunately, on this occasion,” ho observed, there has been no serious result, except that twenty men have been sacked and [ a few thousand ‘callows’ have beer lost.” (“Callows” are the half-burned bricks). “On another occasion a chamber of ‘callows’ was discovered and on search being made it was found that one of the flues bad been carefully blocked up by a brick placed edgways into it. This is the sort of thing that Mr Hutton has had to contend with all along.” -MV Griffith added that he was determined to fight his way through. Moth kilns, he said, were burning brilliantly, and his .sanguine estimate of some time ago would, he hoped, ho fulfilled by the middle of the present j month.