The Daily News WEDNESDAY, APRIL 3. AN INCIDENT AND A LESSON.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 59, 3 April 1907, Page 2

The Daily News WEDNESDAY, APRIL 3. AN INCIDENT AND A LESSON.

The recent fearful plight of a minor in tlic Wostrnlia J'iist mine, in Western Australia is one that might set the most careless person thinking. Cut oil' from the outer world by llooilnl worldlings, heroic divers were able to visit hini, and to devise, means of i-hgijiu for liim. The point to he emphasised in relation to this drama of til • underground jvor'.il i.-, tliitt people an- too prone lo accept the everyday things of life without, giving any thought whatever to the tremendous di'llicultios and dangers that men encounter in many daily avocation,-). A party of gold-miners may, liy tin- tiling of "one .-hot, send up the dividends of mining shareholders living out of danger and in comfort with a hump. The shareholder rejoices at the i ) acreage in value of shares, hut, as a general thinu:. h<- has not the least, conception of what has really happened to make Irs hank balance heavier, lie .lues not see miners working in the dark bowels of the n'arth in an atmosphere that would turn a man used to fresh air dizzv and sick, nor has lie any con-c-p.-ion'of Hit- daily acts of courage performed hv miners who perforin them witli little thought of (her Who of us, when piling another shovel-* ful of coal on the lire, stops to think of the man who makes it -possible, the grimy hewer who daily lakes his life in hi- hand and who often enough never returns to the wife and family lie may have left above groundV Alodern labor conditions have made the man who wins wealth out of the earth and the man who gets the dividi.nd look upon each other as mere automata, to he expressed in money value. Tha carelessness of an engineer, as was demonstrated the other day,at Waihi, may cause dreadful deaths to men whose wages are never commensurate with the work they do and who would consider themselves well paid if they got the money an ordinary carpenter, who risks little, earns. We arc all too prone to accept the ordinary things of life as if they -grew in a coal bucket or fell from the sky. The housewife who makes cake doesn't sec • the niggers working in a vineyard to 1 pick grapes for raisins. She sees no

fields of corn growing, no strippers working, no ceaseless toii tit a threshing machine, no roller mills working, no sweating tin workers, no perspiring lard boilers, nothing but Hie ingredients she has .bought at the store. People may havo died to supply the wherewithal for the cake, just as people do very often die that we may have coal and gold and precious stones v,fhich are oniy precious because they are difficult to get and generally represent the work of people groaning under ghastly disabilities Comforts and a comfortable l.le are gifts Unit are- unevenly diffused, and the ones who have com fort accept it us a matter of course. Conceive, for instance, the position of a millionaire whose wealth could not buy the services of the people. Supposing there were, no people to biro and nothing to buy. The savage who depended on his own skill merely to bring him food and covering would be Infinitely better off because he had never known opulnuce and wouldn't ' understand il if he saw it. The moral . of all of which is mutual consideration. , Tile wealthy would havo no need or use for wealth if the worker returned to a state of nature. Civilisation is alone responsible for the cruelties of producing things we deem indispensable, if the gold supply of the world were to fail to-morrow we would still exist, and yet while gold is obtainable we chase it as if it were the elixir vitae. Men die, women mourn, children suffer and people draw dividends. And the drawers of dividends die, too, and are buried in the same sized hole as the sweated pauper. Who proliteth it?