CURRENT TOPICS

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 223, 14 January 1911, Page 4

CURRENT TOPICS

THE FIREMAN BOTHER. Tlio doings of .-.hips' firemen are of interest to the whole public, for the people who travel by sra are 'wholly dependent on the man in the stokehold, liefore a great shipping company rose to its feet and defended its employment of Lascars, shipping companies generally regardid desertions of while firemen with more or less equanimity. Jt was all in the day's work, so to speak. The companies did not rush to the newspaper ollices with tales of woe, and the big papers at the chief seaports did not make a bigger sing about a deserting fireman than they would of a shipwreck, Whether there have been a larger .number of desertions lately than usual is not known, but that those occurring are getting great publicity there is no question. A modern shipping company is necessarily a. diplomat. Jt won't rush into print to say that' "no white firemen need apply," ill-' though that is obviously the plain English of the matter. In any scheme for the furtherance of ''enterprise" and larger profits, the use of the public prints is of .immense advantage, and if shipping companies report with the necessary detail and circumstance each defection from the stokehold, the public in its innocence may yet exclaim with, ono voice, '"Give us Chinese!" Seafarers, whether their work lies in the stokehold or on the deck, are in the habit of deserting. Many of our settlers who have won honorable places skipped dowin the gangway and disappeared in the old days. It was very wrong of them, of course, but there is the plain fact. If shipping companies, because of this old-fashioned evil, fill the stokehold with aliens, they may with equal reason recruit all the deck hands from Asia. Shipping companies are at presecit insisting that you shall admire the Asiatic seafarer for possessing the qualities that are alleged to be absent from the British brand. How very noble it is of the coolie wfo> h&is had the variation of caste driven into him through couutle«3 generations to ho humble, uncomplaining and obedient! How sweet of him not to desert his ship to" try his fortune in lands whose language lie dooS not speak and which place a poll-tax oil him! Hoiw splendid of him to go ashore and return sober in a port where hotel licensees would probably refine to be party to selling 'him the kind of alcoholic liquor he never heard, of before! What a precious boon .to the mercantile marine would be the manning of British ships by these faithful coolies! How wonderfully it would spur the patriotism of the British seaman and induce the belief in the British mind that the Empire was safe in black and yellow hands! If the Press continues to be good enough to support shipping companies in the blackbird and canary trade, maybe the white fireman will disappear. ThreQ I cheers for the red, white and blue'

— ■ POOR OLD BRITISH WORKMAN! Quite a number of people have got into the habit of believing that the British workman is the best workman in the world. These people generally judge by the quality of the goods he turns out, by the faot that every country in the world eagerly welcomes the British artisan, and that Britain's trade makes everybody else's trade look small in comparison. Kverybody knows the arm-. chair student who assures 'his fellow man that the politics of the country are rotten, the shopkeeper who knows exactly where the weakness of the Navy lies, and the street-comer expert who can solve everybody's troubles but 'his own. The other day that very great man, Lieuten-ant-General Sir R. S. Baden-Powell, made this tremendous remark: ''Good British workmen are getting rarer and rarer." If a British workman had risen to his feet and declared that good British officers were dying out and that advertising pays better than soldiering, he would not have been reported. It is hard to understand how a notable like the lie.ro of Mafeking found time to learn all the British trades so that he might be able to criticise the ability of the persons engaged in them. We know he is a soldier, an amateur actor, draws very capably, speaks fluently, wears a Canadian hat, is a perfect encyclopedia of advice on every subject, and has earned immortality by his work in raising the Boy Scouts. But he is British, and he held Mafeking with British workmen or men approximating to the type. Xobody thinks of chiding a great epigrammis't for denouncing persons without :whom Baden-Powell .would have to put his immense talents to practical use, for in Britain a titularly distinguished personage is .not so open to general criticism as the base-born persons who keep the Treasury full and hamki Baden-Powell his half-pay. We are promised a visit from Baden-Powell, and while he is here we might gv.'t his invaluable opinion on reafforestation, bee culture, sugar-beet growinu', bank management, and plumbing, it is hoped that his native modesty will not cause him to .withdraw from the persistent interview.tr, a la Kitchener, and that his advance agent will see that excursion trains are provided so that even the remotest buck-Mockers may leant bow to suck eggs from an expert.