THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1906.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXIX, Issue 8270, 25 October 1906, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1906.

Among the nrinor effeots of the dia asfcrous fire 1111 Wellington on Monday morning was tin temporary dislocation of a considerable portion of the telephone service of the city. The flames which leaped across a tolerably wide street and picked up buildings on the opposite side, and heat which aotually set the wood pavement on fire, naturally made short work of the leaden pipes in which the metallic circuited telephone wires are contained. They melted in the fieroo heat like ice on a eummer'a day, and many of the wires were broken and hung about the footpath and roadway in tangled sbeins. This is not the first time that Wellington has been similarly inconvenienced, and Mr Aitken, striking while the iron was hot, questioned the Government as soon as the House met in the afternoon, as to whether steps could not be taken to hare the wires put underground. The Premier's reply was sympathetic, and to some extent satisfactory. The placing of the telephone wires underground has, it seems, been engaging Jthe attention of the Department for some time so far as Wellington is concerned. Negotiations are in progress between the City Engineer and the head of the Telegraph Department, and as soon as a reasonable proposal baß been arrived at the Government will favourably consider it. The work will be ooetly and the Department is apparently not willing to bear the whole expense by itself, though how far the city will be expected to

help has not yet transpired. The telephone system is growing so fast that ic is only a matter of time when provision will have to be made for underground work not only in Wellington, but, in the other three centres. "In time" is of course a fairly wide term, but any hint tnat relief may be looked for even at some future date from the plague of poles that now afflicts the streets nf the four cities will be welcome to any one with an eye for the picturesque. The proper place for the wires is underground, where they will bo out of danger whatever happens.

It has occurred to many observers that while the lot of labour uomes in for a good deal of attention, a little thought might well te spared for that of the middle classes. Shan F. Bullock has something tc say on their behalf in the Fortnightly. Burdened and neglected in respect to education in favour of the board schools, he complains, with living dearer than it used to be, and competition fiercer and more unscrupulous, with a higher standard of respeotability exacted, and families claiming more in the way of amusements, holidays, and clothing, the demands of wives' and daughters, the necessary subsoriptons to the library and the golf club, the middle-class worker ia beset on all sides. What satisfied them 20 years ago, what satisfied their fathers and mothers, will not satisfy them now, and still less their wives and children. Ihey work harder, but this writer doubts it they are happier, healthier or wiser. He is certain they are assuredly pooror. "At any hour be tween seven and nine of evenings," he 'writes, "you may see us plodding home, pale, wearied, worried —still enrrying with us the burdens of the strenuous day. Probably not one of us will ever touch his allotted span of life; just in sight of peace and retirement something will snap—and then good-bye." He talks cf the haunting uncertainty of lite, the struggle to make ends meet. The workina man progresses while the middle class stands still. The workman soorns his neighbour's plight—"for we are incompetent, ridioulous, inept." The article as a whole is a foroible statement of a state of things which has, perhaps, not received the attention it deserves as' one of the problems of civilisation, and the middle-class social conditions it ha& evolved. It is signed by six others besides the writer, who designate themselves respectively solicitor, employer, insurance agent, broker, journalist, and tradesman, and profess to represent life in a London suburb.