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Waikato Argus, Volume IV, Issue 258, 12 March 1898, Page 1 (Supplement)

At the meeting of the Railway Classification Appeal Board, Christ* church, it was stated that the permanent wharf porters at Lyttelton, when working at night, did not receive overtime pay until they had, by working day or night, made up 48 hours’ work per week. It was stated that the plan had been ordered by the Premier with the object of more evenly distributing the work. The appellants stated that the system. pressed unfairly on them, and that thby were not allowed time off on the days succeeding the nights on which they had to work. One said that he had been continuously on duty from midnight to 5 p m. next day. There are at the present moment four young English girls in Shanghai, possibly more, the youngest oay 17 years old (says the North China Herald), who were married in Loudon to Chinamen, brought out by mail steamers as the wives of these Chinese and deserted here, aud exposed to perils which we need not particularise. One of them, quite a young girl, was lelt in an empty house with nothing in the world but her nightdress, her supposed husband having stripped the house of everything. She was discovered by a kind-hearted neighbour, who heard her crying and sobbing for 12 hours continuously. What can become of these poor girls ? They have no friends here, no money, and they are afraid to go home and tell their friends there what has happened. American ingenuity appears to be just as inexhaustible in the church as in the workshop. A preacher in New Jersey, so Munsey’s Magazine informs us, hit upon the idea of inviting six of the prettiest girls in his congregation to act as ushers on a certain Sunday morning, aud caused the fact to be pretty widely notified beforehand. “If ho had advertised a free song and dance performance the people could not nave responded more readily. The church was packed, and for once in our religious annals the masculine element predominated. Every young man in the community came, and was as particular about being especially escorted to his seat as lie would have been at a leap year dunce. And when the same six took up the col'ectiou the pleasant rustle of paper bills whispered among the pews, instead of the usual clink of dimes and .nickels. It was a great day in the old church.” The editor of the periodical in which Hie above appears is unkind enough to censure religion for “dropping its glorious dignity and scrambling for customers like a music hall oratKme museum.”