SHIFTING SPOIL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 March 1940, Page 5

SHIFTING SPOIL

DEMONSTRATION GIVEN BY MR SEMPLE

QUANTITY SHIFTED IN TEN MINUTES.

ON WHICH TWO MEN HAD SPENT FULL DAY. (By Telegraph—Press Association.) CHRISTCHURCH, March 18. Stripped to the singlet, the Hon. R. Semple worked on the Burwood golf course this afternoon with a longhandled shovel and a wheelbarrow on a time test to shift a given quantity of light soil which was reported to have taken two men a full day to handle. Although the Minister had done no manual work for years he shifted the. spoil in exactly 10 minutes. For all his 67 years and lack of- recent experience between the shafts of a barrow, which he has condemned as a relic, Mr Semple made fairly easy work of his self-imposed job. “I prefer to see for myself how the job can be done,” he explained. I never ask another man to do a job for me if it is sticky and I cannot do it myself.” Asked by the Hon. P. C. Webb, who was detained in Wellington on waterfront business, to investigate complaints of unsatisfactory work by No. 13 scheme men on the Burwood golf course, Mr Semple made an unannounced visit to the work this morning. The complaints which he investigated were that the rate of progress was becoming progressively slower and that action was needed.

To satisfy himself that some of the charges were well based Mr Semple paid another visit to the course in the afternoon after the men had gone home, this time dressed in a khaki shirt, flannel trousers and old shoes, and carried out his own test. What the opinions were of the work at Burwood Mr Semple would not say publicly today. All he would say was that his investigation led him to believe that the job was costing far too much and that the work of the men was definitely unsatisfactory. “I was not bustled when I shifted that six barrow loads in 10 minutes,” he added, "and I know I could keep that rate up at a Chinese jog-trot all day.”