Australian Unemployed and Smoko-Ho July 13, 1895.

*THE WORKER*

BRISBANE, July 13, 1895.

Australian Unemployed.

The report of the superintendent of the N.S.W. Government labour Bureau for the month of June shows that to the houseless and homeless 7426 shelter tickets were issued for June as against 7663 for May. The number of men working for rations at the Centennial Park, Sydney, on June 1^st. was 2398, since when the daily average had been from 600 to 800, the number never exceeding 830. The total rations issued for the June month of five weeks was 31,076 to 12,472 persons, costing £2777 18s. 71/2d. This total for the month does not represent distinct individuals, however, as about 75 per cent of the men are relieved day after day. Many of the men so employed are described by the superintendent as respectable and decent. A large number, too, are business men, clerks, and accountants who have seen better days, and who express gratification at being allowed to work in preference to receiving pauper rations. [Labour papers in Great Britain please publish as a set-off to the statements of colonial Agent Generals in London about the States of the Labour markets in Australia.]

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Smoko-Ho.

IT is said that a certain Queensland newspaper offered to go into mourning for a defunct local magnate; price £2.

POLITICS in N.S.W. at the present time look like a fight to a finish between the Legislative Assembly and the crusted fogies of the Upper Chamber.

THE American beef trust, consisting of the firms of Armour and Co., Nelson, Morris and Co., and Swift and Co., is said to make an annual profit of £1,300,000.

THE general secretary of the A.L.F. Has received the sum of £5 5s., collected by Mr. J. M'Veity, at Evesham, in aid of an old friend in distress named W. Adams.

ON Michael Davitt's arrival in Sydney the Australasian Labour Federation, the Federated Seaman's Union, together with other societies, presented him with addresses of welcome.

THE squatters are jubilant over the rise in the price of wool in the London market. They should let the rouseabouts wages rise also, and then the jubilation would be more general.

IN Greeley colony, Colorado, US., anyone, who sells intoxicating liquor invalidates his title to the soil. The Queensland whisky party would not get on very well in that part of the world.

WHEN the collection-plate was being handed round in a Melbourne Church on last Sunday a man seized a handful of the silver coins and tried to bolt with them. The forced loan did not come off.

AT the sheep show held in Sydney during this week the president, in an opening speech, stated that 90 years ago there were only 1531 sheep in Australia. At the present time there are 120,000,000 out of a total of 520,000,000 in the whole world.

“It is pleasant to think, too, that her Majesty the Queen pays the postage on every private letter she sends away,”- London paper. Rather liberal of the old lady, certainly, considering she receives somewhere about £600,000 per year as salary. What say you, Grimes?

THE Privy Council of Great Britain has upheld the appeal of the Japanese Government, in which the latter claimed £170,000, damages against the P. and O. Co. for the sinking of a torpedo cruiser by one of the company's steamers during the late war. The coolie crews will have to work harder to pull up the dividends.

LABOUR Member M'Donald informed the Legislative Assembly last week that during the 1891 bush strike there was a kind of leg-iron introduced for the use of union prisoners which is known as the “Lyre-bird leg-iron.” Readers of the WORKER who don't see the print are requested to communicate with Colonial Secretary Tozer.

MICHAEL Davitt arrived in Sydney last Saturday and met with a splendid reception. Over 10,000 persons assembled at the railway station and cheered the Irish patriot. A procession of the Hibernian Society and trade unions conveyed him to the Grosvener Hotel, from the balcony of which he delivered an address to a large concourse of people.

THE N.Z. Observer of the 8^th June, in giving a favourable criticism to a clever little sketch appearing in the WORKER, over the signature of “Victor Zeal,” states that the author is “Mrs. J. Hawker Wilson, of Rotorua, a lady who is gifted with considerable literary ability.” The N.Z. Observer is wrong. The author is a New Zealander, but not the lady in question.

WAR-WHOOP of the N.S.W. Premier to the electors of the King division, Sydney: “How can the MacLaurine, the O'Connors, the Heydone, the Jacobs, the Salomons, the Davis and the Dangers of our Upper House imagine that men sprung from a race which Plantagenets, and Tudors, and Stuarts could not subdue will bow the knees to them? Do they think Australians so degenerate as to be afraid of puppets of their own creation?”

“C” WRITES under date June 17: “From St. George to the Boatman station, with the little township of the Bollon in a very sleepy state between, is a good tramp of 170 miles. The only place between where work is going on is at Bindy Bangs station. When I passed three contracts for ringbarking were let. On two the men were getting 20s. and on the other, that of Broomfield and Sullivan, 25s. The men here are, I believe, guaranteed their wages.”

IN the evidence given before the Victorian Banking Commission one of the witnesses, referring to the number and manner in which many struggling farmers were evicted by the banks, said: “If all these men who had been subjected to this treatment lived closer together there would have been such a row as there was in Ireland. What had prevented this was the fact that they were all isolated. If he were one of these men he would simply say to these bank men, 'I am doing my best to pay, and my storekeeper has offered you your interest.'”

THE re-union of the churches and the activity of religious missionaries is causing a lot of discussion in Sydney just now. Lecturing on this matter one clergyman, describing the spiritual enterprise of the missionaries of another denomination, said; “We have heard of missionary vessels whose bills of lading showed a spiritual cargo indeed, but spiritual in the sense of casks of whisky and wine and rum, much more than in the number of Bibles. A Sydney paper of March 27, 1880, gives the following bill of lading of the missionary ship John Williams, of which we have heard a good deal lately, then sailing from the port of Sydney: '1 case wine, 1 case port, 2 cases ale and stout, 25 cases claret, 25 casks whisky, 65 cases beer.'” This spiritual impeachment is stoutly denied by the clergymen in the opposite camp, and the printer's devil is blamed as the cause of the false charge. Poor devil!