Letters to Editor August 10 and 17 1895.

*THE WORKER*

BRISBANE, AUGUST 17, 1895.

Mail Bag.

Wanted – (to prepare the way for Socialism in our Time)

One Adult One Vote.

Land Tax.

Income Tax.

State Bank.

Shops and Factories Act.

Eight hours day where practicable.

Referendum and Initiative.

Taxation of every person according to ability to pay.

The State to find work for unemployment.

The State to fix a minimum wage.

Free railways.

Free administration of Justice.

The WORKER does not hold itself responsible for the opinions of its correspondents.

A.J.O. - Will look into.

CABOOLTURE PATRIOT – Well meant.

C.N. Wellshot – Letter addressed you, Ilfracombe.

DINGO,TAMBO; HANDARAN, Thargomindah – Held over.

M.P. DUGGLEDY, TOOWOOMBA – Send your circular to the Queensland Cabinet.

THE DOMINIE, East Darr Wool Scour – Poetry not suitable; but always glad to receive newsy items.

STATE SOCIALIST, Cairns, suggests that the Chinese are wiping out the white hawkers through being supported by white men.

C, BUTCHER , Mount Gambier, S.A. Writes congratulating Rev. A. C. Hoggins on his naive acknowledgement that he is only a leaner.

M. Gympie – Thanks for confidence. The other matter you write about is at present under the consideration of the industrial and political organisations. Always glad to hear from you.

ANONYMOUS – The Political Reform Union is in existence already. To do away with the Industrial Union would be very much like dropping the substance for the shadow. The workers require both political and industrial unions. Supposing men cease to pay £1 a year for a union ticket, and the squatters knock £5 or £10 a year off the wages, what then? We haven't got the public educated up to the legal minimum wage yet.

W. MUDDLE, New Farm, in reply to H. Jackson, Port Pirie re gambling, says; Queensland, as a whole, is not near in a line with other colonies so far as horse-racing and sporting is concerned. Compare horse racing in Adelaide with Brisbane, and you will find the difference between the two places, £80,000 going through the totalisator in Adelaide in six days and only about £7000 through the same source in Brisbane in three days. Therefore, according to Mr. Jackson's argument Queensland should be the most favoured colony, politically speaking, which is not so.

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ED. WORKER – Observing a paragraph in your issue of July 27 to the effect that a branch of the W.P.A. was formed t Lower Camp, Miclere Diggings, as secretary of the above association, I wish to state that the association was formed for the purpose of embracing the whole of the Miclere. - Wm. Shaw, Hon. Sec. W.P.A.

ED. WORKER – A dangerous accident happened last week at the Queensport Meat Works. A rotten, used up boiler burst. In the excitement and confusion the men ran for their lives, blinded by steam, some throwing themselves down too terrified to get up, others flying with their trade implements in their hands, headed by the manager, fearing they would never get far enough away from the dangers behind them. Unfortunately, two boys were injured by the scalding steam, and only that the boiler burst inwards there would have been a fearful loss of life. In the event of another such accident families of the firemen employed there would have little to compensate them for their husbands and fathers risking their lives at a paltry screw of 15s. a week and rations for one. Driven by dire necessity of bad times and want of employment men's misfortunes are seized upon by the octopus and greedy capitalists to swell their riches and fatten on cheap labour. Meat factories, as well as all other factories, should be inspected by proper authorities compelling these capitalists to disgorge a little of their wealth in supplying sound machinery and appliances for the protection and safety of human life subject to their control – MECHANIC.

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Mail Bag.

(From * THE WORKER* August 10)

E.C.W. - Thanks.

F. - Will appear as soon as possible.

T.L.R. - Did not get that letter. Will see to the other matter as soon as the party calls.

A. H. Red Hill – You haven't “a bad conceit o' yersal.” You may have the superfluous “that's,” “ands,” and “alsos” by calling at this office.

INGLEWOOD writes that Foxtoe never visited the farms in the Carnarvon district, and therefore cannot be an authority on the amount of tobacco grown by Chinamen.

J.W.D. Alleges that he received unfair treatment from the one Bullocky Tom, who keeps a shanty 50 miles from Townsville. He then had to walk 30 miles for a summons which the police neglected to deliver.

SEVERAL INTENDING PARLIAMENTARY CANDIDATES – When you are duly elected by the Labour organisations the WORKER will announce the fact. In the meantime, our advertising raises may be read on column 1 of page 2.

PATRIOT writes that the fines for employing kanakas at other work than in the canefields are too small to be a preventive. He says that the Government wink at repeated breaches of the Pacific Island Labourers Act in the Mount Cotton district.

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ED. WORKER – Tozer is hardly to be congratulated on his new list of J.P.'s. Some of them are daisies. One of the crowd is a dipsomaniac, and not fit to adjudicate in a dog fight. Last time I saw him he was taking part in a drunken brawl in front of a public house. - TASMAN.

ED. WORKER – As Queensland is on the opposite side of the globe to England perhaps that may account for the upside down way of the several classes of the employer and the employed in Brisbane. Labourers are working at shipwrights' work and shipwrights are looking for labourers' work. Joiners and housebuilders are glad to be employed at any inexperienced labour, while the non-tradesman is doing their work, “after a fashion.” Sailors and handy-men are sweating at sailmakers' work while sailmakers are looking for labourers' work. And highly educated men would be very glad to get any labouring work but cannot, yet are ashamed to apply for relief at the Government Labour Bureau. - RED HILL.

ED. WORKER – Shearers must be the hardest men in creation to be able to stand the wretched accommodation provided for them at sheds. It's a pity Miss Shaw or some other reporter for the capitalist or for the Board of Health didn't come and inspect the accommodation at some of the sheds on the Peak Downs. Kilcummin sleeping accommodation for fifty-two shearers consist of a large shell or hut partitioned into three, and absolutely unfit to herd pigs in, ad half-an-inch of rain will make the floor of the hut ankle deep in mud, and the constant laying down of sheepskins, old bags, and different things to keep the floor dry and above water causes stench enough to breed fever or even cholera. These things would be looked into in any civilised country, but in Queensland under the present rotten system man is a nonentity. GREABER

ED. WORKER – I beg to call attention to the fact that at the present moment there are no less than four Government agents now in Brisbane who do nothing but draw their £25 screw at the end of every month. As I am one of those poor, overtaxed, and one of the many unemployed who have a severe struggle to live at present, I fail to see why those four useless Government agents should not be sacked at once. There are no kanaka vessels wanting any Government agents in port just now-there are the schooners May, Helena, and the William Mason, all of which are laid up at present and are offered for sale as they are not required for the Kanaka trade. The four Government agents have been from two to nearly six months idle, and no one seems to take the least notice of the waste of money in the shape of wages that they draw month after month. - FAIR PLAY AND NO FAVOUR.

ED.WORKER – In reference to the paragraph published in your issue of the 13^th July;

I want a smart Salvationist. Shorthand. Single. Game to work 21/2 hours a day, sell Crys in pubs., write a paragraph or an article, do a report on a nail. Pay; A soldier's rations and shelter. Apply in writing, editor War Cry, England. Enclose photo.

I am writing from a place where they returned seven labour members last year-not to Parliament, but St. Helena. I wish to point out, dear editor, nearly all Salvationist, out West are staunch union men – men that have been tried and never found wanting-and it is hard when a few of us get work in sheds and paragraphs like the above appear, because men with no manhood or principle beyond their own interests taunt us with the following:- “There is your army, it is on a par with your union.”

To enlighten such men as these. I pen the following in defence of Salvationism is a work of love. Many the bright lass and lad have left good homes and billets and gone out in the world to stand the scoff and sneers of the people to try and save their fallen sisters and brothers, not not for the sake of gain but out of pure love, to try and do their duty towards their God and fellow creatures. They have faith that they will be rewarded in the ever lasting for noble work done here below. How different if our union was on the same principle – a union of brotherly love, not to be union men for ourselves, but to be true to each other; to have that faith in all men which characterises the true Salvation soldier. By standing together and assisting one another we would, in the near future, have our reward in having better conditions, better wages, better Government administration; and we would encircle the whole world in a bond of unionism and brotherly love never to be broken if we had faith. Now, dear editor. I will conclude this long letter, hoping you will insert it as I am a staunch unionist. - C. NUTT. Hon. delegate, Coombemartin.