Smoko-Ho August 24, 1895.

*THE WORKER*

BRISBANE, AUGUST 24, 1895.

Smoko-Ho.

DON'T forget the WORKER Enlargement Fund?

THE Vienna fire brigade contemplate introducing the bicycle into its service.

ONE-SIXTH of the total number of inmates in the Freemantle Lunatic Asylum are coloured men.

THE Cunard line of steamers which run between England and America gives employment to 10,000 men.

“ADVISER and adjuster of marriage and family troubles. Fee, 5 dols.”. in a new industry lately established in New York.

THE Municipal Council of Toronto (Con.) has gone into the fire insurance business with complete satisfaction to the citizens of that city.

THE Queensland Literary and Debating Union is going to hold its first annual literary and musical competition next Wednesday in the Protestant Hall, Brisbane.

DURING the year 1894 the income of the Linotype Company was £56,658. The net profit out of this amounted to £28,540. Up to the end of the same year the total number of machines made by the company was 423.

A MASS meeting of Chinamen in Sydney has been expressing its abhorrence of the massacre of Christians at Kucheng. “Allesamee,” John keeps on massacring with his dirty competition the Christians of Australia.

IT may be interesting to the Queensland Attorney-General to know that Michael Davitt did not shake the dust of this colony off his feet until he had received, as one of the mementos of his visit, a copy of the Coercion Act.

“FOUND, a £5-note. Apply W. H. G. Marshall, Town Clerk.” It is a million to one that it was not a bank instructor who found that note; but the WORKER is glad, at any rate, to know that there are some honest people left in Brisbane.

THE latest addition to the number of sufferers in the leper lazarette was, up to the time of his removal, employed by an M.L.A., who site in Parliament behind the members of the Ministry and is an active supporter and a dirty tool of theirs.

ENGLISH law made Stead, the editor of the Review of Reviews pay £100 for writing “Another rare rogue, in the shape of Jabex Balfour, was a good deal before the courts last month. He will appear at the Old Bailey, and then we may expect to hear no more of him for some time to come.”

SOME “honest” Melbourne importers have just been sentenced to terms varying from nine to three months with heavy fines for robbing the customs by spurious invoices. If all who are guilty of this crime were punished there would be few eligible to take seats in the Upper House.

THE wealthiest clergyman in America is living in New York. His name is Eugene Augustine Hoffman, and he owns a fortune of twenty million dollars. This gentleman devoted his life more to land speculation than to heavenly matters. He also owns the so-called plague-hole, a noted quarter for poor tenement houses in New York.

THE following is an extract from evidence given at a Maoriland murder trial; “Cross-examined – He (the accused) was a man who could carry a whisky barrel in his inside before it would affect him. His disposition was excellent, and he was not quarrel-some.” Ye gods!carry a skinful of whisky . . . and not be quarrel-some! Whoo-o-o! Next!

ON the 31st December last there were 1905 neglected children in charge of the Victorian Government, and 150 in the reformatory. Of the former 490 were committed during the year and boarded out, and of the reformatory children 63 were committed during the year. The condition of society must be rotten which makes parents so unnatural as to neglect their offspring.

TOZER, at a meeting in the Centennial Hall, Brisbane, said “his life was begun under the auspices of a Christian mother who taught him to believe that in his 'Father's house were many mansions.,” Which is all very well, Horace, but haven't you been in too many mansion's lately that were not your father's, and may not someone want to know how you got there.

PATRICK J. Burne, 81 years of age, a British ex-soldier in receipt of a pension of 8d. per day, has been sentenced to one month's imprisonment in Melbourne goal for issuing a valueless cheque to pay his bread bill. This poor tool of many years' service in the cause of wealth and oppression may be excused if his gratitude to his Queen is only on a par with the amount of his pension.

A. H. Barlow and his administration are getting some hard knocks from one Lumley Hill. “All I have to say,” says the latter, “is that the historical Tite Barnacle of the Circumlocution Office was a perfect fool in the art of how not to do anything, as compared with some of the powers that be in the Lands Department.” Good boy, Lumley, stir the barnacles up; they want it.

A PRESBYTERIAN clergyman at Geraldton, W.A., says that the pulpit is losing it's power “because the people saw so much wrong doing going on round about, concerning which the pulpit was silent; because the pulpit allowed injustice to be done without lifting a voice; because the people understood the pulpit was afraid to give utterance to any condemnation of the powers that be, however immoral they might be.”

CATHERINE Constance Poole sailed into the N.S.W. Divorce Court last week wearing a dainty little hat with a ribbon attached on which there glistened in golden letters the word “Liberty.” She asked for a dissolution of partnership because the senior member of the firm, who was also present in custody, was a confirmed criminal. This time there was no crime committed in the name of the sacred word on Katie's hat, and she left the court a free woman.

THIS is how a Yankee writer sums up the rational costume worn by the “new women”; “It is a pair of trousers very baggy at the knees, abnormally full where you strike a match. The garment is cut decollete at the north end, and the bottoms tied around the ankles or knees to keep the mice out. You can't put it over your head like you do your shirt , nor around you like a corset, but you must sit on the floor and pull it on just as you do your stockings, one foot at a time in each compartment. You can easily tell the right side to have in front by the buttons on the neckband.”

MR. M'Master: “I wish to make a personal explanation. On Thursday last, when speaking to the adjournment of the House. I stated that a list of forty names connected with the Fortitude Valley electorate was brought to the registrar's office by a person named Albert Hinchcliffe. On further inquiry I find that Albert Hinchcliffe was not the person who brought the list, but a person named David Bowman, who is also connected with the A.L.F. I have no wish to do an injustice to Mr. Hinchcliffe, and I have taken the first opportunity to put the matter right.” The WORKER desires to point out that Mr. Bowman is also entirely innocent of the charge of roll purging. He wrote M'Master to that effect and asked him to deny it from his place in Parliament, but the member for Fortitude Valley declines to again swallow the “leek.”