ATLANTIC STEWARDS’ TIPS

Greymouth Evening Star, 8 November 1929, Page 6

ATLANTIC STEWARDS’ TIPS

ROAD TO PROSPERITY If . you should happen to be at a certain English seaport when one of the floating seaport hotels of the Atlantic arrives from New York you may a man of the prosperous business type, perfectly tailored and serenely selfconfident, disembark when the ship is clear of passengers, and drive away in a limousine behind a chauffeur in livery. He is the chief smoking-room steward (writes Sir Percival Phillips, in the “Daily Mail”). You may also see a man of different bearing, with the stamp of the sea all over him, whose clothes were evidently made for wear rather than ornament, - hail a taxicab or walk to the nearest tramway car station. He is only the captain. This is not an imaginary incident, but a plain statement of fact. The gulf between these two classes of toilers of the deep is as wide as that. The transatlantic ship’s steward de luxe is the only person who has satisfactorily solved the age-old problem of extracting gold from sea iwater. The road to prosperity in the merchant service lies not by way of the bridge, but through the pantry, along the alleyways to the millionaires’ suites, and up a golden stairway to the after-saloon, where cocktails abound and pools are made on the daily run. This applies, of course, to “blue ribbon” ships of the luxury class. Not every steward employed in them is able 40 retire with a fortune, but some do. The majority earn far more than

men in higher walks of life, where the essentials to success are education and technical experience, laboriously acquired.