MINERS’ CRITIC.

Greymouth Evening Star, 20 July 1945, Page 4

MINERS’ CRITIC.

[to the editor.] Sir, —In reply to your correspondent “Bath House” I would suggest to him (or her) that in future when in searen of a nom de plume they use anothei house. As to his wish that the mineis should be buried in the snow, until they thaw out, by their own heat, here’s one miner who wishes that “Bath House” be committed to a place where the heat is so intense that he will not have to use any ol his own heat to thaw °^ Y °^f R C soN. Rewanui, July 19. [to the editor.] Sir—ln reply to our poorly informed critic I would like to explain various facts why the mine bath-houses should not be cold. ‘To start with I wonder if our friend has evei woikea in places where the water is over his boot-tops or where he has to take a change of clothes. Places where the water pours out at him and when I say pours I mean it. Perhaps he has, although I should not like to wager on it. I wonder* also if, when he goes to work next day, he would like to put those clothes back on and do another day’s work in exactly the same conditions, and then spend ten or fourteen days in bed suffering from ’flu, or maybe worse. No I do not think he would be so stupid as to do so I’m sure, so please don’t ask us poor cold miners to do it either. I’m not sure how many wettimers there are at the Strongman but at the Liverpool mine there arc, <on the average about twenty pair pi miners working “wet” and a ceitain amount of truckers and shiftmen. ■! don’t think it would be profitable tor tne State Mines if there were about fifty men off the coal every, now and then suffering with the. ’flu. It dqesn t matter about the poor old miner lying in bed with no money coming m. So you see my friends it is sometimes better to lose one day than ten I hope you will agree that it would be best to keep the bath-houses at the required temperature and save endless trouble to both parties. And my friend talking of snow, We have that too. Not always but enough for us. I worked in it six hours one day with a very cheerful blizzard blowing gently all the time. My pals and I went along to see the manager to see if he would pay us extra. We asked for an extra day (we believe in starting high and working down) and he said he wouldn’t consider it at all. We all learned afterwards he thought we wanted a shilling. We worked six hours and went home wet-time. One rope-boy was off work two weeks with frost-bitten hands'. So pal any time you feel like putting on a cold shirt with us we would sure welcome you to our enjoyable and much-criti-cised profession. Yours, etc., PROUD MINER.