THE SOCIAL GRADE IN A SHEARIN SHED.

Lake Wakatip Mail, Issue 2644, 28 January 1908, Page 5

THE SOCIAL GRADE IN A SHEARIN SHED.

A rude awakening would await the armchair Socialist were he to put in a few weeks' time in a big shearing shed. There he would find two distinct classes, as distinct as the East is from tbe West, which never meet—namely, the shearer and the shed hand. The shearer is like unto the centurion; the shed hand the slave who fetches and carries. In his time the shearer has usually occupied the lowly grade, commencing as " fleece oh," and he has fetched and caaried, and possibly has been kicked | and cuffed, until by a process, of ap> prenticeship in the half-hour spells he has learnt to hold and Bheer his sheep. Then he becomes a shearer, and under the old pre-bistoric rule, the rule that might is right, he keeps his heel on the necks of those of the second grade from which he has sprung. To the shearer the shed hand is a rouseabout, somewhat inelegantly termed a "lobby." He muit not sit at the same table as the shearer, and in many instances he does not get the same fare. A story is told how, years ago, on a Wairarapa sheep station, a shed hand had the temerity to ask the Chinese cook for some " brownie I .' •• Brownie " is a shearing-shed delicacy, as birds' nests are in China, and comprises a wheaten loaf into which have been shot a few currants. The request of the shed hand was treated with scorn by the Celestial chef, whereupon the hungry one invaded the shearers' table and helped himself. This gross sacrilege was the last straw for the Chinee, and his feelings so overcame his native love of peace that he boldly grappled with the invader, and to a frantic tattoo on that much-astonished party's face and head, he screamed, " Blownie ! blownie! I'll give you blownie, you louseabout."