MELBOURNE

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume XXI, Issue 1066, 8 May 1890, Page 3

MELBOURNE

The professional agitator is hecoini >jr a nuisance. There is a man called Fleming, a bootmaker, who is generally to the fore whenever the unemployed question crops up in Melbourne. This man, one would think, is always out. of work. O i Su: day afternoon got a crowd round him on Quee i's wharf and stuceeced in passing a vote of censure upo i that exemplary bootmaker the Hon. Mr. Ticuwith, M.P. for Riehmoid. Mr. Trettwith's oifence consists in the fact that when opposed to Mr. tie iry George the other day he asserted that I'iotection enabled the Melbourne bootmakers to earn x:i it week. 1, for one, don't dispute the truthfulness of thai statement. I am also certain that many clerks would only he too; glad to be guaranteed that sum. Mr. Fleming, however, denied the accuracy of Mr. Trenwith's statement. He said that 35s a w»ek was the average rate of pay -and if there are many boor, operatives like Mr. Fleming I do not doubt his statement either. T te fact that Mr. Fleming always figures amongst the "unemployed" speaks volumes as far as his owu experience goes Yesterday this irrepressible gentleman turned up again. When the eight hours procession was about to start he unfurled a banner, bearing ti motto of his own invention. The said banner was a dirty piece of calico, upon which was printed the words: " Feed on our tlesh av.d blood, you capitalist hyena ; it's your funeral feast." A desperate character must be this man Fleming, who, whilst deiying that the members of his craft could earn 3, acknowledged to3ss. But, when Mr. Trenwith asserted £3 to be the rate of pay, he was not thinking of men like Fleming. He was thinking of men who were willing to work, not of men who, when work is plentiful, tike their place in the rankso£ the "unemployed." Upon more than one* occasion His Excellency the Governor has quietly, and in the u.0.-t dignified manner, reminded You;!g Australia tlu.t without the efforts of their fathers, who bore the '>rnnt of the battle in subjugating nature in these maj-dfieent regions, they might not have quite so much to boast of to-day. in other words, his lordship does not seem willing to admit that all tlie prosperity of Australia is entirely due to the Australian native. Yesterday, when replying to an address prese:.ted by the pioneers of the eight hours* movement. Lord Hopetoun said: —" I sometimes think that in a young community we are a little apt to imagine we can do better than our forefathers. That remains to be seen, gentlemen, hut I think we should, all of us. be most gratified with the men who left home and came out Uere to a strange land, and, by their robust qualitita, foundid oae of the finest, oie of the most prosperous communities that the world has ever seen." His Excellency was right. The Australian native of to-day should never forget that what he now enjoys is a heritage, handed down to him by the original co querors- not a conquest of his own. As the disaster at Bourke (N.S.W.) exceeds anything of the kind in the history of Australia, so it is to be hoped will the assists >ee afforded the unfortunates outrival any similar eflort of the sort in these colonies. Suh.criptions have already been started and sen; to the " Argus." Broken Hill ltd the way, and others have followed. But, unless lam mistaken, before the week has passed a very ha sum will hare been raised. The money will he sei.t from the " Argus'* ctHce to the Mayor of Bourke, day by day, as it is received. Nellie Stewart, at prcsei.t pla.vit.jr at the Opera House, writes to say that she and her troupe will give a matinee—" Paul Jones " - -and the whole of the receipts taken at the doors- not the profits merely-will be given to the fund. Further, she will supplement this by giving a donation of £SO Of her own. Bravo, Nellie !