MINERS’ PARADISE

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVI, Issue 202, 27 July 1926, Page 11

MINERS’ PARADISE

FLAUNTING THEIR WEALTH. OTHERS WANT TO SHARE IT. SYDNEY, July 8. Miners on tho South Maitland coalfields have found to their cost that it is a mistake sometimes to flaunt one’s wealth. Some of these men, from the Old Country, sent homo among their friends copies of a photograph showing one of the miners seated at a table with £5 and 1 notes scattered about, and bearing the alluring inscription “Last fortnight’s pay.” This in itself was among British coalminers who saw it, enough to cause much excitement but, to make matters worse, another photograph was sent from the coalfields to Shields, in England. This portrayed a minor, his wife and their youngsters, all holding banknotes, described as “A month’s pay.” Only ono interpretation was. of course, placed upon the photographs by those who saw them and that was the British coalminers who had migrants to New South Wales had found a now Eldorado, and that, by Midas-like magic, everything they were touching was turning to glittering gold. _ That so many migrants aro now arriving on the fields as to overload the labour market there is not at all surprising. To ask coalminers of the Old Country to disregard conditions portrayed by these photographs and equally alluring letters would bo much like offering strawberries to pigs and expecting them to refuse them. For one field alone at South Maitland there are now 300 migrants on tho. high seag. Like hasty, ill-considered words,

letters and photographs sent through the post cannot b© recalled. . Some of the residents of South Maitland are now wishing that they could liave been retrieved before reaching their destination.