Keepers of the Harbour.

Free Lance, Volume XIV, Issue 722, 2 May 1914, Page 11

Keepers of the Harbour.

Response to the Call of Duty, Certain Personalities; and a Refresh - ing Strange Surprise. '

ee Lance by Frank Morton,) The spokesman says .that the objection is to a proposal that appears to be the thin end of the wedge to bring about the formation of a number of little separate unions along the water-front. • It is not a subject I am expert in. but on the face of it would seem that the deputation is in the right. There is on the wharf a lurking desire to. hamper 'or .overthrow the present arbitration union. ;If employees and the Board had to deal :/• with a multitude of small unions, thetrouble would be endless. The incident , pleases me, however it goes. I never "before saw wharf-labourers who looked so much like prosperous •churchwardens as these two do. Compared with a meeting of the City Council, this * meeting of the. Harbour Board is refreshing because it is so quiet, so orderly, and altogether so businesslike. These men are not here to fill in time_ or to talk to the .gallery. This meeting might be in Melbourne, or Brisbane, or Dunedin, or anywhere: There is no suggestion of a mothers' home league or an excursion "in the Ark. Mem-, bers go directly to the matter .in hand, and waste no time about it. I don't pretend to be a business man myself; but that somehow seems to be the right way. Perhaps I'm wrong. Something about municipal leases. Will skip it. ;h The Board wrote Mr. Massey a.glring for an indemnity in regard to concessions made on exhibits to and from San Francisco. A letter came back from a Mr. O'Brien, assuring the Board that any necessary indemnity would be given. The Board apparently held' that, though Mr. O'Brien is not Mr. 'Massey, Mr. O'Brien would do very well. Quite so. I have known a lot ,of highly capable men named O'Brien. At length I've found out who it is that Mr. Hindmarsh has been reminding me of all this time. In. my distant childhood days we had an old . illustrated Bible containing a picture of Tobit (or it may have been Habakkuk). Mr. Hindmarsh is exactly like Tobit (or Habakkuk) with his hair cut; and Mr. Hindmarsh has a cleaner shave than Habakkuk—or it may be Tobit. Captain Watson has very little to say about anything so far. Henry VJLLL. in his genial age would have said little more in the same circumstances. Mr. C. W. Jones is all for sweet reasonableness, common sense, and —what-the-whatsit-should-we-waste-time-for ? He helps to keep the business atmosphere , brisk a,hd clear. Mr. Wright, is argumentative and inconclusive as of old— the old style still goes with the new manner. At one point Mr. Fletcher picks up the water bottle as he rises to interrupt Mr. Wright. This is, I think, an accidental gesture, for Mr. Fletcher looks quite serious and calm. The Union Company wants more facilities for selling passenger-tickets on the wharf. It seems —oh, wonder! —that a. clergyman was robbed of a £10 note in the crush awhile ago. The parson who trusts himself abroad with a £10 note tempts Providence and has. not that gentle consciousness of his own simplicity that clergyman should have. I never yet met a clergyman with a £10 note. I have a lurking suspicion that that clergyman is a myth. He's against Nature. Where would he get it? Mr. Fletcher ■ can't guess any more than I can, and I eaten a twinkle in Captain Watson's eye. These are perilous times. And human nature, you know, is human nature. When a parson is robbed of ten pounds, every man will say that . it is very sad; but every man in his heart will be glad of it. That is because ordinary people do not regard professional moralists as being in the strict sense,exactly human. You cannot really sympathise with a monolith. So now you will understand why "it is that at the reference to the parson who was robbed on the wharf everybody sits up and looks cheery and spry. The Harbour Board is a cheerful body. No member looks gloomy and exudes pessimisms. It may not' be always so, • but one speaks of a thing as one finds it. These Harbour Board men are so pleasing to the casual onlooker that I am almost scirry when they get into committee, and I rush away to catch the last Seatoun tram, which leaves town nightly just about the time when the cows come home and stars begin to peep. I would to heaven that the tram service were managed by the Harbour Board.

(Written for the N.Z. Fre 11 HE Editor asked me if I had ever attended a meeting of the Wellington Harbour' Board; and when 1 assured him that I had never dreamt of doing anything so silly, he looked serious. He said _ that in point of interest meetings of the Harbour Board ' were not at all bad. I retorted that if he wanted me' to go to the dashed thing he might as, well out with it. He said tha.t was his idea., And so, you see, I , pub, on a thick coat and came out intoy ' the stilly night, and here I am. On a first glimpse, it. looks more, like .a directors' meeting, than a meeting of: a j>u,blic body. There is a businesslike air about things, and a noticeable absence •of formality and "side."' Mr. .Fletcher, thetehairman, is informality- itself —a man without affectations or • self-conscious poses of any. sort. . At the other end of the table, Captain Watson looks remarkably like what Henry VIII. might have looked like. if he had been born a few centuries later and named Watson. I like to see a burly virile Watson, because a Watson of- that sort somehow atones •fqr the Sherlock Holmes Watson—which •same was a graven image most inhuman. But—have you noticed it? —the world is very full of incongruous smokers. Here we have Mr. Fletcher and Captain Wat- . soil both smoking cigarettes—two men obviously designed by Nature to go with "black pipes and fat cigars. To see Mr. "Fletcher smoking a cigarette suggests the pleasant fancy of a young lion eating candied violets; hut I suppose that Mr. Fletcher best knows what's good for "him. All hard-headed business men in appearance they are —save Mr. R. A. ~W":right, who gets surprisingly more dapper .every day. This new or newish appearance of Mr. Wright as a man of fashion or sprightly dandyfied buck, is a constant surprise and joy to me, and reeks of political portent. - Can it be •that Mr. Wright is intent on stealing "the enfranchised office-girls and manicurists from Mr. Fisher? It's that or something like that. One of these days we shall see Mr. Wright adorning a monocle and pearl-grey Bpats. Business is business. The informal proceedings are at the outset of a settled dullness. Mr./Fletcher talks at length about the necessity of providing more accommodation for •cigars. My own trouble has always been to get more cigars for the accommodation. Mr. Nathan has a mediaeval Italian profile and eyes deep and liquid as the fishpools of Heshbon. He is the only member who, in the absence of Mr. 1 Maurice Cohen, can be accounted exactly beautiful.'- Mr. Nathan's beauty is, however, of the sort that comports with commerce and has a polish as of boardroom tables.' And so with Mr. McEwan. On a first glance he. is something like the late George Meredith; but when he speaks you realise at once that there is no imaginative artistry or that sort of dashed nonsense in him. He has a most striking and impressive voice, has Mr. McEwan; if he raised it savagely it • would easily reach half-a-mile. As I note these things they are all talking about telephones on ships, and you will -agree with me that I have no right to . bore you with such a silly subject. Tele- . phones nowadays are rather overdone. I was recently reading of a wireless telephone by which a man on a ship in midAtlantic could hear a man speaking in New York—as if anybody could ever be so completely at sea as to wish to> hear' a man speaking in New York! Despite his . distinguished appearance and poetic profile, Mr. Nathan is not an orator; I found that out in seven seconds the first time he happened to say something. At length a subject that promises some interest —the proposal. to form a Harbour Board Casual Employees' Union and the protest of the Wellington Wharf Labourers' Industrial Union thereupon. The casual workers are not pleased with the industrial union; they are opposed to "all extremists on both sides." They merely want to get their little way and . paddle their own canoe. Some of the protesting' members of the present industrial union are also casual employees of the Board. A deputation of two represents the casual workers in, the protesting union. The two do not look in the least like labourers, and the spokes- • man of the two is, it at once appears, an official of the arbitration union—Mr. E. J. Jones. He says that his union must oppose any union of workers, and he presents a petition against the proposed new union signed by some 84 of the casual workers now on the wharves. Mr. Fletcher says the idea is merely to form a branch union for men who are -exclusively doing Harbour Board work— not an entirely new union, but a sectional branch of the , present union.