CALAMO CURRENTS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXIII, Issue 7800, 20 November 1886, Page 1 (Supplement)

CALAMO CURRENTS.

Tas sending of a trades and labour delegate p -land on a crusade against emigration *° oße0 Be of the oddities of the day. That is "h they have done in New South Wales, nd if reports are reliable, his mission apart to have excited quite an enthusiasm in p eland. The conception of the scheme was natural one, and that the labourers of a colony should make a vigorous effort to re vent the" arrival of competitors is F r stifie d by all the principles of self-preserva-tion which is the first law of nature, pot that he should be received with aphnie, and that his depressing information th»t there 58 110 place beyond the seas where the hungry can find food, and the weary can Lre rest, should elicit cheers from the crowd, is one of those things that no fellow can understand. To tell people who are elbowing one another in the struggle for the , crusts of bread which are all too few, that there are no crusts to be found elsewhere, may be very true; but it seems ver hungry comfort, and if the meetings ire enthusiastic as we are told, the enthuliasm is of a gruesome kind. i

But is it true ? Those that have sent the delegate know that it is not, and that the message, though in the guise of brotherly counsel, is as false as it is cruel in its selfishness. Nobody questions that there is hardship in the colonies, and that there are times of depression anil of want of work. But that destitution,as that word is understood at home, with its constituents of cold and hunger, of compulsory idleness and absolute hopelessness, is chronic or even found in the colonies, is a misrepresentation that nothing warrants. And bad as is the selfishness of the landlowers denounced by the labour delegate, it is nothing to the cold-blooded heartiessness of those who send a man away from the colonies with falsehood on his lips, to persuade the wretched suffering poor of crowded England to not come out to the colonies, where for every honest and industrious man there is not only limitless elbow room, but food and home and competence and comfort. The selfishness _cf capital is bad enough, but the tender mercies of Demos are cruel.

The action of the trades and labour associations towards the doctors is another incident that throws a dark shadow over the principles that aotuata the assemblies of our >*ew Zealand knights of labour. If there is any one thing that more than all besides excites the indignation of the • trades and labour unions it is the importation of cheap labour from beyond the seas to beat down the price of service in the colony. But it is the very course that is contemplated by the friendly societies to crush the members of the medical profession. The scale of remuneration from members of friendly societies has been fixed by the Doctor's Union at so much ; but the trades unionists, deeming the remuneration excessive, are about to import cheap doctors from beyond the seas who may prepared to tike the lower wage fixed by their employers of the trades societies.

It is amazing how principles alter according to their application ; and human nature is the same under all circumstances. The principles of trades' unionism, which are antagonist to cheap imported labour, are accepted by trades' unionists as employes ; but let them beoome employers, and it is a horse of another colour, and it is felt to be a duty to use the weapons of the employer in order to beat down the wages of the employ 6. It is a strange world my masters.

The Salvation Army is confronted with a hydra-headed monster that has arisen In its midst, and which challenges the herculean efforts of the commanders of the forces for its suppression, It appears that courting has broken out among the members of ths Army, and reached such a stage of development as to threaten the Army with dissolution. But with a courage worthy of the cause, the leaders of the host have faced about against the new enemy, which, J venture to think, will give them as much bother as ever they hv?e had in fighting the Devil himself.

The Stiff-Council of the Salvation Army ha! jest issued the following stringent order :

—"That, in future, no sanction will be given to courting, or any engagement of any male lieutenant. He must get promoted to the rank of captain before anything of the kind can be recognised." Whether the recognising of the practice or its non-recog-nition will have any material influence on the conductof the members of the army in this particular direction may be a subject of grave doubt. Indeed, in our experiences of that tort of thing, the less it is recognised or noticed by a father or mother, or any person in authority, the better the courting goes on, and I am inclined to think it will be pretty much the same with the Salvation Army ; but if they think that it requires the sanction of the officers in command to facilitate courting, they must have acquired but JTery meagre knowledge of human nature.

But what strikes me most in this is the dishonourable selfishness of this staff council. It consists no doubt only of officers, captains, and others above that rank, and with an ungeneroasness that I should not have expected of the Army they mean to keep all the courting to themselves. "He must be promoted to the rank of captain before anything of the kind can be recognised." Now, this is exceedingly unfair, lor why should a captain have the right to go-a-oourting more than a subaltern, or even a full private ? They would like it just as well as he does, and this attempt to keep all the Hallelujah lasses to themselves shows a monopolising spirit on the part of the officers that reflects not a bit of credit on them.

But there is another thing that strikes me even more than this. There is not a word said about the Hallelujah lasses, nor the smallest restriction put on their courting. They may court away as much as they like; indeed the one-sided prohibition by 'be staff council seems to imply that they Wish the lasses to court as much as they c&D. All they do is to forbid anything below » captain from reciprocating the •Sympathetic glances of the Hallelujah Now, as from the earliest ages, & °d in all that we have ever seen or read of courting, it is never satisfactorily done unless there are two at it, ■his is a mean trick of the officers to turn We lanes away from all the young fellows, Md throw them, so to say, into the arms of 'he old stick-in- the-muds that have got their commissions. Of course if the young fellows cannot court back in return, it will be dry * or t. and the girls might be expected to 7e it up, and so be obliged to turn to the old ones. And this shows the meanness of 'be Council,

Bat can it be possible that the staff council think they can, in this way, regulate the "robbings of Salvation hearts ? They may ' tnow *11 about the devil and his tricks, bother him at every turn, but they must now precious little about the girls. Why 1118 is the very thing that will make them ®°art»)lthe more; and, in pure sympathy .? i pity for the poor young fellow litfl mustn't court, they will lay their , l ' e poke bonnets 'against his manly • o 'om, just to comfort him, and will set « big Salvation heart a bumping, and a amping, and a jumping, till he won't know ' Hhe deuce is the matter with him. fel , J D >t because he cannot court he will , * it all the nicer, as he bends majestically tha"** 0 the little pike bonnet, and, in all Serf fervour of religious emotion, fulfils the £ ura ' injunction, greet one another with e Kiss of charity. Hallelujah.

«o, they musn't court, these subalterns, 4 there is nothing enjoining them to «vent the Hallelujah lasses from courting ; though "nothing of the kind can be by the Council it does nob « ' er > and from the very fact that the „ UD «I has sought to raise difficulties in Hat Way> from that wilful perversity of ' which is one of the charms of the r*w ♦ 1488168 will set themselves ib . e ' Car Y° cont rav(!ne the ordinance ; and, in thai "J** 11 ® 88 ®'f heart to the poor fellows do an a u' tcoart . and deling that they must '1 the courting now, they will set themlatte' Witll a Wl 'l t0 the work, and the ft. first* of that army will be worse than

I The playful habit they have of shearing each other's sheep in the Wade district was S nearlv getting an honest settler into trouble. He was brought up,, he and hia family, at the Police Court, but fortunately for him, the justices on the occasion, being accustomed to the ways of the place, decided that in shearing his neighbours' sheep, and bagging the fleeces, no had no felonious intention. It is to be "noted, that the prosecutor on the occasion wan » comparative stranger to the district, or he would never have thought of prosecuting a decent man in an action which, however it may be regarded in other districts, is no offence against law or morals at the Wade. He had been only six weeks in those parts, having recently purchased the farm and stock of another settler, who admitted that he had sold out and left the district solely because of this local usage of a neighbourly shearing of sheep. His predeoessor had also lost sheep themselves, the carcases having been retained after the fleece had been previously removed. In this way half his flock had gone, but true to the traditions of the Wade he was a reluctant witness in the prosecution. He bad spoken, he said, to his neighbour on the subject of taking his fleeces and his sheep, but "he did not blame him," which shows the kindly socialism which reigns in those parts. His abandoning the district did not •how that he altogether approved of the practice as conducive to profitable farming, but sooner than disturb the harmony existing in the place on the subject of fleeces, he retired. His successor, who had bought in his farm is evidently of a more churlish nature, and inaugurated his accession—like Dr. Cremonini—by instituting reform. This he has attempted by bringing a whole family before the beaks ; but as the magistrates decided that taking a neighbour's fleeces is not stealing at the Wade, the newcomer, if he cannot make himself agreeable in the district, had better clear out and go elsewhere. Pollux.