OUT FOR THE BOODLE.

NZ Truth, Issue 98, 4 May 1907, Page 5

OUT FOR THE BOODLE.

THE WEST PICTURE PUSH.

How They Treated Their Employees.

Sock the Sports and Button-up on Charity.

The West's Picture people have very good reason to thank their stars that they came to New Zealand ard Australia. In fact, New Zealand and Australia have seldom received itinerant strollers with such effusive welcome as West's received ; nor is there any theatrical management extant m the wide, wide world tint can boast of having amassed the boodle that the West picture push have pocketed. West's struck an Eldorado m these parts, and the company is now a plutocratic concern that can afford to cheerfully drop out Of public sight and live | happily, coii'terited, and with boodle to burn for ever afterwards. And for b a viiig made its pile the picture push cannot be blamed, good luck, to them for having struck It rich. However, quite m keeping with the usual conduct of anybody suddenly raised from poverty to opulence', the I West picture' push are a confounded ly mean crowd, and their treatment of employees does not redound to their credit, but much to their discredit, not that the West's much mind. Nothing matters much now as they have plenty. The West's "struck it rich m New Zealand from the moment they landed ; and, of course, the Exhibition was not allowed to exhibit at Hagley Park, without the West's mercenary maulers being on the miake, and they accordingly ha)d a side-show m Munro's mammoth menagerie. One employee, who used Ito pound the piano from morn till close-up time, was obliged to work extraordinarily long hours, and did not even receive a cent overtime. As . I THE BIGGEST SHOW ON EARTH was closed on Good Friday, the West man was awfully wild, so he got even on Munro by opening earlier than usual on Easter Saturday, and, of course, the employees had to suffer. The pianist was the hardest worked of the Crowd, and as he did not receive any overtime-pay, he thought. the least the West management Could do for him was to provide Mm with' lunch that day, and the management saw the force of his reasoning, and assented to lunch being provided. It was provided, and two stale buns helped to keep up the pecker of the pianist till teatime came, when he had a decent blow-out at his own expense., But the greatest and ,the greediest of the West's people actions , was on the last day of the Zibishun, when it was pretty well recoernised by everybody 'that had anything to do With the' show, that the various assistants or employees of the Zibishun were to 'get a big cut out of the takings. If such was the case West's employees got only their bare dues, while other emnlovees and assistants got something to remind them that there was such a thing as a Christr church Exhibition m 1906-7. It se?ms to "Truth" that the West Picture push are a very mean crowd, who don't deserve to succeed as they have. Still, they are out for boodle and to accumulate such, pretty mean nnd contemptible things have to V.c dofte. '