RATS! RATS! RATS!

NZ Truth, Issue 882, 21 October 1922, Page 5

RATS! RATS! RATS!

WANTED A PIED PIPER

Wjiere Mayor Wright Is Wrong

MURPHY MISSES HIS MONEY

Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats^ Brown rats, black rats, grey rats, tawny rats, Grave old plodders, gay yjfrung friskers, Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins, Cocking tails and pricking whiskers, Families by tens and dozens, Brothers, sisters, husbands, wives, f Followed the Piper for their lives.

Who is the man, Jimmy Parr excepted, who most enjoyed and profited by the plague rat scare of a year ago? Anyone giving the answer of Murphy, the professional rat-catcher, will be at once disqualified as a person entirely ■ ignorant of the facts of the case. Murphy, according 1 to his story, was the melon of that scare, the man who lost money through the booming, of his calling m place of reaping a harvest very ripe indeed for the garnering. He tells a strange story of his treatment by the City Council, a story quite worth telling, both m his interests and perhaps m the interests of the town— that is, If a mild jolt might wake the Wellington CityCouncil from its present peaceful, slumbrous and quite inexcusable attitude on the question of the city's swarming rat population. ■ According- to Murphy, -who", by , the way, has caught rats "officially" m half a dozen Homo towns and knows the' brutes from tail tips to eyebrows, he was engaged by the council when the scare came along at so much per week, the main condition, from his point of view, being that he' should give up his private practice, worth more per week than one might think at a rough guess. It was up to Murphy m the face of all the circumstances then disturbing (very slightly) the City Council, and 1 he agreed to the terms. From November until , last May the City Council* waged A FEROCIOUS 'WAR N upon the rats, and indeed the slaughter was terrific — we do not think. The campaign, consisting chiefly m the

issue of ;an arsenical poison — ■which the rats would not eat, though they would eat all round it — and Mayoral appeals that dwindled m force' as time went by, gradually fizzled but. Since then nothing worth a sackful of German marks or a drayload of Russian roubles has been done. The rats have carried right ahead m their usual keep-the-cradle-full style, and t once again the place is AS BADLY INFESTED as it ever was. ; . Now what is Murphy; s position? It was not till some very warm; correspondence had passed between the Health Department and the City Council that Mayor Wright and the •others round the table could bring themselves to give the tip direct and instructive to their cluan-u.p department. It is a good time, since that correspondence passed,], but even so it would- make interesting- reading as showing the eagerness of the City Fathers to keep a fatherly eye upon genuine sanitation and public health matters. ' Murphy joined up and he did catch rats, for instance, the following one-night catches .during the months December to : May (the names of the firms concerned are m "Truth" Office):— •A butcher's shop, Courtenay Place: 62, 60, 24, 12, 9, 14, 8, 10. , Another, Lambton Quay: 12, 59, 27. Tearooms m drapery establishments of standing: 10, 5, 11, 5, 14. Private houses: 9, 6, 4, 14, 19, 17, 15, 6, 12, 33/ 14, 13. A Willis Street building (very classy and respectable): 36, 33, 6. And so on. , He was ; for the time being a City Council employee, officer maybe, and when he hove m sight, everyone knows him, he was right welcomed: "Come inside and catch 'em, the City Council pays." And accordingly he did. catch 'em and the City" Council, did pay— up till 25th May, when THP CAMPAIGN .WAS "OFF," for several reasons... The council acl^ed up the cost and found it heavy. The town, so the council' apparently persuaded" itself, was a clean old town— lowest death rate m the world, bless you, except on the top of Mount Everest, where no one ever goes and so cannot die there — and certainly a lot better than some others. Thirdly, the plague had? not arrived and probably never would. So on 25th May. ■ Murphy found his pay envelope stopped and turned to his private practice for a . livelihood. He found himself still very welcome, but when he asked for payment, my word, they did laugh heartily: "Go to, thou scurvy knave," .or the modern -English for .it, such as this: "Don't you try to put that over me, old son, the City Council's paying you. Now you turn to and collect your cash from Jimmy Doyle and Co." Murphy, knowi.ij? that the "campaign" was off, argued, but talk went for nothing; he had dooe the job for nothing during the months from December to May and he could do It again or not at all. In most cases he did it not at all, though, '.as a matter of fact, he' still does catch rats m a few plaoes to oblige the people- iri them. What he waits the council to do :is to make it clear either that he is a paid servant of the city (which he is, not at present), and, therefore .at the call of the man place neer|s the once-over, ov that he is not (and he says he" is not) and should therefore' be paid by those, making a call upon him. During the past six months, thyn, he has.been off the council's pay roll and private persons will not pay up because they think he draws on official envelope. ,

■ He has N had a lawyer to work- for a I time past, but not a word of satisfac- ? tion has he had. He can catch rats,, , "Truth" has seen him at it once' or t twice, and either he is good enough ' for the council to keep on or he is not. He wants to know. His tale reminds one of the little story Browning had to tell about ihe Mayor and Corporation of Hamelin town, but fortunately Murphy works with dogs m place of piping; there's not much risk to Wellington's children, as therfl was m that case, except, of course, from rat-carried disease. As to the success of that clean-up a year v or /'so ago. It was, to be quite polite, ■/'.. ; AN ABSOLUTE FARCE. A. few proprietors were haled before the Court and ashed why they had failed to clear awaty the rubbish, m quite a few instances from stables ana the like. Minister Parr walked round and about and- swore great oaths that every eating housa m every street m every town, .every butcher's, ' every baker's, and so on and so on, would,, have to be spring- cleaned, rat cleaned, rat proof and sanitary to a vast degree. Then he, as Minister of Health, applauded loud am! long- when Mayor WrighUjoined- him— after much per'suasion| not to mention warnings am 1 , threats from the Hpalth Department— and looked up the power of clean-up as given by the by-law and decided that a more violently! threatonin^ addition, anent rubbish harboring rats, was necessary. What was done? For fi few weeks, talk, for a few weeks a casual inspection. Then less talk' and no inspection worth th^ name. Then no talk, till recently, of course. Minister . Parr's rat hunting was much more futile than his heresy hunting. He did- land- a few heretics, he reckoned, though not all of .them stayed to be taught, but he merely talked rats and thought rats, but, did not do much to s>et rid of them, m Wellington, at any rate. "Truth" will be very pleased to supply -either Minister Parr or Mayor Wright or any council officer, particularly one of the essentially efficient inspectorial star" .with the address of one town restaurant", a real ice-cutter, where the best people t eat and admire thn cleanliness of everything, where th? cooking rooi.* literally SWARMS WITH RATS, and where at night they "hold great revelry. - The pastry suffers, of course, but if there is nothing more than foot • marks they don't ' There ' are other addresses, hotels, butchers',, shops, boot shops a very, clas,sy.hos-\ telry m Willis Street; there are hundreds of them, but "Truth" has not all those addresses, naturally. There are yards of city pavements tljat havo subsided and collapsed on accou.it of the rat tunnels underneath. The council cannot see a aijfn of it apparently. . One condition 'Truth" will mako before it gives those addresses, and that is that, the by-law providing pains and penalties shall not bo put in*:o operation m • respect ot those premises, a few out of so very many. Thai bylaw breds rats m place of killing them, for now, a property owner or lessee whose stock of pests is far beyo«-l him simply will not advise the eoi'.n'cil lest a £10 fine be runbed into him, but if the council handled that by-law advisedly, why, the unemployment loan' would be wiped of£ m a week or so, for nine city property owners out of ten would be roped m. by inspectors at once. ■■•'. The business man i« not alone m what he puts tip with from the town's rat population. Wellington householders have a share. Even our good friends m the very best parts knowall about them and their filth and destruction. Once upon a" 1 time a paper man talked) to a city councillor - about house rats and was. told that that councillor did not believe it. He had none at his place and had never heard of others having the brutes about. Now, if that councillor wants a few addresses — no by-law prbsecutions, if you please — ttey can be had if he would only ask the right man. By the way, a certain leading citizen expressed an opinion that .a. certain amount of rats were good for any town, helped to keep the dirt down. On the lines presumably of Mark Twain's: "A certain amount of fleas are good for a dog. Keeps him from remembering that he is a hound dog." "Truth" does not worry greatly over a plague scare for the moment. The thought is of filth and destruction and ' loss m health and- money, though the dreadful risk of spreading foul disease is always to be reckoned up. Only one thing is needed to clear the rats, at any rate to keep them down to an absolute minimum, an inspection , ■ THAT IS AN INSPECTION/ and not a farce. If a man knows that a Magistrate will demand prompt cash payment he will clean his place , up all right, but at present either, the ' council's inspectors are overworked (of which they carry very few appearances), they do not do the job they are paid to do (which is an unkind and altogether uncharitable thought) or thej r do not know enough to recognise rat haunts m private houses as well as m business blocks, warehouses, restaurants, bakers, butchers, drapers, furniture manufacturers, fishmongers, Government build-ings, and a score more (and that last seems most probable). If they do decide to qualify m the Al efficiency class a primer course m the use of eyesight will be. invaluable, to the city's inspectors, and when they do get on the job, maybe a squad of them, no need to send a whole battalion, might' hurry along— that alone j would be a change— to the Zoo and I watch, the birds and- rats lie down together., Indeed it is a beautiful study, •' albeit on council property. From there they might walk, over to John . Street and then back to the Clyde Quay depot. By that time, providing they started early m the day, it will be evening- and time to call upon 'proprietors of shops m city streets. Particularly will property owners and lessees in' Lambton Quay welcome them with loud- cheers. Or they should it they do not. The clay will be vastly instructive, but probably no notice will be taken of a report if one is sent m. One inspector might do a world of cleaning up if he only kept his eyes open and saw that something was done when he did report. . This is the day of efficiency, . why not an efficient staff of city inspectors? When does the Health Week commence, not the "talk" week, but the "do'| weelc? If the C'ty Council will not /do the job, will the Health Department force their hands?