CZAR OF THE CARS?

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12707, 9 March 1912, Page 4 (Supplement)

CZAR OF THE CARS?

MR BADGER OF BRISBANE.

(By M.A.S.K.)

Mr Badger ! Probably no single name has ever carried so much excited interest in the minds of the people of Australia as that of the autocratic, immovable, shrewd Brisbane- Badger. Perhaps it is not fair to call him Badger — to omitthe courtesy title. .For nobody in Brisbane would dream of saying just Badger. The '.Mr. is always used. Even the strikers, even the rabid, semi -anarchistic set up there, would always speak of him quite politely as Mr Ba'dger. And as for the 'gen oral run of the public, the average visiting spectator would have thought, to hear them talking of Mr Badger, that he was either a philanthropist who had been copying Carnegie to t^ucenslad's eternal benefit, or some great potentate from away somewhere in the dim blackness of a half-unknown, continent whose mystery, lent interest to its ruler. Hardly anybody in Brisbane has ever scon Mr Badger. Ask twenty men what his appearance is, and they will not be able to tell you. Maybe you would find oii9 in a hundred who had seen him and who had some sort of recollection of the Czar of the cars, but Mr Badger is not a well-known man in the ordinary sense of the term, not well known as a Premier is, for instance, or a popular actor, or a. negro pugilist. No one calls, him Bill or Jim, or whatever his game happens to be. Very few people know what it is. • Mr Badger has been in Brisbane a score of years, has been' the head of one of the. city's greatest services, is one of the best p'aid men there, and one of the hardest workers. But to-day he is practically unknown. His employees refer 1 respectfully to him. And tliat is all. Hero there is none of the love and confidence that many thousands of workers hold for their masters. Mr Badger is respected, perhaps feared a little. Those are the only two qrades of feeling that his men havo for him/

At first glance there is nothing particularly characteristic about the man. He looks just an ordinary, everyday citizen, plainly but neatly dressed, ecxd talking unobtrusively, with just a little of the American twang still hanging to his speech. Talk a while with him, question him, try to squeeze news out of him, and you begin to appreciate the subtlo fore© of the man whose action resulted in the holding up of the whole of Brisbane's trade and commerce, that lost ins firm perhaps, two or three thousand pounds, but the State scores of. thousands, and the business of the city hundreds of thousands. Mr Badger is a secretive;- man, almost a" artful man. A rathe i- srtiall face, with the characteristic droop of the lips that nearly all business Americans have, moustacheless, and a small tuft of iron-grey beard is what you see at- first si^ht. But watch* him care-. fullv. .-md you will begin to appreciate ■what this'man is. There 'is a breadth of forehead and a length of head from back to front that denotes the man of brains: There- is the steel-trap like set of those lips that make him »look a hard taskmaster. And there are the eyes. Mr Badger's eyes are peculiar, or at least one \>f them is. You hardly see the other long enough to get a good look at it. For when lie is-* conversing Mr Badger has a habit of cocking his. head on one- side, and almost closing the left eye . But the other eye peers out at you ,\vith all the force of two. A sort of steely -blue-grey with a 1 strange white rim— it is. an 'extraordinary eye It 1 is steady, yet there seems to be a sort of little 'spark of fire in it, always moving. Mr Badger's right eye is possibly his greatest asset as :a business man- and a man of affairs. "^ It dominates. May be it v.culd be a good^ medium of mesmerism if only its owner,, would practice that science. It is a com eye. There is nothing sympathetic about it. H> is a keen eye — 'an eye for th& wrongdoer to beware of. ' ■-■"•■,. '.•'.■■•■

Mr, Badger uses his eye more than his tongue. He is a particularly uncommunicative gentleman. He refuses "to discuss the details of his business with anybody outside of his own employers or 'employees. Even the wheedlings of a pressman cannot move him, and questions that one would think he _ might answer without doing hurt to his company or injuring his own position one tittle ho baulks at. But when he does answer he does not mince words, nor waste them. Mr Badger is one of- those irten who, one would say, never wastes anytliing." I asked him or«e day how much the tramway company was losing by the strike.

"I don't know," he said, "and if I did I -wouldn't tell you." That is the general attitude of the man. Ho will not tell you things that you want to know, and he tells you straight out that he will not tell you. He does c.i.ot beat about the bush, nor lie, nor put the job on to somebody else. He sees you, listens to you, screws up that left eye, and peers through you -with the right, hears all your questions, and then — tells you nothing, excepting that the weather is warm > and is likely to keep warm if it doe* 1 not change— ox that Brisbane is looking well. ; ; Mr Badger is of the stuff that the old Pilgrim Fathers were made of and' the Covenanters. He is a stern man, • >a> hard man, and yet a deeply religious man with Presbyterian leanings. Oh top of his desk continually lies a Bible. From its appearance tirra would judge that it is not there as an ornament. Mr Badger uses it, reads it in his office, and takes _the stern precepts of it and Ms faitl*'- irtto the daily round and common task of workaday life. . . • His Bible is his companion. A few years "d^o Mr Badger lost his wife, and the loss v/,is a great blow. But he sought gc».?.^olation in the Great Book' and found it. For— so the story goes— people who condoled with him over his bereavement saw never a movement, in' those steel-trap lips, never a dimming of that -gimlet eye. He was the same .stolid,, placid Badger as of old, going «lowri,'ti> Jiis office' day by day, doing his duty by man, and reading his Bible with God.

Mr,Jßadger is a practical man. He has ao time -for the loafer. AHis own son hag been put through the routine of driving one of Brisbane's cars, and learning how to do it property. He has be"n all through the business and could take charge to-morrow if Mr Badger \vc;,s unable lo continue at the head of Yet with all his. attributes, !m wonderful strength and force of character,, Mr Badgor is not loved. He is a- fust man— most everybody will agree to that — but he is not beloved of his people. Perhnns ho does not wa-nt to be. Probably he holds that business and kindly feeling cannot walk side by side. — Sydney Sun. • ' ■ : .:.