"BRIDGE OF SIGHS"

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LV, Issue 16914, 1 April 1929, Page 7

"BRIDGE OF SIGHS"

SPANNING SYDNEY HARBOR SYDNEY, March 21. Completion of Sydney harbor bridge is fixed officially for 1931, but the belief in the minds of the public is that unless strikers on the job- cease from downing tools every now and again the work is not likely to be finished by then.

Work on the bridge has once again been resumed, following the latest Stoppage for wages, which would have meant £l6 10s a week for boilermakers and £35 15s 4d for iron workers, under a 44-hour week. Peace has been patched up somehow or other. The public, as usual, or at least that section of it which is specially taxed for what is really a national undertaking, has to foot the bill. The work on the bridge is admittedly hazardous, and the more dangerous the higher the de mands go, but equally hazardous work is being performed day in and day out on huge city structures in all directions. On one of the arms of the harbor, a few miles from the site of the bridge, is what is known ns the suspension bridge, -with a drop from its towers of about 200 ft. to a hard bed. For the hazardous work of building that massive bridge men received about £3 a week. But times have changed.