THE MINERS’ FRIEND.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 12647, 3 June 1919, Page 4

THE MINERS’ FRIEND.

TO THK IDItOB. at the town planning exhibition last evening tile Hon G. W. Russell forgot that he was a member of the National Cabinet and betrayed tho feelings which it is and has been customary to associate with a labour agitator. No man, he said, should sell land just to put money in his pocket, nor years men have been saying this from off tho tops of boxes, the pedestals of lampposts and the tailboards of carts, and the public platforms. For so doing they have been denounced by what they have been pleased to term a capitalistic Press and crusty Conservative politicians, as striving to stir up strife against a well-ordered and wellconducted world and create an era of rum and desolation, not forgetting the awful menace to the constitution. Tho Minister swelled with virtuous indignation at the thought of the awful conditions under winch the coal miners and their families existed. “If those present,” he declared vehemently. had seen these conditions they would not wonder why hundreds of miners had abandoned their occupations and were now working on tho wharves- The miners should ho provided with comfortable homos and given, a superannuation scheme similar to that of the railwnymen.” Of course ‘they should, and it has taken Mr Russell all these years to discover what the ordinarily sane person knew ages ago. but was branded as a_ menace to society for daring to ventilate. Coal mining is an unhealthy, unpleasant and dangerous occupation. It. has killed thousands of workers under appalling conditions of explosion, nre, poison, starvation, suffocation and drowning in the bowels of the earth, while many owners wero unconcerned by the miseries and squalid existence of the toilers. The coal miner should work in no other mine hut that owned by the State. He should he a State servant just as the railwayman, the telegraph operator and all‘the thousands employed in other Government works, and he should live uuder conditions which should ho directed with the object of making the life as cheortul ns a miner’s life ever could he. Thou the coal mine would cease to he the hunting around of the anarchist, the Rod Fodder, the T.W.W~ist and the Bolshevist. Mr Russell has suddenly discovered that the miner is a man and a brother. Ts this sincerity or a vote-catching expedient? In remembering that a general election is coming •along one oho wants +o nondor over the fact that Mr has Imd ample opportunities ip tho years that have eonp to have materially altered the conditions under which the miner worked, and he didn’t. His svmnathv for the miners is a trifle belated.—l am, etc., . A DOUBTING THOMAS.