AND THEY TOILED ALL CHRISTMAS DAY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17729, 26 December 1925, Page 1

AND THEY TOILED ALL CHRISTMAS DAY.

WHILE MR A. SAT DOWN TO DINNER, MR B. NEVER LEFT HIS POST.

(Specially written for the “Star.”) It was not everyone in Christchurch that could sit down to a steaming Christmas dinner yesterday. Some people had to run the trains, tjie trams, the telephones, the electricity service, and the water stations. How they enjoyed it is related below.

Actually the army of workers out Christmas Day was much larger than - ' realised by most people. For the most part it was a well paid army but even double rates of pay did not always compensate adequately for separation from the family circle when the Christmas dinner was brought on to the table. Certain w'ork, however, simply had to go on. The policeman must guard the public; the nurse must continue to tend the sick; the doctor must respond to urgent calls (even if they do interfere with his roast turkey) ; tho fireman must be prepared to do battle against the flames whenever the necessity arises; the telephone exchange attendant must stick to his or her post; the electrical engineers must see that the supply of “juice” for the city is maintained; and numerous other workers must be ready to stand to their posts on Christmas Day. Then of course there were the waitresses and cooks in the restaurants, the ice cream vendors, and the w r orkers in hotels and boarding houses to whom Christmas Day meant a day of activity. A tramway conductor was in reminiscent mood when the reporter tendered his fare. “It’s rotten luck having to work to-day,” he remarked. “I had hoped to spend the day with the wife and kids, but here I am instead. Of course I get extra pay for it, but it is not worth while. Somehow Christmas Day is the one day that one likes to have free more than any other day in the year.” One policeman anyway did not relish his way of spending Christmas Day. Out on the beat for four hours at a stretch on Christmas morning was not his ideal of how the day should "be spent. Still duty must be done even though the kiddies at home did not have daddy with them to show how their toys worked. With the nurse in the hospital it i was different. Iler work was much J

lie same as on any other day, and it could, of course, have been nice to have spent the day within the family circle, but then what a joy it was watching the happy faces of her patients. Christmas Day in the hospital was one of the days that compensated for much of the drudgery of other days. No, she did not think she would prefer to be “off duty” on Christmas Day. The taxi-driver on the stand gazed apprehensively at the weather. It was his day on duty’-. He could blame no one but himself. On Christmas Day the prospects looked good; he had agreed to take on the work on Christmas Day; now he wished he hadn’t, that was all. It was such a rotten day for Christmas. Still he should have known better. Throughout the city many public utilities were kept in commission only because certificated engineers stood to their posts in spite of home festivities. At the pumping station, an engineer stayed on watch all day. There was a gauge in the engine-room connected, with the sewer outside, and at intervals he had to stop and start the electrically driven centrifugal pumps according to the height of the gauge. Every hour he logged the switched readings. At the destructor an engineer and a fireman kept watch. The engineer sat in a glasvsed-in office and every halfhour went out and took his switchboard readings, returned and logged them up. Even at the Hospital an engineer had to remain on duty. In the forenoon there was the heating of bath water for the patients, the steam for the sterilisers and the supply of heat and water for the preparation of the Christmas dinner for the staff and inmates. So the old saying is still true—one half of the world does not know how the other half lives—especially on Christmas Dav.