OIL SHIPS.

Waipa Post, Volume XXI, Issue 1242, 13 May 1922, Page 2

OIL SHIPS.

CURE INDUSTRIAL TROUBLES. Among the new tyrannies under which the modern world is suffering, oil is taking increasing prominence. Its demulcent qualities are becoming quite overshadowed by its frictioncreating powers. While there is still talk of pouring oil on the troubled waters. If rumour be correct, a good deal of the trouble over Russia at Genoa is to be attributed to oil. Then there is 'the great —we may say, the burning question of oil fuel for ships. In New South Wales the Seamen’s Uuion has issued a statement in which fears are expressed that the increasing number of oil ships- will reduce the number of seamen who will be required. Workers in the stokehold scarcely come within the category of seamen, but that may pass. Nothing is more certain than that the stokehold of the oil-driven vessel is a very different place from that of her coal-driven sister, and a vast improvement on it. The amount of labour called for is greatly reduced, and there is an elimination of incessant, grimy, perspiring toil that ought to comfort the heart of humanity. But apparently the firemen, those autocrats of the sea, love the old condition, and cling to the coal dust, which has got in the eyes of members of the Seamen’s Union generally in New South Wales. So, drawing their argument from the oil-driven ships, they cry “Down with Capitalism,” thereby indicating that they would have been quite as pleased to cap with the same cry any other argument that might serve their turn. One might hark away back to the vicissitudes encountered by the inventors of the machinery which was going to ruin British industries but which really created .them. But, labour conditions altogether disregarded, far more pleasant sight to the Seamen’s Union- in New South Wales is the ship requiring 60 men in her stokehold than the vessel of equal size requiring 20. The former *costs more to run and more hands' are employed; therefore the system is good. Nothing is said about the thousands of vessels laid up in Empire ports because thier owners cannot afford to run them. “Where ignorance is bliss ’tis folly to be wise!” In such a protest there is, however, not even an endeavour to conceal the trail of the serpent.