A SIGH OF RELIEF

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 74, Issue 145, 22 June 1931, Page 8

A SIGH OF RELIEF

WATERFRONT ATMOSPHERE SHADOW OF DARK CLOUD AUCKLAND, June 18. A sigh of relief went through the city when the news of a settlement of the cooks and stewards’ dispute was circulated. “I know these men and I know their attitude of mind,” said a seafarer of former days, “and I am certain that the average member of the union did not want to strike. Many of them told mo so. But they knew that they must go out if the headquarters so decided, and they knew that in that event they would not probably regain their jobs when the trouble was over.”

Before the news came through there was a feeling of grave foreboding about the waterfront. Queen’s Wharf was busy. The Rotorua, deep-laden for England, was ready to sail, and the passengers were holding the coloured steamers to prolong the last tie. The Ruahinc was discharging. All seemed normal, but there was an undercurrent of unrest because of the far-reaching effects of a maritime strike.

Down on the Central Wharf there was no shipping traffic, but workmen were busy in erecting the barriers in preparation for the Winter Exhibition. But who could contemplate calmly the possibility of the exhibition occurring • during a strike that would have so aggravated the depression? The Mosquito Fleet. Several vessels lay at the Northern Wharf, some loaded, ohtrs loading or coaling On one of the loaded ones the crew sat on a hatch-cover in discourse as to what the next few hours would bring. Appearances wer-' normal about the vessels which were loading. Tanks and concrete pipes, oil and petrol, sugar nd flour, were being handled—and one wondered if the country storekeepers and the farmers to whom the goods were consigned would receive them. There was no activity on the Maui Pomare and it not difficult to picture that ill-starred ship lying in the same condition at the same berth for some, time, as idle as the four high-riding steamers lying out of commission off Hobson Bay. The sight of those four idle steamers seemed to be an eloquent argument against the strike. There they lay because they could not get cargo. They meant the unemployment of many men. What if the ships that could get cargo were to be for cibly thrown out of commission because a small section of the crews was ordered ashore as a protest against a wage reduction which the depression has made inevitable, the same depres sion that sent useful steamers to moor ings. The Menace of Misery. There was not a man obout the waterfront—master mariners, cargoworkers, lorry-drivers and merchants’ clerks—who did not feel the influence of the cloud that hung over this centre of industry. Whatever lipservice that might have been paid to the case of the cooks and stewards, whatever 'cklessncss that might have been expressed, there was not a man who did no realise that a maritime strike, would add unnecessary misery to what exists and bring personal privation to many of them in jobs. Few in their heart of hearts did not feel glad at, the lifting of the cloud.