BALLOTTING FOR PLACES.

Waikato Times, Volume XLIII, Issue 3486, 1 November 1894, Page 7

BALLOTTING FOR PLACES.

AN INCIDENT IN.THE NEW SOUTH WALES PASTORAL TROUBLE,

The group in the centre of the paddock is trying to decide how a certain woolshed, which has agreed to shear under verbal agreement, shall be filled up. It takes ?"i. Sf *?? s Sunaft y mow % to h it, the difficulty being that fire men, STP ot xn P earlier in the morning thantheir fellows, have already secured for themselves pens at this shed. According to a decision recently arrived at by the union, all sheds should be ballotted for,' To give the squatter the right of choosing his men for himself is looked upon as a dangerous concession. It is granting freedom of contract, a thing of whioh unionists have a most reasonable dread. The men believe that if the pastoralist could select his shearers for himself he would gradually weed out all the unionists, and for the same reason the system of references initiated by the Pastoralista' Union is objected to. Many of the men hold, in spite of the frequent denials which have made, that the station managers had some mysterious way of marking these references so that the dotting of an i or: the curling of a y's tail might stamp a man's character and rum his chance of obtaining an engagemenfc. At present, however, the talk is not of references, but of the ballot, and a union ballot is a most complicated procedure. The men who have already secured pens decline most vigorously to give them up,, whilst those who have neither been so smart nor so fortunate demand with equal vigour, that the whole of the 30 pens shall be submitted to the ballot, so that all may. have -an equal chance. ( The wordy warfare goes on.for hows in an irregular way; suggestion . after suggestion is made, only to be rejected, and the secretary of the union, •who presides, has his work cut. out to> maintain asemblanceof order. Still, the argument never goes further than words, the men have too much self-respect to lose .control over themselves, and the public opinion of the camp would condemn, in a very decided and practical m, any breach of the peace. One good thing about the proceedings is that everything is done in the daylight, the field is open to all, and any, onlooker ib free; to » listen as long as he chooses. Through it all, the five, men who have drawn pens hold out, and their persistence wins the day, the ballot being eventually drawn without them., Theeagerness of the men to win is quite infectious; all watbh closely the, two, boys who draw, each from a hat,, the name of a man and a prize or blank. ., The lucky ones, with many a. cheer, move .off to pack f their ; swags, for soon they will start on a long day's journey to the station, whilst,the defeated remember it is dinner time, and proceed to console themselves with mutton and potatoes. , The accommodation at the camp is not, it must be confessed, very luxurious, but still, in wet weather, it is better than a six-by-eighfc tent on the muddy riverside., An old, wooden building, once used as a brewery, serves as a living room and <a, sleeping room,; buta few of the men, preferring the open, have pitched their tents in the adjoining paddock, whilst other's'are still under canvas a little way down the river.