FAIRLY WELL ISN’T WELL ENOUGH.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXI, Issue XXVI, 24 December 1898, Page 822

FAIRLY WELL ISN’T WELL ENOUGH.

Let us say that your wages are twenty shillings a week. You have worked hard, done your best, and feel that you have earned your money. Very good. Now imagine that when Saturday night comes your employer hems and haws, and wants to put you off with fifteen. I’ll be bound you would think yourself hardly treated. What are the great strikes in this country commonly about? Why, in seme fashion they are about wages or hours; it comes to the same thing, lie it understood that the writer uses this fact as an illustration of another fact—that is all. What is that other fact? We will work it out of the following personal statement: — ‘Nearly all my life,’ says Mrs Sarah Dalby, T have been subject to attacks of biliousness, accompanied with sickness, but got on fairly well up to the early part of 1882. At this time 1 began to feel heavy, dull, and tired, with an all-gone, sinking sensation. My skin was sallow, and the whites of my eyes of a yellow tinge.’ As everybody knows, or ought to know, the colouring matter was bile. The liver being torpid, and, therefore, failing to remove the bile from the blood, it entered the skin; and showed itself on the surface. But the discolouration isn’t the worst mischief done by the vagabond bile, containing many poisonous waste elements; it disorders the whole system and sets up troublesome and dangerous symptoms, some of which the lady names. ‘I had a bad taste in the mouth,’ she goes on to say; ‘and, in the morning particularly, was often very sick, retching so violently that I dreaded to see the dawn of day. ‘My appetite was poor, and after eating 1 had pain at my chest and side. Frequently I couldn’t bring myself to touch food at all; my stomach seemed to rebel at the very thought of it.’

[This was bad, but the stomach was right, nevertheless. More food would have made more pain, more indigested matter to ferment and turn sour, more of a load for the sleepy liver, more poison for the nerves, kidneys, and skin. And yet, without the food, how was she to live? It was like being ground between the upper and the nether millstones.] ‘After this,’ runs the letter, ‘I had great pain and fluttering at the heart. Sometimes I would have fits of dizziness and go off into a faint,, which left me quite prostrated. Then my nerves became so upset and excitable that i got no proper sleep at night, and on account of loss of strength I was obliged to lie in bed all day for days together. I went to one doctor after another, and attended at Bartholomew’s and the University Hospitals, but was none the better for it all. ‘ln September, 1883, my husband read in ‘Reynold's Newspaper' about Mother Seigei’s Curative Syrup, and sot me a bot'l'e of it. After taking ft lor three days I felt relieved. Encouraged and cheered by this I kept on taking the S yrup, and in a short time all the pain and distress abated, and I was well —better than I had ever been. That is ten years ago, and since then I have never ailed anything. With sincere thanks. I ant. yours truly (Signed) Mrs Sarah Dalby, 93, Tottenham Road, Kingsland, London, N., January 2nd, 1894.’ Now run your eye back to the first st ntence of Mrs Dalby's letter, and you will come upon these words, ‘I got on fairly well, et c. This is the sad thought. Her life has always been at a discount; she has always got less than her due; she has lost part of her health — wages. Do you take my meaning? Of course. Whatever may be our differences of opinion as to the rights of capital and the value of labour, it is certain that every human being is entitled to perfect health—without reduction, without drawback.

All tile more, as nobody else tbses what one person thus gains. No, no. On the contrary, a perfectly healthy person is a benefit and a blessing to all who are brought into relations with him. Hut do all have such health? God

help us. no; very, very few. Why not? Ah, the answer is too big; I can't give it to-day. To the vast crowd who only get on ‘fairly well’ I tender my sympathy, and advise a trial of the remedy mentioned by Mrs Dalby.