Our Wellington Letter.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XLVII, Issue 6, 7 February 1912, Page 4

Our Wellington Letter.

February 3. The Tramway Strike. POLITICS are far transcended in importance just now by the strike of the city’s electric tramways men. The strike has now lasted three days, and though negotiations for settlement have been going on day and night, peace is delayed by an undignified squabbling oyer trifles. To a very large extent the strike was brought about by "the City Council’s incompetence and its wavering attitude, at one time leaning to the side of peace at any price, and then insisting upon its dignity with a ridiculously acute appreciation of that dignity. But within the last day or two it has behaved with common sense, and has not shown any indication of adopting the curious advice of the “New Zealand Times’’ that it should resign in a body. Resignation in such a crisis would be such a lamentable exhibition of weakmindedness and cowardice that the

‘"rimes” suggestion has only evoked laughter. At the time of writing the main terms of settlement had been agreed upon, firstly, the transference of Mr. Fuller (the ticket inspector to whom the men object) to another branch of the service, ami .secondly, a guarantee on the part of the Council that on the resumption of wori- Mie men concerned in the trouble shall nj,\ be subject to victimisation, but be reinstated in their employment without loss of status. But over four little words the negotiating parties are still at loggerheads, the statement in the draft agreement, that Fuller be transferred “at his own request.” It has been made clear that the City Council would not have agreed to the transference if Fuller had not applied, but the Labour side insist that Fuller has been transferred at the Union's request. So there is a deadlock just as the public were beginning to con-

gratulate themselves on being able to ride in the cars again to-day. Now’ there is a very ugly attitude on the men’s side. The leaders want Fuller removed from the service altogether, and as the Council, or a majority of that body, considers him a good servant, albeit “wanting in tact,” this labour mandate is turned aside. Things will be much more serious yet unless both sides drop their mantles of self-importance and make more concessions to each other.

However much the City Council has blundered, there is a pretty general feeling that the men have taken up an insufferably arrogant stand. Their leaders have shown still less tact and discretion than the Councillors. Their publie utterances have been full of threats of what may happen to the public if their demands are not complied with; the w’harf men and the seamen will not handle coal for*the city power-house; the eoal miners will not hew eoal for the municipality’s use, and so on. People resent this sort of thing, and are at a loss to know why they should be punished for a petty squabble over the internal management of the tramways. The prospect of the city’s lighing and water supply being interfered with as the result of the threatened eutting-otf of coal supply isn’t calculated to prepossess the average citizen in the Union’s favour. In faet, the popular opinion is strongly adverse to the men, who are not fighting for any important reform, such as higher wages or shorter hours. They admit they are well treated in those particulars.

But most of us have taken the ear struggle very good naturedly. The weather so far this week has been gloriously fine, with—for Wellington—a phenomenal absence of high winds, and not a sign of rain. We are getting our summer at last, but it is by no means too hot for walking. So pretty well all Wellington has been taking walking exercise, and men and girls are bragging about the

number of miles they have had to tramp to and from work. The Miramar and Island Bay people are the worst off in strike time for they must walk eight miles a day or thereabouts; a few get a seat in an antiquated ’bus or two that have been resurrected for the Miramar trip, and a drag or two run in and out for the benefit of the Island Bayites. Seatown people have a steamer right and motoring, but some have even walked all the way in and out, a matter of some eight miles each way. This is not so bad while the tine weather lasts, but a car stoppage in wet weather would be a very different matter, and, would quickly rouse a cyclone of indignation. Ilwellers on the terraces above the city and the Kelburne heights are fortunately situated, for they have the service of the Kelburne cable ear, which is owned by a private company, and is run by a very few hands, and is not involved in the municipal trouble. So there is at least one advantage in private ownership at strike time. The Kardri people have made a great aid by use of these cars during the strike; th'e Kelburne service gives them a clear lift of 400 feet on their homeward journey, and the rest of the route is for the most part a level walk.

We here on the heights can afford to pity the hapless out-suburbanite. A Miramer resident told me this morning that it took him an hour and a quarter to walk in to his office. Two hours and a-half are a good slice out of one’s day. But it is helping to give people the use of their legs again, and that is no great misfortune after all.

Some wild language, which would be amusing were it not fraught with suoh serious consequences, has been used by the unionist orators during the past few days. The speeches made by union secretaries and other champions of the allegedly oppressed workingman had quite a red flag tang. About the most humourous utterance I have heard of came from the lips of a stump speaker in Post-Offiee Square, “We are not going to stop,” he yelled, “my friends, we are not going to stop until we are in the position of being able to elect our own bosses.” Yells of delight from the crowd. A “boss” elected

by oneself, and holding office only at one's pleasure should be an ideal employer. , [Since the above was written the strike has been settled, the agreement being arrived at on Monday.]

Fined for Inciting a. Strike. The leaders of the tramway strike may well feci a little uneasy on the score of a possible prosecution by the Department of Labour, in view of the recent conviction of the Wellington Merchant Service Guild for inciting a strike. Tha strike of coasting steamer masters and mates had its aftermath at the Magistrates’ Court the other day, when Dr. McArthur fined the Guild £IOO as thq result of the instigation, per medium of its secretary, Captain Watson, of certain officers belonging to various companies to become parties to an unlawful strike. The Guild intends carrying the case on appeal to the Supreme Court. The Tramways Union deliberately flouted the law by resolving not to give the fourteen days 'notice required by the Statute. Then the executive, feeling in theii - bones that they would have to pay the piper before Dr. McArthur, coolly requested the City Council to indemnify them against any possible prosecution. This naive request has amazed citizens considerably. Naturally, the Council can’t do any such thing; it would be preposterous to give, such an undertaking. The Union leaders are pretty certain to be prosecuted for their breacli of the law, and they will have very little sympathy from the greater body of the publie. They have talked too loudly and made too many threats, veiled and unveiled. City Beautification. When our City Councillors have quite recovered from the brain-strain aroused by the tramear troubles, they might do worse than read the remarks made by Dr. Max Herz in his recently published book on New Zealand concerning the want of civic taste in the adorning of our cities. Perhaps Dr. Herz is rather too sweeping sometimes in his condemnation, and is apt to forget that we are but young —very young indeed —as compared

with the European cities with which he is familiar. But there is a very large percentage of truth in his comments on pur cities, our buildings, our alleged statuary, and other conspicuous objects in the urban landscape. It was inevitable that the Doctor should have discovered that ridiculous statute of John Ballance in Parliament House grounds; equally inevitable that he should have penned a caustic word or two about the Queens’ statue. For the former, of course, the municipality is not responsible; it is able to shunt the blame on to the General Government. Rut there are worse eyesores than, these statues about Wellington, picturesque though the city really is. Dr. Herz found Wellington very ‘ sombre, bare and drab.” Very possibly he landed here on some eold, rainy day, when all the place, looked dour, and the encircling hills were as depressing as a gaol wall. But Dr. Herz, I fancy, would see reason to change his opinion were he to spend any time here; at any rate, he would discover that Wellington, with its blue harbour and its green ring of hills, can be very beautiful when it likes. Had our critic said that Wellington is naturally picturesque, but that its citizens do ntrt take any trouble to enhance that picturesqueness of situation, he would have been very near the mark. Our real want is more trees, more gracious foliage, more grassy plots in our “drab” city. Any Wellington resident and any observant-visitor can indicate a score of places which a little civic care and a very little money would make places of great beauty. One spot I have in iny mind’s eye just now is the foreshore of Oriental Bay, which is capable of great improvement, but which is at present more or less of a rubbish-dumping ground for the neighbourhood. Another is the Kelburne Park, the ‘ made” recreation ground you pass in the cable car on your way up to the Kelburne heights. The park is something like 300 feet above sea-level; a pleasant billiard-table of green turf, where the white flannels of the cricketers make an enlivening picture on Saturday afternoons. But the effect of this green level space among the tumbled hills is quite spoiled by its ugly edges; bare clay banks and treeless borders. No attempt has been made to beautify the fringe of the park; no trees, no flowers. The Council people apparently imagined that with the making of the playing-ground their duty ended.

One hopes that some one will lead a few of the City Fathers up to the park some day soon, and run them violently up against that staring yellow clay wall on the one side and those rubbish piles on the other, at the same time delivering a brief but forcible lecturette on the subject of pleasure grounds as they ought to be. Then, I suppose, the Councillors would go away, thinking hard, and direct the City Gardener to plant a few score of macrocarpa and pinus insignus. That’s just about their idea of what is fitting and beautiful in the way of soil adornment. What we want in Wellington is a good live Beautifying Society, one which would make it its business to see that the municipal governing body got some sense of the aesthetic knocked Into its rather commonplace skull. We want fewer band rotundas, fewer “howlers’’ in the way of statuary, and more trees and flowers in our public places.

Turner, the Alpinist. An interesting chap whom one may see on Lambton Quay prety well any day just now is Mr Samuel Turner. F.R.G.S., one of the world's most famous mountaineers. Indeed, Englishmen who have reviewed his recently published book, “My Climbing Adventures in Four Continents,” have called him “the king of climbers,” "the world’s greatest Alpinist,” "Edward Whymper's legitimate successor," and a variety of other flattering titles. Mr. Turner has scaled our Alpine monarch, Aorangi, but that is one of his minor triumphs.. He has carried ice axe and rucsac to the summits of some of the great Siberian heights, and he has plodded through snow waist deep 20,000 feet above the sea on the peaks of the Andes. Now he is seriously thinking of attacking Mt. Everest, for his ambition is to reach the loftiest pinnacle on this old globe of ours. It will be a tremendous task, and very costly as well, and he does not anticipate being able to tackle the king of the Himalayas for a few years yet. But he has any amount of self-confidence, and determination, and these qualities will go a. long way towards attaining his heart’s desire. For the rest, Mr Turner is a butter buyer by calling, not exactly the trade to make a crack Alpinist one would imagine. He is the New Zealand agent for a big English produce firm; hitherto he has made annual trips to the Dominion for his firm, but now he has settled here and has selected the Hutt for a place of residence. The snow peaks of the world are his playground, but New Zealand he has made his home; there's no place like it in the world for healthy and rational life, he says—and he has seen all the civilised world, and a good deal of the uncivilised. Physically, this climbing man does not strike the casual eye as a great athlete or gymnast, but he is both, and a bit of an acrobat to bott. All notable Alpinists have to be; they have to perform ‘ stunts” on ice and rock that would turn a circus gymnast grey with fright. lie is under rather than over the middle size, and he is not obtrusively muscular. But he’s tough and quick on his legs, and he has the doggedness of the British bulldog. And, in his own homely North-of-England phrase, ’’lt’s dogged as does it.” A Memory of Sir Arthur Gordon. Lord Stanmore, whose death was reported per London cable this week, was very little known in New Zealand under that name, but as Sir Arthur Gordon many old colonists, and particularly old members of Parliament and Civil Servants, will remember him. Sir Arthur was Governor of New Zealand for a couple of years, 1880 to 1882. He had governed Fiji from 1875 to 1880, and then was shifted down here, a not unwelcome change after the tropic heat, the flies, the. hurricanes, and other drawbacks of life in the Cannibal Islands. Sir Arthur had a rather autocratic way with him, the result, no doubt, of his long service as ruler of Crown colonies, where a Governor does really govern. About the only memorable incident of his sojourn in New Zealand concerns Te Whiti, the famous old prophet of Parihaka, who passed to the Maori spiritland four or five years ago. It was in the unsettled times in Taranaki, shortly before Bryce’s unforgettable raid on

I’arihaka. The Governor wished to visit Te Whiti at his big settlement at the foot of the Mountain, thinking , no doubt, that his influence might induce the Prophet to look with a more friendly eye upon the whites. He despatched his A.D.C.. an English army officer, to Taranaki to arrange for an interview. The Prophet met the A.D.C.; the late Mr Charles Wilson Hursthouse, then a surveyor in Taranaki, and a persona grata with Te Whiti, was the interpreter. The old Maori mystic smiled serenely on the A.D.C., but gave that officer and gentleman to understand that he didn’t want to hobnob with Governors, and tliat he intended to go on his prophetic way untrammelled by conferences with pakeha rangatiras. “Kua maoa te taewa,” .said the Prophet, in his oracular way, as lie closed the interview. “The potato is cooked,” is what that meant; all is over, the Rubicon is passed, there is no turning back, and so forth. The interpretation of the inner meaning of that phrase, which became historic, worried Maori experts and Ministers of the Crown for many a week thereafter, while old Te Whiti sat chuckling in his whare. But Mr John Bryce cooked the Prophet's own potato for him a little later- (this was in 1881> by invading Parihaka at the head of 1,700 Armed Constabulary and Volunteers, and gaoling the big medicine man of the Mountain and his principal disciples. The Premier's Private Secretary.

It is announced this morning that Cabinet has appointed Mr James Hislop, chief private secretary to Sir Joseph Ward, to be Under-Secretary for Internal Affairs in succession to the late Mr. Hugh Pollen. This is good news to all Mr Hislop's friends, for the Internal Affairs chair is one of the most comfortable and well-paid billets in the Civil Service; and it will be particularly welcome, I doubt not, after the strenuous life Mr Hislop has led as the Prime Ministers’ secretary. Mr Seddon worked his secretaries very hard, and Sir Joseph Ward is almost as constant a toiler, and of course his secretaries have to toil at all hours and under all sorts of conditions. However, Sir Joseph is a very kind and considerate man; all who have served under him express that opinion, and between Mr Hislop and his chief a very firm bond of friendship exists. Mr Hislop, personally, is a very well liked man, one’ of the most unassuming and pleasant and courteous men in the Civjl service, and an able man withal. He is still a young man, though he has put in many years of service, twelve of them as secretary to Sir Joseph—a position which has always been a stepping stone to good promotion. Now the shrewd question will occur to many people, ij there a hint of coming changes of great import in this comfortable disposal of the Prime Ministers’ secretary ? It looks very like it. The opinion gains weight that Sir Joseph is going to resign. He has denied it, of course, but Ministerial denials, like other political utterances, find scant credence these davs.