Worker gap left by soldiers

The Kelso A. and P. Society's fifth annual show at Kelso on Wednesday, November 3. - Otago...
The Kelso A. and P. Society's fifth annual show at Kelso on Wednesday, November 3. - Otago Witness, 17.11.1915.
The war has brought a staffing problem to heads of State departments.

All kinds of men, of the orders skilled and unskilled, have been drawn to the war, and in a number of cases it is very difficult to arrange for a satisfactory filling of the gaps.

In the Postal Department alone the number of men who are either at the front or in a training camp is between five and six hundred - about 14 percent of the staff.

A special officer is visiting district offices throughout the country, and his one function is to help in staff readjustments necessitated by enlistments for the army.

In addition to the extra work caused by the withdrawal of so many experienced men, the officers have to hasten the training of new employees.

Classes for telegraphy and other subjects at Oamaru, Wellington, and Auckland have an attendance of about 150, and there are correspondence courses for those whose homes are remote from the towns where classes are held.

The department has, also, classes for shorthand, typewriting, and the use of office machines (''computers'' and others).

Very soon a class will be established for the training of women as telegraphists.

• It would appear from expressions of indignation by people in the Yass, New South Wales, district that hostility to ill treatment of human beings is not entirely reserved for Germans.

At a place called Galong, some 2000 navvies are employed at railway construction work.

There is the accompaniment of the familiar excessive indulgence in strong drink on pay nights, and the arrest of men who make too much trouble.

The nearest township boasts of only one cell at its lockup.

This is sometimes made to accommodate eight or nine men, and even then there is an excess of police prisoners.

Those who cannot be jammed into the cell are chained up to a fence, and the resultant spectacle is one which deeply wounds the feelings of local residents as they drive to church with their wives and children on Sunday morning.

They have offered to build a temporary lockup if the Railway Department will provide the material; but the railway officials say that the Estimates do not provided for such a thing.

It may perhaps comfort the people of Galong a little to know that the open-air accommodation of police prisoners is not at all uncommon in this country.

Sometimes there are amusing incidents.

For instance, a powerful miner, arrested at a mining settlement in Western Australia, was, for want of something suitable in the way of a building, chained up to a big log in the yard of the police station.

The man went to sleep beside the log.

But next morning he was missing.

So was the log.

A policeman and blacktracker sallied forth to investigate.

They found the prisoner in the bar of an hotel enjoying pints of beer bought for him by sympathisers.

He was still chained to the huge log, which he carried off with him in his quest for a ''corpse reviver.''

• A correspondent writing to the Dominion makes a sporting offer, to those well-to-do people who are daily deploring their inability on account of age to get to the front.

''It has occurred to me,'' he says, ''that some of these gentlemen might like to be represented by proxy, so I am willing to take the place of one of them if he will enable me to square up my financial affairs. Only a very modest sum is required, and I shall be very glad to serve the Empire on behalf of my patron.''

The editor of the paper has the address and references of this spirited volunteer, and there seems to be no reason now why some sorrowing capitalist of mature years should not be comforted. - ODT, 25.11.1915.

 


COPIES OF PICTURE AVAILABLE FROM ODT FRONT OFFICE, LOWER STUART ST, OR WWW.OTAGOIMAGES.CO.NZ


 

 

Add a Comment