Bottle-O
SAD DAYS FOR THE BOTTLE-O
Wants Suburbia Back on Beer
Yes, we have no beer bottles; we have pickle bottles and vinegar bottles, but yes, we have no beer bottles to-day (chorus)
THE only chap who hasn’t had his share of sympathy among those affected by the beer strike is the ‘bottle-o.’
His job is not of the best at any time, but the beer strike has taken all the spirit out of his usually animated cry in suburbia. The ‘Any bottles to-day, lady?’ query has become almost a plea – and one which Is being met more often than not with a look bordering on the pathetic. To male householders his cry savours of ‘fighting talk.’ The men just laugh and laugh, for they know that you can’t buy s bottle of Brisbane beer! The gurgling brook has stopped gurgling . . . And so the bottle-o army has had to turn Its attention to pickle bottles and tomato sauce bottles and rum flasks, and, yes! even to lemonade bottles! A blow to dignity, perhaps, but what can a ‘bottle-o’ do?
YE GOODE OLDE DAYES
Their’s is a trade which dates back to the days when bottles were made of skins of animals, mostly of goats. And assuredly there were no sit-down strikes in those far-off days. Who could have foreshadowed that there would come a time when the thirst of the people could be satisfied through the tap? Said one ‘bottle-o’ Interviewed:
It used to be easy for me to rake in 35 dozen a day, but this week I haven’t seen able to lay my hands on enough to keep the -wife In kerosene bottles?’
Outside of the ‘clothes-prop man,’ suburbia, knows few more colourful figures than the ‘Bottle-O’ – Colourful because it is realised by many that often University-educated men and idle breweries mean idle bottle depots. Horses that have been thrown out of work temporarily by the beer drought.
Men formerly in comfortable circumstances walk with the shadow of the ‘bottle-o.’ A heartbreaking job confronts the men. Householders often haggle over the fivepence a dozen offered for beer bottles, yet the ‘bottle-o’ receives only eightpence. And he has to pay for a horse and cart! The ‘bottle-os’ find that they cannot carry on by collecting only condiment bottles, for beer bottles usually comprise 75 per cent of their loads.
you couldn’t get a load of condiment bottles in a week
said one. A slight increase In wine bottles from householders who have taken to wine-shandy has been noted, but it is not helping to any great extent. And there are just a few more rum bottles found on the suburban round. Should the beer strike continue in the coming week, ‘bottle-o’ men will be joining the ranks of the unemployed. And so will carters engaged in carryIng empty bottles from hotels to bottle yards, for then the supply of bottles in hotels will have become exhausted. Unexpected Glut Bottle merchants who turn over the ‘bottle-o’s’ collections to the breweries are also being hit by the strike.
One firm reported that It had accumulated 10,000 dozen bottles more than It would have done ordinarily. The breweries did not, of course, want any bottles with activities suspended. Many ‘bottle-o’s’ operating from the various yards have already given it up as a bad Job.
You’d go mad sitting on a river bank looking for a dead marine to float by now
lamented one. 
We have 20 or 30 horses here, which usually are taken out by ‘bottle-o’s,’ eating their heads off — they have nothing else to do
said a leading bottle merchant. He estimated that the collections of ‘bottle-o’s’— those who were optimistic enough to take out a cart— had dropped by easily 75 per cent. With one voice the ‘bottle-os’ say that they want suburban ‘back on the beer ‘ explaining that the average drinker consumes a bottle of beer a night, whereas a bottle of rum lasts a week. They consider that this yo, ho, ho and a glass of water business has gone far enough.
Yo, Ho, and a Glass of Water (1937, September 26). Sunday Mail (Brisbane, Qld. : 1926 – 1954), p. 8.
