In Bad Company and other stories

But, in these two instances, the common-sense of the city populations came to the rescue. The young men of the learned professions, of the upper classes – in the true sense of the word – came out to play a man's part in the interests of law and order. They manned the gas-works, and, amid furnace-heat and grime, provided the necessary labour, all unused as they were to toil under such conditions. The cities were not wrapped in darkness, and the streets were not made ready for the spoil by the burglar, the garrotter, and the thief. A line of wool teams was driven down the principal street of Sydney by barristers and bankers, by clerks and merchants, chiefly young men, high-couraged and athletic. But on the foremost waggon, high-seated behind his four-horse team, which he tooled with practised ease, might be recognised the leonine visage and abundant beard of Winston Darling, the Explorer, the Pioneer Squatter, the well-known Pastoral Leader and Ruler of the Waste.

The streets were crowded with yelling, blaspheming, riotous Unionists, with difficulty kept within bounds by a strong body of police.

Stones were thrown, and foul epithets freely used. But though one youthful driver had his head cut open, no further damage was done. And the wool was safely conveyed to the wharves and shipped in spite of the threatening demeanour of the assembled thousands.

These amateurs, native-born Australian gentlefolk, worked for weeks, from six to six, in many instances galling the hands, which were wholly unused to such rude treatment. But they kept at it till the stubborn conflict subsided, and not till then did they fall out of the ranks of the 'muscle-workers,' who in this and other instances have arrogated to themselves the title of the only workers in this complex and many-sided body politic.

This demonstration was chiefly confined to the seaports. When, however, the Ministry was sufficiently strong to call out the Volunteer regiments, their disciplined action gained control of the disorderly mobs, and order was regained, without discouraging delay.

But in the bush, far from help, police or military protection, matters were far otherwise. Lonely stations were terrorised. Large camps of armed and apparently desperate men were formed, who intimidated those non-Union shearers and bush labourers who neither conformed to their rules nor submitted to their dictation.

They were in many cases captured, so to speak, assaulted, maltreated, and illegally restrained from following their lawful occupation. The carriers' horses or bullocks were driven away or slaughtered, their waggons, in some instances, burned.

These outrages were directed against men and their employers who had dared to be independent, to exercise the right of free Britons to manage their own affairs and their own property.

It may easily be imagined how bodies of two or three hundred men, well armed and mounted, could terrorise a thinly-populated country. Specific acts of incendiarism and other offences against property were frequent. Woolsheds were burned with their contents, sometimes to the value of thousands of pounds; fences were cut and demolished; bridges and telegraph lines destroyed; in short, no lawless action which could result in expense and loss to the pastoralist, or those of the labourers who defied the New Tyranny, was omitted.

CHAPTER IV

Some explanation of the Great Australian Strike of 1890, which lasted in more or less virulence and intensity until 1895, producing widespread damage and ruinous loss, may not here be out of place.

This important industrial conflict exhibited the nearest approach to civil war which Australia has known. It originated, as did certain historical revolutions and mutinies, from an occurrence ludicrously insignificant compared with the magnitude of the results and the widespread disasters involved.

A fireman was discharged by the captain of a coasting steamer belonging to the Tasmanian Steam Navigation Company, whereupon the Seamen's Union took up the matter, the man being their 'delegate,' and demanded his reinstatement.

He had been 'victimised,' they asserted, by the chief steward, who must be dismissed or the fireman reinstated. The Cooks' and Stewards' Union, in the interests of the chief steward, held an inquiry, in conjunction with the Seamen's Union, to which the fireman belonged. The result failed to substantiate any charge against the chief steward. But the Seamen's Union decided to hold the captain responsible, threatening to take the crew out of the ship. No inquiry was asked of the owners.

About a month after the threat the crew gave notice, and were paid off. The captain had received the following letter: —

'Seamen's Union Office,

Sydney, July 1890.

'Captain – , Steamer – .

'Dear Sir – We are instructed by the members of the above Society to state that we intend to have our delegate – reinstated on board. If he is not reinstated by the return of the ship to Sydney, the crew will be given twenty-four hours' notice.

'We intend to protect our members from being victimised (sic) by chief stewards and others, and intend at all hazards to have him reinstated. – I remain, yours truly,

'The President and Acting Secretary.'

'Sydney, 6th July 1890.

'The Acting Secretary.

'Sir – With regard to your letter as to the discharge of a fireman from the steamer Corinna, the captain informs me that the chief steward had nothing whatever to do with the discharge. The fireman made no complaint about his food. He was discharged in the Company's interests, but there is no objection to his joining any other of the Company's vessels. The captain also was not aware that he was a delegate, and had nothing to do with his discharge. It seems strange that men should leave the Company without explanation, while the Company is denied the same right. – I remain, etc.'

Now, what in the world had the colliers of Newcastle, N.S.W., to do with the injustice or otherwise meted out to the fireman through that powerful and distinguished official, the ship's cook, or even by the chief steward? Such would be the common-sense view of any ordinary person, especially if he had been reared in the belief that 'mind your own business' was a maxim of weight and authority, verified by the lore of ages. Not so thought the leaders of the mining community. A fatal fascination appeared to have actuated one and all under the influence of a false and specious principle.

No sooner had the steamer arrived at the Agricultural Association's wharf desiring a cargo of coal than the miners 'came out' of the Sea Pit, at that time in full work. Then the Northern Colliery owners, justly indignant at this breach of agreement, stopped work at all the pits under their control. Fourteen days' notice should have been given by the miners, on the terms of their agreement.

There was no grievance between master and man, and yet at the bidding of an outside person the miners abandoned their work without notice.

The Unionist shearers, at the instigation of their dictator, hasted to join the revolt. They commenced to formulate an agreement imposing higher pay, shorter hours, the supervision of sheds by workmen appointed by themselves, the deposition of the rule of the employer over his own work, as to his own property, in his own woolshed.

Then the employers, up to that time slow to move and more or less disunited, saw that the time had come for them to combine against the tyranny of a communistic organisation. The Shearers' Union, however, as represented by their president, thought it improper of other people to form Unions. They began to threaten as follows: —

'Should the employers maintain their present attitude, the trades' organisation will be compelled to use every means to win their cause, methods which at present they have avoided.

'For instance, they could call out all the shearers (sic), and at one blow cause widespread disaster. [This they did later on, including those who, in reliance on their promises, were shearing under Union Rules.] The effects of such a step would be to paralyse the whole industry of the colony. In Victoria, shearing is only just commencing. In New South Wales it is barely half over. At the Labour Conference in Sydney it was decided that the Western miners be called out next day. This meant cutting off the sole remaining coal supply of the colony. Decided also that all the shearers, rouseabouts, and carriers be called out. Instructions sent accordingly.

'In New South Wales alone this will affect 22,000 shearers, 15,000 rouseabouts, 10,000 carriers also, together with all affiliated trades, such as butchers, bakers, grocers, and compositors. Whether the railway men will be included cannot be now ascertained.'

As a sample of the class of arguments used to set class against class, and to inflame the minds of the bush labourers against their employers, the following circular, signed by the leaders, and privately distributed, may serve as a specimen. It was headed: —

An Appeal to Station Labourers

'A shed labourer's lot is not a happy one. To work all hours and to endure all manner of privations. To work hard for a miserable starvation wage. A victim of capitalistic greed and tyranny. Suffering worse treatment than the negro slaves of the Southern States of America. The reason for this being that they have had no means of protection. Let them unite. Let them be men, free men, and have a voice in the settlement of the terms at which they shall sell their labour.

'The rights of the labourers will then be recognised. Capital will no longer have Labour by the throat. The mighty heritage of a glorious independence is in their grasp.

'Let them rise above the bondage of capital, and be a unit in that which will make one powerful whole – the General Woolshed Labourers' Union of Australia!'

That this sort of language was calculated to arouse the passions and heighten the prejudices of uneducated men may well be conceded. The ludicrous comparison with the 'wrongs of slaves' in the Southern States of America might raise a smile, had not reports of outrages, unhappily but too well authenticated, followed this and similar proclamations.

However, the Employers' Union and the Pastoral Association were not minded to submit tamely to the oppression of a 'jacquerie,' however arrogant, as the following extract from a metropolitan journal, under date 22nd September 1890, will show: —

'In Sydney that picturesque procession of lorries, loaded with non-Union wool, and driven by leading merchants and squatters, will once more betake itself through the streets, and may be the signal of actual civil war. These waggons, with their unaccustomed drivers, embody in a dramatic shape that aspect of the strike in which the Unionists have morally the weakest case. The shearers have undertaken to make Unionism compulsory at one stroke, in every woolshed in Australia, by the tyrannical process of forbidding every bale of wool shorn by non-Unionists to reach a market. Why must merchants and squatters, at the risk of their lives, drive these particular bales of wool to the wharf? We frankly hope that the wool "boycott" will break down hopelessly, ignobly. All reasonable men are against this fatal blunder of the Unionists.'

Commencing in 1890 among men 'who go down to the sea in ships,' the revolt against employment and authority spread among 'all sorts and conditions of men' dwelling in the continent of Australia. All trades and occupations by which the muscle-workers of the land, falsely assumed to be the only labourers worthy of the name of 'working-men,' were attempted to be captured and absorbed. To account for the readiness with which the new gospel of labour was accepted, it must be borne in mind that many of the better-educated labourers and mechanics had been for years supplied by their leaders with so-called socialistic literature. They had in a sense sat at the feet of apostles of the school of Henry George and Mr. Bellamy.

The former was convinced that all the 'riddles of the painful earth' might be solved by the taxation and gradual confiscation of land; this plausible-appearing policy would remove all the oppressions and exactions under which the excellent of the earth had so long groaned. Mr. Bellamy's method of procuring universal happiness, solvency, and contentment was simple and comprehensive. Every adult was to be compelled to labour for four hours of the day – no one to be permitted to work for more than this very reasonable, recreational period. Every one to be pensioned when he or she reached the age of sixty.

By this happy apportionment of the primeval curse, every one would be obliged to furnish a sufficient quantity of labour to provide for his own and other people's wants.

No one would be expected to do a full day's work – always unpopular as a task, and suspected to be unwholesome.

Dining and Music Halls, an artistic atmosphere, with all mental and physical luxuries, to be provided by the State, in exchange for Labour Coupons of specified value.

It cannot be doubted that speculative theories of this nature, proposals for minimising labour and dividing the wealth, accumulated by the industry and thrift of ages, among individuals who had neither worked nor saved for its maintenance, had a wide-reaching influence for evil among the members of the Labour Unions. Dazzled by alluring statements, they were ready to adopt the wildest enterprises, founded on delusive principles and untried experiments.

Perhaps the most important of the Utopian projects, which at the close of the conflict found favour in the eyes of the Unionists, was that of a Communistic settlement in Paraguay, to which the leader, an Americanised North Briton, gave the name of New Australia. This was to be somewhat on the lines of the settlement so delicately satirised by Hawthorne in the Blithedale Romance.

It was decided by a caucus of certain wise men of the Union that a country where the dietary scale for working-men was the most liberal in the world, the hours of work the shortest, the pay the highest, the climate the most genial, the franchise the most liberal, was not adapted for British labourers. It was accordingly agreed to establish a co-operative community in a foreign land, where brotherly love and the unselfish partition of the necessaries of life might exhibit to an admiring world an ideal State, free from the grasping employer and the callous capitalist. This modern Utopia they proposed to call New Australia. Money not being so scarce among Australian labourers as, from the tremendous denunciations of their leader, which freely compared them to negro slaves (only worse paid, fed, and driven), might have been supposed, they were expected to pay sixty pounds each towards the charter and freight of a suitable vessel.

This notable plan they carried out. One man indeed sold a cottage in a country town for £400, and putting the cash into the common fund, sailed away for South America amid great jubilation from the Radical press and Labour organs; thankful, however, before long to work his passage back to England.

Hope and Mr. W. G. Spence told a flattering tale before experience came to the audit. A tract was found in the Paraguayan Chaco – '234,000 acres, well watered and timbered – splendid land,' thus described in the New Australia newspaper, the journal of the New Co-operative Settlement Association, Wagga, New South Wales, 28th January 1892.

In September 1893 two hundred and sixty New Australians arrived to take possession of the Promised Land. Even on board ship differences of opinion arose. In December there was a notable desertion. The 'five-meal, meat-fed men' doubtless thought sadly of poor 'Old Australia,' where they had no dictator and few privations, save those irreparable from high wages and good food. They missed many things for which they had been the reverse of thankful, when supplied gratis. They even missed the police and the magistrate. One man at any rate did, who was thrashed for impertinence, and could not so much as take out a summons for assault. They must have gasped when they saw, in their own journal, in answer to questions – 'A. K. If you didn't like it, you could leave. The equal annual yearly division of wealth production would enable you to ship back to Australia, if you wanted to.' Many wanted to, but the Dictator's reply, slightly altered from that of Mr. Mawworm in The Serious Family, was – 'We deeply sympathise, but we never refund.' As to how the deserters got to Buenos Ayres, on their way 'home,' doubtless many tales of adventure could be told. The equal partition did not work out well. No one had a right to anything, apparently – milk for a sick child – a razor – any trifling personal possession, when all had a right to everything. The dissatisfaction deepened to despair. The 'rest is silence.' Migration to the 'Gran Chaco' is played out.

The Shearers' Strike drifted into the Shearers' War. Not vigorously dealt with at the beginning by the Government of any colony, it emboldened the agitators, who called themselves tribunes of the people, to suggest bolder assaults upon the law, to carry out yet more dangerous disturbances of the public peace.

The specious process of 'picketing' – an illegal practice involving insult and intimidation, under the transparent guise of 'persuasion' – was tacitly permitted. Becoming habituated to the assembling in force, armed and drilled in military fashion, it was patent to the lowest intelligence that the Government, if worthy of the name, must confront these menacing and illegal levies.

The tardy Executives, which had watched the ill-usage of free citizens, the burning of woolsheds, the killing of stock, with apparent apathy, now became alarmed and ordered out the Volunteer regiments. Directly a disciplined contingent, properly armed and officered, took the field, the pseudo-guerillas disbanded and disappeared. If prompt measures had been taken at the start, years of demoralisation and damage, loss of wages, and ruin of property would have been saved both to employers and workmen.

Such a disgraceful incident as that reported from Bowen Downs in July 1895 might never have occurred.

'A private message states that two attempts have been made within three days to poison free shearers here. On the first occasion eight men were poisoned; on the second, forty-nine.'

A Barcaldine telegram states: 'Forty-nine fresh cases reported from Bowen Downs. Strychnine suspected to have been put into the meat and sago pudding used by the men. A letter received states that the scenes in the shed at Bowen Downs were beyond description. The men, contorted with agony, lying about in all shapes. One man named Thomas has since died. He is not known in the district. Name probably an assumed one. Richardson, one of five brothers, said to be very bad; also Christie Schultz; a second death expected.

'Bowen Downs was managed by Mr. Fraser for a Scottish Investment Company. It is expected that 250,000 sheep will be shorn there this year. Sharing in the "strike troubles" last year (1894), the sheep were shorn by free labourers and some Unionists.

'They followed the example of Howe and others on the Barcoo run, and went to work in defiance of the Union mandate. This year many of the same men returned to the station to shear.

'The authorities had previous information that poisoning was likely to be resorted to on some stations. The Aramac and Mutta-burra police are at the station. No evidence was attainable against the authors of this cowardly crime, resulting in one murder at least, and the possible death of a score or more of their fellow-workmen. It is significant, however, as against the theory of accident, that the injured men, well-nigh sick unto death, were free shearers.

'It is notorious that elaborate preparations have been made for committing further outrages on property, and violence on persons. Hitherto the Government has erred on the side of insufficient precaution and protection to loyal subjects.

'Violence and intimidation, on the other hand, have been approved by the Labour Federations. A demand is made by them that employers should not be allowed the right to employ any but Union men, on Union terms. Such an edict is inadmissible in a free country. So Sir Samuel Griffith, C.J., of Queensland, stated the case.

'The Moreton Mounted Infantry left by the Wodonga for the seat of the disturbance. In consequence of further outrages by the so-called Labour organisations, one of which was the shooting of a team of working bullocks, eleven in number, belonging to a non-Union carrier, Colonel French has been sent to the north with a force of 130 men, having also a field-piece and a Gatling gun. The Union leaders had boasted of the wreck and ruin of squatting property which would follow the strike.'

In the second year of the revolt a special parade of the Queensland Mounted Infantry was ordered. They were ready to a man. In view of the outrages already committed, and the justifiable expectation of more to follow, military protection was manifestly needed. This drew forth a pathetic remonstrance from the 'General Secretary of the Australian Labour Federation.' He was virtuously indignant at the whole force of the Government being 'strained to subjugate the wage-earners of the central district, under the dictation of capitalistic organisations.' It was emphasised that 'the Australian Labour Federation's steady influence had always been used to substitute peaceful agitation and moderation for needless suspension of industry. The Government is urged to use its influence to induce organised capitalism to meet organised labour in the conference.'

The high official so addressed replied: 'The Government is merely endeavouring to maintain law and order; to punish disorder, violence, and crime. The existing state of matters is misrepresented by the Labour organs.'

As might have been expected, manslaughter and arson, if not murder and spoliation, did result from this and similar teachings. Some of these crimes were undetected, others were partially expiated by imprisonment; while in more instances the wire-pullers – the deliberate and wilful offenders against the law of the land – escaped punishment. But when the burning of the Dundonald took place, with the capture of free labourers by disguised men, the tardy action of the Executive was accelerated. That the apprehensions of the dwellers in the pastoral districts, and their appeals to the Government of the day in the first years of the strike, were not without foundation, an extract from a letter taken, among others, from the person of an arrested 'labour organiser,' affords convincing proof.

'Queensland Labour Union, Maranoa Branch,

'Roma, 10th March 1891.

'Dear George – It is a mistake collecting our men at the terminus of the railway. Better to split them up in bodies of a hundred and fifty each. One lot to stop at Clermont, another at Tambo; others at outside stations, such as Bowen Downs, Ayrshire Downs, Richmond Downs, Maneroo, West-lands, Northampton, and Malvern Hills. Say a hundred and fifty at Maranoa; same below St. George. Every station that a hundred and fifty men came to would demand police protection from the Government. Then, if you wanted to make a grand coup, send mounted messengers round and have all your forces concentrated, away from railways if possible, and force the running by putting a little more devil into the fight. They will have no railways to cart the Gatling guns and Nordenfeldts about. – Yours, etc.

Ned – .'

Such were the missives which passed between the 'labour organisers' and their 'brother officers.' Small wonder that the rank and file were stirred up to deeds of wrong and outrage, stopping short by accident, or almost miracle, of the 'red fool-fury of the Seine.' Imagine the anxiety and apprehension at the lonely station, miles way from help, with a hundred and fifty horsemen, armed and threatening, arriving perhaps at midnight – the terror of the women, the mingled wrath and despair of the men. And the temperate suggestion of the labour organiser to 'put a little more devil into the fight, to force the running!'

Doubtless it would, but not quite in the manner which this calculating criminal intended. Such a wave of righteous indignation would have been evoked from the ordinarily apathetic surface of Australian politics, that the culprits and their cowardly advisers would have been swept from the face of the earth.