CHAPTER IV

THE WORKING-MAN AND THE WORK-A-DAY WORLD

THE working-man in Australia is being made a demigod of, with all sorts of frills added, so that the fact of his possessing feet of clay, like the rest of us, may be hidden, even from himself. He does not really care about it all. He wants—if he is a real working-man—to do his job, and smoke his pipe in peace, while all he asks for is fair play, or all he has asked for in the past; because now, like all spoilt children, he has come to a state of mind when he really does not know what he wants. He is like a boy, naturally brim full of the spirit of adventure, of pluck and endurance, who has been kept at home and pampered by an over-fond mother. It is not his fault that he has missed the bracing atmosphere of that greatest of all schools—the adverse world.

The wonder really is that the Australian working-man has kept his head as he has done and gone on with his job at all; that trees are being felled, bricks laid, roads made, and mines worked by these men, who—from the way their supporters talk—ought to be living on the unearned increment of the landowners; ought to be seething in revolt at the inequalities of life, “protesting and demanding,” and doing little else, instead of going plodding off to work each morning; with their lunch done up in a red pocket-handkerchief, that might be so much more effectively contrived into a cap of freedom. Luckily, the working-man, for the most part, regards his political supporters as any normal John Bull regards his womenkind. They are all very well in their way, but they are not, for a single moment, to be taken seriously—and so he refuses to be made a fool of. After all, what is there for him to fuss about? Usually he has grandparents, or ancient relatives or friends, who remember what the life of the working-man in England was like in their young days; at the present time he has newspapers, and probably knows as well as you or I do of the number of out-of-works and paupers, and deaths from starvation in England—125 dying from sheer want of food alone in 1909. Of course, he is sometimes out of work himself, and masters are mean, or wages low. I remember one case brought against a manufacturer of food-stuffs—porridge, oats, flour, pickles, etc.—where the awful fact came to light that the wives of some of the employés could not afford to spend more than 5s. a week on meat, this—with the best chops at 5d. per pound, and good joints at 3d. or 4d., and commoner sorts at 2d.—being equal to at least 10s. in England, where, in the country districts, meat more than once a week is very rarely seen on a workman’s table. Melbourne was terribly shaken over the disclosure; but still the workmen went on working for that particular manufacturer just as they did for any other. There was no bloodshed, no real boycott, no particular agitation—there seldom is among the _bona fide_ workpeople; they know when they are well off. It is the agitators who agitate for them, who insist on treating them like _enfants gântés_.

After all, even the good things the reformers have procured for the working-men are not good for all. Take as an instance the minimum wage. It is good for the middling worker, for the man who is neither weaker nor stronger, better nor worse, than his fellows. It is not good for the man who is above them, because the universal high rate of pay prevents the employer from being able to raise it in any particularly promising case; already they pay so much that they can do no more. Neither is it good for the old or the feeble, for the pottering odd-jobman who is not up to a regular hard day’s work, and yet who could keep himself—at a time when his family are probably out in the world and doing well—by his own small exertions; living on far less than the minimum wage allows, and still feeling he is taking his part independently in the battle of life.

As another instance of the two-sided way things work, take the Trade Boards. There are now fifty-nine special Boards in Melbourne, by which the rates of wages and prices for piece-work are fixed, the average wages since the establishment of these Boards having risen very materially—in the bakers’ from £1 12s. 6d. a week to £2 4s. 7d.; in the furniture trade from £1 9s. 1d. to £1 16s. 8d.; in the bootmaking trade from £1 3s. 2d. to £1 16s. 8d., to cite only a few examples. In the face of this it is evident that the workman need not feel disturbed by any fear of being underpaid; the Board connected with his special trade will see to that for him. But, on the other hand, the high rate of wages—which sends out of the country a great quantity of work which might just as well be done in it—makes it possible that, as the population increases, the Australian workmen may be faced by a serious lack of employment, besides raising the cost of some articles very considerably. To take one instance. In 1908 Victoria exported 1,680,294 pounds of frozen beef. I presume all the cattle so used possessed skins—indeed, it was proved by the export of raw hides—and yet the leather imported into the State that same year was valued at £275,291, and the Australian workman pays more for his boots—if they are of leather—than does the English workman.

Yet, after all, clothing, boots, and house rent are the only things for which the Australian workman has to pay dearly out of his ample wages. Food is quite wonderfully cheap. I remember a restaurant—it was not The Paris nor The Vienna, nor was it situated anywhere in the vicinity of Collins Street—that I used to go to in my drab days. There one could get soup, hot meat with two vegetables—I particularly recollect quite delicious little beefsteak puddings, one served to each customer—a sweet, often apple-tart, or milk-pudding made with egg, a cup of tea, and as much bread as you wanted—all for 6d.! More than that, they would send round to any office or workshop a tray with meat and vegetables—an ample allowance, too—a pot of tea, and a plate of tart or pudding, milk, sugar, and bread, for the same price. Once I breakfasted there on tea and toast—plenty of it, thick and hot, and lots of butter, too—for 3d., a more ample breakfast, with the addition of a plate of porridge and a chop, or bacon and egg, mounting to 6d.

I remember that breakfast well. It was the day before Christmas Day, and I had gone into town from a suburb, three miles distant, by the first train, at five o’clock, thinking that I might do an article for a local paper on the Christmas show at the Victorian Market. Not that I did any regular journalistic work at that time, but I was like a sparrow; pecking round in the dust for anything I could get hold of. And it was dusty that day, too, even so early in the morning, dense and yellow with dust, and with a scorching north wind blowing. However, I got to town, and then, to save another tram-fare, toiled up the long hill to the market, in the very face of the wind and dust, with clenched teeth and tortured eyes, arriving there only to meet one of the regular staff of the paper for which I intended my article actually coming away! She had stayed with a friend in town, gone to the theatre, sat up all night, talking and tea-drinking, and reached the market soon after three!

The Melbourne Market is a wonder and a delight at any time, but at Christmas it is glorious. It must be remembered that it is the time of fruit and flowers. There are piles of cherries, early apricots and peaches, bananas, and pineapples and tomatoes, glowing masses of colours; and carnations, and roses, and irises, and the clear blue of cornflowers. There are confectionery stalls heaped high with every sort of cake and pastry. The keeper of one stall, where most delicious gingerbread was sold, told me that she made everything herself and had been at the market three days a week for thirty years. There are stalls of china, hats, dress materials; poultry and fish, dairy produce, pork, bacon, books. There are Chinese gardeners smiling urbanely over their stacks of vegetables; big sun-browned fruit farmers; busy wives with butter and eggs (in large white aprons); and butchers, with their blue coats, selling meat—the best at only 2d. and 2½d. a pound, here in the market—and making a most prodigious noise over it, too. I remember once fancying some brains for breakfast, fried in an outer wrapping of bacon—I knew exactly what they would look and taste like—and the laughter that greeted me when I inquired of the butchers if they had “any brains,” and how I laughed, too. When once one is up and out in the fresh air it does not take much to make one laugh at five on a summer’s morning.

There is one dairy-stall at the market that is presided over by five sisters. It is all exquisitely clean, and the butter and eggs, and bacon and sausages, and jars of yellow honey are the very best procurable; while the sisters—as fresh as paint—look delightfully pretty in their large white aprons and over-sleeves. If I was a Victorian up-country farmer, it is to that stall I should go if I wanted a wife; not to “Holt’s,” which is quite close by.

“Holt’s” is an institution in Melbourne—a matrimonial agency, with a minister of some sect or other always at hand; witnesses, ring, and all, ready for any venturesome couple. In England one is occasionally amused by seeing a matrimonial advertisement in some daily paper, but there are nearly always from six to a dozen a day in the Melbourne papers, and intensely amusing they are. Often, in their way, intensely pathetic too, evidently written, as they are, by up-country settlers, men who need a mate and comrade, and have no possible chance of meeting any unmarried woman in their far-away shanties; and by women who see a hopeless desert of celibacy stretching out in front of them, with no possible prospect of meeting any men outside their own family circle. The odd thing is that it is so often people with money and settled incomes who advertise, apparently as far from meeting, in a natural manner, with anyone on whom to lavish their affections as are the little servant-girls, milliners, and clerks who otherwise patronize “Holt’s.” I never, as far as I can tell, knew anyone who was married at this popular marriage-shop, but I must have _met_ people so united again and again, if the very large percentage of marriages I once heard cited as taking place there is correct.

The whole matrimonial business is run by Mrs. Holt, though perhaps her husband assists in the part of witness, best man, etc. At one time, however, Holt was a very well-known repoussé metalworker and engraver, and made presentation shields, and cups, and all sorts of imposing things. Once, being most keenly interested in metal-work, which I adopted as a sort of side-issue to my other trades, I ventured into the smug and secretive-looking place—with the very clean and inviting steps, and the magic name over the door—to interview Mr. Holt, and ask if he would give me some lessons. He replied that he had no leisure for teaching; and apparently he was right, for all the time I was talking he kept being repeatedly called out of the room. The door would open a crack, a voice would breathe his name, and with a murmured apology he would rise and slip out. There would be more whispering in the hall; then the sound of a closing door and silence for about ten minutes, during which time I pictured some awful and all too binding rite being practised in another apartment. Then there would be more whispering in the hall; the sound of the front-door furtively closing; and mine host would slip back to me and our dropped conversation, which was engrossing, save for these interruptions, for I found him an enthusiast over his art, and quite willing to give me such information as was possible. All the same, it was somehow uncanny, and I was not sorry to get away, still free and unfettered by any “dark gentleman with means” or “fair young man, of a loving disposition”—a description that many of the would-be bridegrooms indulge in. One breach-of-promise case I remember well—though whether it was the outcome of one of “Holt’s” advertisements I do not know—where the romantically minded, would-be suitor described himself as “a young man of military appearance in the millinery business.”

There was once a Melbourne man who—for fear, I suppose, of the torment of jealousy—advertised for the “ugliest woman in Australia” as his wife—got her, too, and has her still, for the gods love beauty.

I seem to have wandered far away from the Victorian Market, but, in truth, it is but a few steps. From two o’clock in the morning of each market-day the carts roll past the very door of the marriage bureau, with sleepy men lolling on the top of their piles of produce, bringing, along with the loud rumblings of heavy wheels, a waft of country scents through the city streets. Till five o’clock the carts arrive in a long procession, the flowers and more fragile sort of fruits last of all, while by then there are others ready to leave, and the retreating tide begins.

Hundreds of carts and tented waggons wait in the road which divides the two sides of the great roofed-in market-place, many of them with a child or two, or a half-grown lad, placidly asleep on the pile of sacking inside. The noise is indescribable, the crowd is immense. Everyone seems to be eating bananas or sucking oranges; all save the mothers of families, who push their perambulators—laden high with fruit and meat, babies, and vegetables—up and down the narrow alley-ways between the stalls, driving them ruthlessly in upon the legs of the crowd, with a decision which suggests that an army of women with “prams” should be added to the Australian Defence Forces. The large buyers from the shops have usually all finished by six; then come the housewives, and a sprinkling of dainty, delicate-looking maidens, who at first puzzled me, but who, I found later, were mostly tea-room girls, out to buy fruit and flowers to decorate their tables. What fruit, too! Peaches, 2d. a pound; pineapples, 2d. each; oranges, 2d. a dozen; grapes, 1d., 2d., and 3d. a pound; bananas, 2d. a dozen; huge water-melons, with slices cut out of them to show their beautiful pulp, like “the King’s daughter, all glorious within.”

In the summer—if one goes early enough—the market is a sheer joy. In the winter it is almost more fascinating as a sight, lit with its flaring petrol torches, but it is not so nice getting there. I remember one cold winter’s morning, at five o’clock, half running, shivering, up the long hill in Queen Street, meeting only one policeman, who flashed his lantern at me suspiciously. I even remember what I bought—chops and a bunch of rhubarb, and six eggs, and six pounds of potatoes, and some gingerbread—two large hunks for a penny. I was going to buy butter, but I bought a bunch of early narcissi instead, and ate my bread dry for a week.

Later on the metal-work, which I had discussed with Mr. Holt, came to be the most paying of my many endeavours, and brought me some amusing adventures in my search for a work-shop—after having been politely requested to leave several buildings—where there was nobody to be disturbed by my incessant hammering, the tang, tang, tang being little short of maddening to anyone who was not actually doing it themselves; while, in addition to myself, and the girls whom I had taught to help with the more mechanical work, as often as not I had two or three pupils, all plying their iron tools and hammers at once.

After a long search I found a young motor engineer, who was willing to sub-let me a corner of a large upper workshop for the merest trifle; and here I established myself for some six months, till the craze for metal-work slackened. Here also came my pupils with praiseworthy zeal, picking their way daintily over the gritty and littered floor and up the most awful stairs I have ever encountered.

It was a grand place to work in, for we were allowed to use the bellows and blow-pipes for heating our metal and vices for shaping it, all far bigger than I could afford to obtain for myself; besides which we could get any broken tool replaced on the spot. At first the men at the far side of the room could hardly get on with their jobs for watching us. The hammering out of the pattern they could understand—that struck them as a sort of fancy job—but the shaping of the larger pieces of metal, and riveting and brazing seemed, I suppose, quite an extraordinary phase of women’s work; however, they soon got quite used to us—though never to the hats and costumes of my pupils—and what a good-tempered crew they were! The place was, at times, frightfully hot, with the sun blazing down through the skylight and the blow-pipes going; but they always seemed to be contented, laughing and joking, and I never heard a word of bad language—not real bad language—all the time I was there.

These engineers and metal-workers seemed, on the whole, a much more cheerful set than the painters and cabinet-makers. Several times I did jobs for a large drapery and furniture-making establishment, mostly painting white furniture with little garlands and wreaths in Louis Seize style, or cupboards and boxes with pictures from nursery rhymes. I found the cabinet-makers—apart from the carpenters who work in larger and more airy premises—and the French polishers on the whole a rather anæmic and melancholy class of men; though among them, as among all other Australian workmen, I, an alien, and—in their sense of the word—a mere amateur, met with the greatest possible courtesy and kindness, finding them always ready to give me a helping hand, lend me materials, or pass on any small trade secrets that might benefit me; while, somehow or other, someone inevitably conjured up a cup of tea to help me through the long afternoon hours. They did seem long, too, for, though I worked far longer than eight hours a day in my own rooms, at most times twelve, and for one awful week, I remember, fifteen, I went from one thing to another, and moved about directing or teaching, or doing little homely odd jobs in between. Still, I liked the working in the shops or factories best, and certainly all my happiest days in Australia have been spent among other workpeople; while to this special firm—Messrs. Buckly and Nunn—I owe a special tribute of thanks for unfailing fairness and consideration.

Before the great Women’s Exhibition I worked for some time with another firm, who gave me an equally free hand, paying me at the same rate, £1 a day, better than many a really skilful artist in London gets, and enabling me to live in clover while it lasted. Indeed, from only one firm in Melbourne did I meet with anything like unfairness. This was for one of the biggest pieces of decorative work I ever did—a frieze—for which the architect of the building for which it was intended arranged to pay £37, out of which, of course quite unknown to him, I got only £5 for my work, and £1 for the paint.

In the cabinet-making trade, wood carvers and turners get on an average 54s. to 56s. a week, as do all other skilled cabinet-makers. Bricklayers average 10s. a day, and carpenters the same. Unskilled labourers are paid 6s. a day; quarrymen, 45s. to 54s. a week; electric-light fitters, 54s. a week; farriers, 48s.; compositors, 56s.; blacksmiths, 54s. to 72s.; smiths, 45s. to 52s.; fitters and turners in engineering works, 60s. to 66s.; nail-makers, 50s. to 70s.—rather different to the 2d. an hour the Lancashire women have been agitating for; but women do not make nails in Melbourne, nor do they make chains—or wear them either.

It is little wonder that, with wages like these, in a country where food is so cheap as in Victoria—Mr. Coghlan estimates that only 37.5 per cent. of the earnings of the people is spent in food and drink as against 42.2 in Great Britain and 49.1 in Germany—with a climate in which fires are seldom a real necessity, certainly not for more than three months in the year, where the means of transit, of change and amusement are cheap and inexpensive, that the Australian workman, when it is impressed on him that he must show a proper twentieth-century spirit of revolt, is—being by nature a peaceful and good-tempered person—rather puzzled to know where to begin; and this is in spite of the fact that more than twice as much meat is consumed annually per inhabitant in Australia than in England, and more than four times as much as in Germany, and that a meat diet is supposed to give rise to a passion for revolt, crime, murder, and rapine in the heart of any man.

There is, I believe, only one vegetarian restaurant in Melbourne, and that is in the basement of a building in Collins Street, originally intended for a cellar. I would not like to say anything unkind about it or its habitués, but certainly they _do_ not look as if they had been grown there; while I certainly prefer the appearance and colouring of the people who—cheerfully and persistently in the face of all food faddists—still consume their three meat meals a day, though there is, of course, moderation in everything.

There are no workhouses in Australia, and there is no Poor Law; on one side there is the State, and on the other benevolent asylums—the former instituting more or less spasmodic relief works in the time of any great depression; the latter helping lame dogs over stiles when needs be. But, except for the physically and mentally unfit, the Victorian does not need charity; there is nearly always work of some sort for the man who really desires it; while up-country the sun-downer, or _bona fide_ worker in search for a job, will find “tucker” for the asking at any farm or station. For the people who habitually refuse to work there are the prisons, to which a man or woman may be sent for “possessing no visible means of employment,” which is considered paramount to battening on their fellow-creatures in some fashion or other. Farm colonies for incompetents have long been thought of, and certainly they are a very necessary movement in the face of the large class of men who are willing and able to do a set task, but quite incapable of tackling any job on their own initiative.

There is, of course, the Labour Colony of Leongatha, which, since it was established first, in 1893, has cost the State the large sum of £36,812 15s. 6d. The last four years, however, it has been more nearly self-supporting, under a new system of management, than it ever was before, and hopes are entertained that it may in time become entirely self-supporting. The colonists are instructed in all branches of farm-work, and mostly stay in the colony for some two or three months, after which employment of some sort is found for them. Up to 1907, 7,232 destitute men had been afforded relief—and £36,812 15s. spent on it! No one can say that Victoria shows a mean spirit towards her derelicts, though perhaps she is scarcely so generous toward her ratepayers; but, after all, one colony can scarcely grapple adequately with all the different types for which such places—even if regarded as mere sorting and grading centres—are needed, and Leongatha has suffered—and still suffers—from the indiscriminate types with which it is expected to deal.

However, the _bona fide_ working-man who is out of a job, for any length of time, in Melbourne is very rare; and the other sorts one must class together as more or less invalids, even if only afflicted with the microbe of idleness or incapacity. It is not, then, charity or more work that the artisan or the town labourer wants. Indeed, he wants nothing. Really and truly that is why the strikes here, which are mostly for the bettering of what is already good, lack the passion and sincerity of strikes in England, agitating, as they usually do, for the remedying of what is intolerably bad. In this may be found the reason why Australian strikes are, for the most part, a failure, as were—among others—the railway strike of 1903, the New South Wales Tramways employés’ strike, and the great trade strike of 1890.

In country districts, however, though the wages may be good and the cost of living low, men often exist under conditions compared with which a prison life might be considered gay, and it is to these conditions that the Victorian Government will have to turn its attention more fully if they wish to count on all the emigrants, whom Messrs. M’Kenzie and Mead have been drawing into their net, not only settling upon the land, but writing home such accounts of their life there as may lead more of their fellows, in the Old Country, to follow their example. More irrigation centres, more railways, cheaper freight and railway accommodation for passengers in the far country districts are all needed, and, I believe, for the thinking man or woman, a better sort of encouragement for putting money and labour into the land than that afforded by the mere fact of taking it away from the old settlers and their descendants, who, on the whole, have worked as consistently for it and paid as honestly as any new emigrants are ever likely to do. “They have robbed others that we may have the land,” the new-comers might well say. “Let us make haste and get all we possibly can out of it, for what has happened once may happen again.”

[Picture: Buck-scraping]

Poverty at home is truly terrible, but I doubt if any poverty has ever been as unbearable as the utter loneliness and strangeness of this country and its ways will seem to many a new immigrant—used, as he has been, to the close community of village life—on finding himself twenty or thirty, or even fifty, miles from a doctor, beyond all reach of church or school, facing droughts which descend upon him like the incomprehensible, awful vengeance of some unknown God; day after day of blazing sun, of incredible toil, no leaf or blade of grass even reminding him of home. The best—the very best—the ablest, the strongest, above all, the least imaginative, will fight through; they will grow to love the gum-trees, the sunshine, and the silence of the Bush, but the first few years will prove a hard fight against home-sickness and hopelessness. It is a fight worth waging, a country worth living in. All the same, I only hope that the hundreds of people, the families of 2,206 persons—including 1,591 women and children—concerning whom M’Kenzie and Mead are so jubilant, and over whom the _Argus_ has almost shed inky tears of sheer joy—do realize that, if they are to take their intended place on the land, it is to a real fight, and not to beer and skittles that they are coming.

Lately one of the members of the Victorian House of Representatives declared that he could, within twenty-four hours, bring to Parliament House a hundred young men—with plant, capital, health, and industry—who for months had been vainly seeking for land on which to establish themselves. In answer to this, two squatters near Camperdown, where the pick of the Western District country is to be seen, have each offered to find good land at a reasonable rental, and under a liberal lease for ten out of these hundred men. They would get entry for fallowing from July to December, 1912, and not be asked to pay any rent till March 1, 1913, when they would have been able to gather in their first crops. Such terms, it has been declared, have been offered for years, and the twenty men are not yet forthcoming, let alone a hundred. It still remains to be seen whether the English and Scotch farmers among the prospective emigrants will take a better advantage of the offer.

I was once talking to an Irishman, who was working on the railway-line out here, about his own country, for which he professed the most passionate affection, bringing tears to my eyes by the description of all the horrors that had attended the eviction of himself, his young wife, and children—the barbarous disregard of sentiment and feeling. “But why?” I exclaimed at last, when I did manage to get in a word—“why? Were you very much behind with your rent?”

“I was that—sure I’d niver paid it at all, at all, nor me feyther before me.”

“But if they knew you could not pay?”

“Ach, I could pay fine; but what should I be afther wasting good money paying rint fur? Now, tell me that.”

It sometimes seems to me that many of the would-be farmers, who in Melbourne clamour for land, hold much the same opinions as did that Irishman. Why should they waste good money buying land, or paying “rint” either? though the plea which is put forward is that the settlers want to buy the land, and the squatters—the two Camperdown men among others—wish to merely lease out and not to sell their properties. Perhaps it would be as well in either case to follow the precedent of the pie-man, and insist, as he did—“Show me first your penny”—or, anyhow, show the young men, if not their pennies, before subdividing any more of the large estates; for it may yet happen that Government finds more on its hands than it clearly knows what to do with.

The latest concession which the Government is agitating for on behalf of the working-man is a Compensation Bill, compelling an employer not only to compensate any man injured while at work, but also to provide for him in any disease which he may contract while in his employment. This, like the minimum wage, is a measure which, if carried out, will press heavily on the weak—the very people who, I believe, it honestly hopes to benefit. For the man with a cough, who might develop consumption; for the man who looks as if he might have a weak heart or a weak back, who even appears in any way delicate, it is ruinous; for who would dare take the risk of a responsibility which might run them in hundreds of pounds? The small settler who has heretofore eked out his living by casual work, at a busy season, on some neighbouring station, dairy, or fruit-farm, will suffer too; for who will venture to employ for a few days a man whom in the end they might have to support for life? It is all very well to temper the wind to the shorn lamb, but why skin it first? By the time this appears in print it is more than likely that the proposed Bill will have become law, for many members will vote for it, not because of their convictions, but because, if they stand firm, Federation may intervene with some measure even more stringent.

The worst part of Federation is that nobody quite realizes its power; it may be merely a semblance of reality, or it may be an ogre. It is like those shadows which lurk in the dark corners of a room, frightening wakeful children; or the genii that Sinbad at first hoisted, with such genial good-will, upon his back.

[Picture: Homestead and bullock team]

When I landed for the first time in Australia the relations between the landowners and the working-people were certainly far happier than they are now. People were proud of the vast estates, as indicative of the size of the country; of the immense flocks of sheep, and the merino wool that nowhere else could be matched for quality and quantity. Certain especially silky wools are procured from sheep in certain parts of the Western District of Victoria, and nowhere else, lambs’ wool actually reaching the price of 2s. a pound in Geelong market this last season. It was famous wool such as this, grown largely by the Macarthur and Russell families, which built up the reputation of Victoria far more surely than gold ever did, or pigs or onions ever will. Sheep do not reach to such a pitch of perfection by chance, and the Western District merinoes would scarcely be recognized by their original progenitors, popularly supposed to have emerged from the Ark. Immense sums of money have been spent on importing animals and bringing them to the highest pitch of perfection, and a question that has got to be faced is: Who—when the land is cut up into small holdings—will have either the money or enterprise necessary for importing fresh blood; and how will all the evils of inter-breeding, always such a danger on small farms, be avoided? Even now stud sheep are being sent out of the country, one owner a few months back having shipped off close on a dozen to Natal, feeling, I suppose, that there was nothing more to be made out of valuable sheep in a country which was, bit by bit, being cut away from under his feet.

“Men are more valuable than sheep,” is the parrot-like cry of politicians—_some_ men I would say. In any case, men can live on sheep, and they cannot—unless they are cannibals—live on each other. If the large estates are not put to a proper use, if the sheep and wool they produce are a menace to the credit of the country, or when all the unsettled land is gone, then a reconstruction will become imperative. Meanwhile it is well to remember what has been done with the sheep, and what the sheep have done, and are still doing, for the country.

The original flock of sheep which formed the chief part of the stock owned by the Henty family was formed in Sussex at the end of the eighteenth century, taken out to Jamaica, then, later on, transferred to Portland by Edward Henty. To this flock many of the best of the Victorian sheep owe their origin, merinoes, also originally imported from England, being brought down from New South Wales by Captain Macarthur. In 1836 there were, officially, 41,332 sheep in Victoria—or Port Phillip. By 1842 the number had risen to 1,404,333, from which the number went on increasing by leaps and bounds till, in 1891, it reached 12,692,843, when the run of dry seasons, which lasted till 1901, decreased the flock to 10,841,790. The enormous rate at which the value of the export of wool increased may be gathered from the fact that between the years 1837—the year following the settlement of the Henty family in Portland—and 1840, five years after Faulkner’s settlement on the bank of the Yarra, and six years before the recognition of Victoria as a separate colony—this value rose from £11,639 to £67,902. In but one more year it leapt up to £85,735; while in 1908–09 the total value of the wool-clip in Victoria, with wool stripped from Victorian skins and exported on skins, has been estimated at £3,556,168, the weight of wool from the Western District sheep alone weighing 27,708,920 pounds.

The first live stock landed by Captain Phillips in Australia, in 1788, comprised 7 horses, 6 cattle, 29 sheep, 12 pigs, and a few goats.

Four months later the live stock in the colony were estimated, in a letter from Captain Phillips to Lord Sydney, Secretary of State for the Colonies, as follows:—“7 horses, 7 cattle, 29 sheep, 74 pigs, 18 turkeys, 29 geese, 35 ducks, 205 fowls, and 5 _rabbits_”—so that Mr. Austin was not the first, or the only, culprit in respect to Master Bunny.

In 1908 there were, roughly speaking, 87,043,266 sheep in this colony, the result of breeding and importation from the old country, from India, and the Cape, the sheep in the six years from 1902 to 1908 having increased by 33,374,919; while the value of the wool exported from the entire colony in 1908 was £22,914,236. In the face of these figures and the well-known fact that the number of sheep in all other countries is diminishing, it does seem rather like killing the goose with the golden egg to prohibit big estates, which, after all, are the only estates possible for pastoral success, As long as there is plenty of land still vacant and the output of wool is not only a great source of wealth, but also a credit to the country, it seems a mistake to financially cripple, beyond all hope, the people who produce it; while the fact that many of the large estates have been on the market more than once and found no purchaser, seems to have escaped the notice of Mr. Fisher when he so light-heartedly sent the maximum rate careering upwards. It seems, indeed, like trying to hang a man who has already been beheaded to take away all the land that is worth anything and impose the heaviest possible tax on that which is worthless.

As yet no one seems to know whether the Federal Parliament is or is not within its rights in levying any such tax at all. However, if their action is proved unconstitutional, the landowners will not be very much better off, as the State Parliament will be only too ready to impose a progressive tax on their own account. Still, they should certainly be able to show a trifle more discrimination than is possible for the Federal Government, while there is some hope that they may differentiate between the man who owns a vast stretch of land, far from any railway or town, and only possible for pastoral purposes, and the man with a small, compact estate, with rich soil, well watered, and capable of the closest cultivation; while something might be done to compensate individuals and companies “away out back” for the disadvantages under which they will labour in competing with the lease-holders of Crown lands, who will have no tax whatever to meet.

There is an idea in England, among the people who do not know much—and these are always the readiest to express their opinion—that the squatter simply sat down on a piece of land and raked in just as much as he could get from the surrounding country, mile upon mile upon mile of it; riding round, killing off horse after horse in the process, sticking up a post here and a post there, and asserting:—“All this is mine”; straddling over the land, with his long legs, and his top-boots, and his picturesque slouch hat, striking his breast, just like a man in a play, and reiterating, “Mine, mine!”

But it was not like that at all. It was blood, and sweat, and sheer endeavour, and hard cash. For one must remember that the men who hold the large estates are not the same men who ran up a fortune in a year on the gold-fields.

The land was paid for—and to the Crown, too—up to as much as 20s. and 25s. an acre. Yet, as Sir Henry Wrixon says during his report on the Federal Land Tax in the _Argus_ of August 20, 1910, the present Government, in its desire to still have the cake its predecessors have eaten, would say to the landowners: “True, we have sold you this land and have got your money; indeed, in some cases we urged you to buy at more than its real value, in order to facilitate your plans for land settlement. But now we have altered our views; we want no large purchasers or holders of land. Clear out, you miscreants. Tremble before the vengeance of a triumphant democracy.”

It may be political, but is it—to put it in a characteristically Australian term—“is it cricket?” and is it sense? And is it the sort of behaviour that is likely to tempt new settlers with means to invest their money in Australian land?

At a public meeting lately Mr. Fisher assured a delegation of mercantile men that they might always rely on him in commercial matters. But Mr. Fisher, in as far as he counts—that is, politically—is not immortal, and his successor may in his turn “barrack,” to use another popular expression, altogether for the landowners; while the mercantile class may in their turn go to the wall with one single twist of the kaleidoscope.

If such a tax as is now determined on was not retrospective there would not be much to complain of. If it was even decreed that it would be regarded as a capital crime in the future to acquire any land over 5,000 acres in extent, that might be fair. But to sell a man anything, then count it a crime that he should possess it—well, it seems, to say the least of it, a peculiarly feminine way of looking at things. And I cannot help wondering if Mr. Fisher was going to try on a new suit, or buy a new hat, or anything else really important, when he lately dismissed the deputation of prominent pastoralists—headed by Mr. J. A. Campbell, President of the Pastoral Union of Southern Riverina—who sought to lay their side of the question before him, after twenty-five minutes, with the airy remark that:—“Doubtless we are all of us desirous of going somewhere else this morning.” And this to men whose homes and families, whose whole means of life, and pride of life, depended on such a twenty-five minutes!

It is true that Mr. Fisher promised to consider the new facts brought before his notice by the deputation. Still, it is not generally considered quite the best thing to mix a cake after it is baked. In our old nursery days we were inoculated with the saying that “It is better to be sure than sorry”; and it is an odd feature of the political affairs of this country that, while all discussion is perfectly free, and praise, criticism, and condemnation equally open to all, great questions are still settled and great measures passed with hardly any discussion at all, or even thought.

From the beginning that part of the new land tax which has been most carefully impressed upon the people is that, while they will all benefit from it, only some 6 or 10 per cent. will be called upon to pay it. This all the electors completely understand, as they naturally would anything that has been so carefully explained.

What has not been so clearly put before the people is the question as to whether the small farmers—who are to occupy the improved holdings on the alienated land, 200 acres or so—and who will be straining every nerve to meet the half-yearly payments, all the immigrants and townspeople will, in the future, be as beneficial to the working-man—whom the tax is supposed to benefit, who in any case has the pleasure of seeing others squirm beneath its weight—as the large landowners have been in the past. After all, these landowners have not stood alone. They have employed an enormous number of men, in an enormous number of ways, from the shearers who clip their sheep to the stevedores who ship their wool, the people who transfer it by railway or bullock waggon, the people who buy it—English, French, and Flemish wool-buyers, who live in Melbourne for two or three months each year, and spend money there; the tradespeople, servants, and artisans.

A big station is like a camp of soldiers; the store-room alone would amaze any English housekeeper, resembling, as it does, a shop, stocked with all the necessities of life in immense quantities. There have been an enormous number of people employed in Australia in growing, making, and packing most of these supplies; and the revenue has been swelled by the importation of the rest. In the shearing season the place is like a hive, and the whole country is alive with men flocking from one station to another, and carts and waggons with supplies—relatively alive, of course, for in these vast distances an army would have as little effect as a swarm of ants. Still, the big stations are the arteries of the back blocks, keeping vital tracts of country which, except for them and except for the sheep which find a living there, would lie uncared for and untouched.

The small cockies do most of their shearing themselves, all the family being called upon to help: the girls in carrying away the fleeces, and even clipping the belly-wool for their brothers; while sundry neighbours will drop in to give a hand, the wool-shed usually consisting of an extempore tent or canopy of hessian.

In other places the cockies shear in a neighbouring squatter’s wool-shed, after his flocks are finished with, keeping on some of the regular shearers if the wool-clip seems large enough to warrant it; while from many small selections all the men go off at shearing-time to make a bit of extra money on the neighbouring stations. It is upon co-operation such as this, both in the matter of wool-sheds, shearers, and stud rams, that—if all the large estates are to be cut up—the small selectors will have to depend in the future; unless the sheep is completely “taboo,” though the enormous tracts of country which are necessary to support the flocks will prevent this pastoral co-operation ever being so successful as in the matter of central butter, cheese, and bacon factories.

Hand-shears have been so completely replaced with machinery nowadays that only a minority of the younger men can clip by hand at all, and are often completely at a loss in the smaller flocks, where there are no machines in use.

[Picture: Wool-presses]

A big shearing-shed is a tremendously inspiring sight, as every place is—even a match factory—where work is being done quickly and well. But, apart from this, there are the various marked characteristics of the men, the play of muscle in the sunburnt arms and necks, and the colour of the weather-worn clothes, the shimmer of heat and dust, and the silky gleam of the wool as it falls upon the boards, swathe upon swathe of it, exquisitely creamy-tinted and fine, the product of intensest care and cultivation, the result of breeding being shown in the fact that fifty years ago a fleece from a full-grown sheep averaged 3 to 4 pounds, whereas now it averages 8 or 9, from some flocks even 15, pounds.

The shearers live—that is, sleep and eat—in what is known as “the hut,” a long narrow structure with bunks at either side, in two tiers, each bunk just long enough to hold a man. The table, which runs pretty well the whole length of the hut, is made of sheet-iron tacked on to a rough frame, with benches at either side, and there is little else, save the atmosphere, which is thick and portentous, an intermingling of tobacco, wool, beer, spirits, clothes, boots, blankets, and men.

The better sort of shearers declare that the noise and the stench, the constant fidgeting and stirring all night, the snoring, coughing, spitting, and swearing, make it impossible for anyone to get a decent night’s sleep in these huts, and many pitch a tent for themselves and a pal, or build a mia-mia of boughs as far from the rest of their companions as possible.

The shearers have one chronic grievance, and that is the food and the cook. They have another constantly recurring grievance, and that is wet sheep, over which they are in a perpetual state of insurrection; and little wonder, considering that the labour and the menace to health incurred in shearing wet sheep is hardly to be overestimated. No squatter can make his men shear wet sheep since the formation of the “Shearers’ Union,” and rightly enough too, though he is bound to pay them all the time that they are in the sheds waiting for the sheep to dry. A really wet sheep can be picked out in a moment by the lank, dark look of the wool; but when the wetness is not so distinctly shown, the question between the shearers and the squatter—who naturally wants to get his sheep finished—becomes a vexed one. Often, too, the back is quite dry, while the neck and belly of the sheep is wringing wet; while the argument so often used in courts of law that no rain has fallen for weeks is absolutely futile. Anyone who is used to shearing in Australia is not likely to doubt the Scriptural story of the wet fleece, whether it was on the sheep’s back or off it, for the yoke of the wool will absorb moisture to any extent from fog, dew, or even from an atmosphere that is not palpably the least damp.

Harry Lawson has drawn us some grim pictures of life in the back blocks. It is often bad enough for the large landowner and his womenkind. But they have books, and papers, and motors—which have revolutionized country life in Australia more than anything else. They can take occasional runs up to town, and have friends to stay with them, so that existence becomes endurable in a way that it never could become to the small settlers, and it seems to me that before such people are uprooted it would be well to face clearly the question as to whether those who replace them will ever be able, or willing, to endure the life which they must face—conditions which will appear far more appalling to strangers than to people who have been bred and born in the country, and who possess, as all Australians seem to do, the most amazing powers of rebound. “John Barleycorn got up again and sore surprised them all” might be said of many a man and many a district in Australia. One of the most extraordinary things about the people being that they will live in absolute loneliness, facing drought, heat, and loss, toiling incredibly to get their stock fed and watered, watching them die day after day during a bad season; and then, when good times come, start again at the very beginning, with as gay a spirit as ever, absolutely unembittered by all the hardships through which they have passed.

Usually the spring might be expected, in its rebound, to fly too far in the opposite direction; but, oddly enough, men who have hardly seen a woman, or sat down to a decent meal for months; or known what it was to have a moment’s relaxation, or pleasure, or sport, will come up to Melbourne and enjoy themselves in as well-ordered a fashion as though they had been living in the very lap of civilization and luxury. In most countries where men had lived as these men had lived, there would be the wildest orgies and excesses, and all sorts of tragedies to follow; but the Australian possesses more than his share of “horse sense”—he also possesses a sense of humour which is mainly, I believe, the greatest reason for his not making a fool of himself.

Of course, men still go “on the bust,” cheques are planked down, and “shouting”—the Australian equivalent for “treating”—indulged in till all the money is finished. But, even so, the men are good-tempered, and it is not a case of shooting everyone who does not happen to be as thirsty as they are; while on the Australian gold-fields, from the very beginning, the record of crime and lawlessness has been far less than in other countries. I remember one story which shows the inspiring joy—even in anticipation—of planking down a cheque that strikes me as delightfully characteristic. A new-chum arrived at a shearing-shed and asked his way to a township some thirty miles distant. None of the men were able themselves to direct him, as they, too, were new to that district, but referred him to the cook, who, they declared, had been there. “Why, yes,” acknowledged that worthy when appealed to; “I’ve been there right enough; but I’m blessed if I remember the road. Ye see, mister, it was like this: I wur only along that way once, an’ I wur goin’ ter cash a cheque.”

An old book by an early Australian settler tells another characteristic story. A clergyman arrived at a far-away station at shearing-time, and was put up there for a few days, which happened to include a Sunday, when he expressed himself very desirous of holding a service for the shearers. As one may imagine, his host was rather torn in two between his desire to please his guest and not set all his men’s backs up. Anyhow, on Sunday morning he proposed riding on to the wool-shed—three miles’ distance—in advance, and preparing the congregation. As he expected, none of the men had a moment of time to spare; there were shears to sharpen, clothes to wash and mend; one man declared he was a Catholic, and had never been inside a church in his life; and the cook and his boy had dinner to prepare for thirty men.

Then the boss changed his tone, and declared: “Every man who attends the service in the wool-shed in half an hour’s time, and behaves himself in an orderly and respectful manner, shall have a glass of rum served out to him after the service.”

It was the greatest success. The men—as such men will—played fair; and years after that very clergyman, then become a high dignitary of the Church, described in a book on the Colonies the picturesque incident: the service in the wool-shed, with the wool-press as a pulpit, and the absorbed congregation of shearers and washers.

On another occasion it struck a visiting clergyman, who was merely travelling through the country, that there must be an enormous number of children who had never been baptized. As it was a slack season, he somehow inveigled the squatter at whose homestead he was staying to start out with him on a sort of camping expedition, during which they rode close on a hundred miles, meeting with several families of shepherds, whose children they baptized, often to the great indignation of the parents, who imagined some slur was thereby cast on the management of their progeny. One matron, however, declared that she was quite willing that her brood should be christened if only they could be caught. They were as wild as kangaroos, and as they had bolted into the scrub at the first sight of strange faces, the only thing possible was to ride them down and literally drag them by force into the Church’s fold. The highly amused squatter officiated at this ceremony both as godfather and godmother, and, I presume, whipper-in, though he declared himself as thankful never to have met any of his god-children in after-years.

The Australians, up to this day—though they are as good as most, and better than many—do not trouble themselves overmuch about the forms of religion, while just the same strenuous efforts are still made to gather wandering sheep more securely into the fold. Some years ago Parliament actually dared to attempt to interfere with the people’s Sunday, and an Act was passed which stopped all local and excursion trains running on Sunday mornings. Needless to say this law was short-lived, and endured, I forget exactly for how long, but certainly only a month or two. At the present time there is no Sunday post, and no second delivery of milk; but these regulations stand more for the benefit of the workpeople than the Church, I believe; while now the Postmaster-General is absolving all men in his department from Sunday labour who can plead “conscientious objections.” I believe that inquiries as to how these objectors spend their Sundays have been set on foot, with the result that fishing, cricket, and billiards have been found to rank highest in their esteem. Apparently it has not occurred to the Postmaster to try rum, as the more man-wise squatter did.

Oddly enough, even the Boer War has not diffused an idea, which is very general, that the Australian working-man is divided into two types—the luxurious, lazy, arrogant holiday-maker and the rollicking cow-boy sort of person. For myself, I should say that the town man, artisan or labourer, is much the same as in any other country, with the added—but quite unimportant—defects and virtues of his time and place. He is more cocksure, but he is also more self-respecting, than the labourer at home. He works less uninterruptedly, but he works harder while he is at it, though with less appearance of sweat and fever, merely because he is better fed, and all the conditions of his life are more wholesome, while his hours are shorter; but otherwise he is much the same as elsewhere.

In the country districts the difference is far more pronounced. “Away back” the shepherd and cattle-man is more ignorant than most of his fellows at home, but he is more resourceful; he has more spirit and more pluck. If the country is not new to him, it was new to his father or grandfather, and it needed all their power of resource and adaptability to get on in it.

I have said that the schoolmaster and schoolmarm in the back blocks face difficulties and meet with conditions almost incredible to their fellow men and women at home. The distance makes the outlook larger. An afternoon visit becomes a long day’s journey, an adventure, an undertaking. The Bush parson and the Bush doctor live a life completely different from the life of a country parish. The very fact of being so constantly on horseback, as they are, makes a difference. The many hours of open air, of sunshine and storm that are involved when they go to visit a patient or christen a baby—it all makes a difference, and a wholesome one too.

Then the postman; think of the country postman at home! His leisurely ways, his thick boots, his slow, steady progress, his many pauses for gossip and refreshment, all dignified by a sort of consideration which the other yokels show him as a servant of the King. Then think of the mailmen in Australia, of their dependence on their maps, and their knowledge of the country, the danger they are in from thirst, from privation, from the chance of being bushed, and from blacks—not, perhaps, in Victoria so much now, but certainly up North, which very fairly represents many other places as they were fifty or sixty years ago.

Only last year a mailman missed his way up by the Archer River, and turned up, nearly a week later, 120 miles farther south than he should have been, having gone right round Coen, for which he was bound, without striking his track. Again, quite lately another mailman in the same district was lost for fourteen days, having travelled round and round in a circle. When the police found him he was delirious, and fought them wildly, thinking they meant to murder him and steal the mailbag, which he had stuck to through all his suffering.

Coen, which is in Queensland, on the Cape York Peninsula, is indeed a place of tragedies. Another young mailman on the same track disappeared, and when his forsaken camp was discovered at the foot of Marsley’s Spur, a note was found pinned to the bag. “Please do not touch the mails; am away horse-hunting.” But though this man’s tracks were followed for miles, no trace of his body was ever found. One mailman, worn out by despair and long, dry stages, shot himself when within actual sight of Coen Post Office; while another was drowned while attempting to cross the Archer. In a district such as this even the arrival of a bill by post would cease to be a commonplace and inevitable event, the wonder being that it should arrive at all.

One often sees little boxes in the country places nailed to some tree on the road. It is there that the letters for the settlers, squatters, and cockies are left by the mailmen; while it is generally one of the duties of the daughter of the house to ride for the mail once, or perhaps twice, a week, twenty miles or so to where the precious documents have been dropped into the private box.

Another thing besides pluck and resource that the way-back districts breed is the true spirit of friendship. The first time I went up-country in Australia I travelled by night, arriving at my destination soon after four in the morning, and such a morning as I believe only an Australian spring can show: cool and fragrant, though it was at the height of a great drought, and enveloped in a haze of wonderful blue.

In spite of the beauty of the morning I must say I was feeling rather miserable and forsaken, and in doubt as to what was going to happen next, when I climbed wearily out of the train and saw no one I knew on the platform; and little wonder, I thought, considering the hour. However, my anxiety did not last long, for two young girls in fresh white dresses claimed me, explaining that they had promised my friends to come and meet me, and take me to their house, where I could have breakfast, and rest till later in the day, when I should be fetched.

That was my first introduction to a sulky, I remember. I and one of the girls packed into the odd little vehicle, and the other girl ran behind through the still sleeping township. There were a lot of streets, all with very imposing names at the corners on large name-boards, but we did not take much notice of them—indeed, there was nothing beyond the names to distinguish them from the open spaces of spare ground, between the little tin-roofed houses, across which we and the sulky and the running girl cut at a hard gallop.

When I arrived there was a room ready for me and a hot bath, the girls themselves having started the bath-heater before they came to the station; and a fire of logs—a welcome sight, for there was a nip of frost in the air—and tea and thin bread-and-butter, and a nightdress ready aired, so that I need not trouble to unpack. Of all the warm-hearted kindnesses I have ever met with in this country, this preparation for the coming of a woman who was an absolute stranger—simply the friend of another friend, herself a new-chum—lingers in my mind as one of the kindest. To this moment I remember vividly the feeling of exquisite comfort with which I snuggled my tired limbs in among the bedclothes, after my bath, and lay there, with the blinds down, sipping tea in the dancing firelight.

It is odd how often one can do with, and delight in, a fire in one’s bedroom out here; but days which have been blazing hot are apt to end with a cold night, and then the wood fires are so tempting, so cheerful and companionable. I recollect once staying a night with some friends on Mount Macedon, where the sitting-room boasted a really huge open fireplace, in which burnt an immense log, part of the trunk of a tree, banked up with smaller pieces. This monster burnt steadily all day till about eleven o’clock at night, by which time the middle of it had become a glowing mass of crimson, that finally broke, with a soft crash, a flare of sparks, and thick fall of silver-grey ash. It is a sound one grows after a time to listen for and love, this breaking of the burnt-through logs. Once up-country I was lodging in a little wooden shanty, through the cracks of which I could see the stars as I lay in bed. The nights were very cold, and I used to make up a good fire the last thing—the fireplace and chimney being the only part of the house built of bricks—to be regularly awakened after some hours by the soft crash of falling logs. Yet, though the nights were cold, the days were such a blaze of golden sunshine that my sheets—there were only one pair for each bed—used to be taken off, washed and dried, and aired in the sun, and put back again the same morning.

But it is not only among the well-to-do people that the spirit of comradeship shows itself, as it did to me that first morning up in the back blocks—it is everywhere among all classes. People have done surprising things for me—people to whom I was a complete stranger—while among themselves, from squatters to swaggies, though they do not write essays on friendship, they will hold by a mate through good and ill—and most of all through ill.

One instance, which, though it belongs to New South Wales, is so typical of this that I cannot resist quoting it, was lately cited in the _Sydney Bulletin_, which says:

“The Outback can still breed some true mates. One of them was heard of at Parkes (N.S.W.) the other day. With another man—a good deal older than himself—he had tramped into Forbes looking for work. On the way the older man’s boots gave out, so the mate bought him a pair, and then had only a few shillings left. They didn’t get the work they were after, so they decided to give their feet a rest and take the rail to Parkes. The older man’s fare was fixed up all right, but the young one quietly took a ticket as far as his money would stretch, and then, with a breezy: ‘So long!’ he got out and walked. The older man rode on; but bad luck had got him down, and when his mate turned up at Parkes he was a corpse. The coroner’s court said it was suicide on the part of one, and mighty fine and generous behaviour on the part of the other; and witnesses and others insisted on dropping their fees and some odd coins into the white man’s empty hat.”