The Workingman's Paradise: An Australian Labour Novel

Nellie stopped at the corner of her street, under the lamp-post. Ned stopped by her side, fuming by now, biting his moustache, hardly able to hold his tongue. Nellie looked at h...

Neither Ned nor Nellie spoke as they journeyed down George street in the rumbling 'bus. "I've got tickets," was all she said as they entered the ferry shed at the Circular Quay....

"It had clung to its little life so long, in the close Sydney streets, in the stuffy, stifling rooms which were its home; it had battled so bravely; it was being vanquished at l...

"It can't do any good. We have made up our minds that the matter might just as well be fought out now, no matter what it costs. We've made all our arrangements. There is nothing...

Ned dreaded that rejoining the others on the verandah, but he need not have. They had forced the conversation at first, but gradually it became natural. It had turned on the pro...

It was a husky whisper. His throat was parched, his lips dry, his mouth also. His heart thumped, thumped, thumped, so that it sickened him. He shook nervously. His face twitched...

"I suppose he'll get drunk to celebrate it," she was saying, energetically drying the last cup with a corner of the damp cloth. "And I suppose she feels as though it's something...

Ned's thoughts were in tumult, as he sat balancing his spoon on his cup after forcing himself to swallow the, to him, unpleasant drink that the others seemed to relish so. There...

"Fifteen! But they're taking girls on at twelve. Of course there's meals. But you've got to room yourself, and then there's washing, clean aprons and caps and cuffs and collars....

The working of George's oars and the rippling of water on the bow were all that broke the silence as the skiff moved across the harbour. Suddenly Ned lost sight of the swinging...

While Nellie had been talking temperance to Mr. Hobbs, Ned had been watching her impatiently from the other side of the street. For an hour and more he had been prowling up and...

"Well! Where shall we go, Nellie?" began Ned jauntily, as they walked away together. To tell the truth he was eager to get away from this poor neighborhood. It had saddened him,...

After ten minutes' walking Ned reached a broad thoroughfare. Hesitating for a moment, to get his bearings, he saw across the way one of the cheap restaurants of which "all meals...

Geisner was betimes at his appointment in the Domain. It was still the dinner hour, and though it was Sunday there were few to be seen on the grass or along the paths. So Ned sa...

"Because he is like a wall of iron in front of one. If he were a fat hulking brute, as some of them are, I wouldn't have minded. I could have pitied him and felt that he wasn't...

At the station some of the Sydney unionists wore waiting to see Ned off. As they loaded him with friendly counsel and encouraged him with fraternal promises of assistance and co...

Paddy's Market was in its glory, the weekly glory of a Sydney Saturday night, of the one day in the week when the poor man's wife has a few shillings and when the poor caterer f...

The shadows were beginning to throw again as Nellie finished telling her story. The quarters had sounded as they walked backwards and forwards. It was past one when they stopped...

She had gone up to him as they all came in. "Is it good?" she asked, looking over his arm. For answer he held the slips down to her and changed them as she read rapidly, only pa...

"I think land and machinery, the entire means and processes of the production and exchange of wealth, including stock, should be held in common by those who need them and worked...

The picnic party had moved on while they talked, but a multitude of sitters and walkers were now everywhere, particularly as they climbed the slope to the level. There the Sunda...

The naming and writing of THE WORKINGMAN'S PARADISE were both done hurriedly, although delay has since arisen in its publishing. The scene is laid in Sydney because it was not t...

"In a western billabong, with a stretch of plain around, a dirty waterhole beside me, I sat and read the WORKER. Maxwellton Station was handy; and sick with a fever on me I craw...

Ah thy people, thy children, thy chosen, Marked cross from the womb and perverse! They have found out the secret to cozen The gods that constrain us and curse; They alone, they...

In yesterday's reach and to-morrow's, Out of sight though they lie of to-day, There have been and there yet shall be sorrows That smite not and bite not in play.