The Workingman's Paradise Part 14

Where the leafy chimes of gladness in the tree-tops aye are ringing, Answering to the joyous chorus which the birds are ever singing; Where the seas of yellow plenty toss with music in the wind; Where the purple vines are laden, and the groves with fruit are lined; Where all grief is but a mem'ry, and all pain is left behind --As Time rolls on!

But it lies beyond a desert 'cross which hosts of Death are marching, And a hot sirocco wanders under skies all red and parching, Lined with skeletons of armies through the centuries fierce and acre Bones of heroes and of sages marking Time's lapse year by year, Unmoistened by the night-dews 'mid the solitudes of fear --As Time rolls on!

* Kindly written by Mr. F. J. Broomfield for insertion here.

"Well done, Arty"! cried Ford. "I'd like to do a few 'thumbnails' for that."

"Let me see it, please! Why don't you say 'rushes' for 'wanders' in the last verse, Arty?" asked George, reaching out his hand for the slips.

"Go away!" exclaimed Mrs. Stratton, holding them out of reach. "Can't you wait two minutes before you begin your sub-editing tricks? Josie, keep him in order!"

"He's a disgrace," replied Josie. "Don't pay any heed to him, Arty!

They'll cut up your verses soon enough, and they're just lovely."

The others laughed, all talking at once, commending, criticising, comparing. Arty laughed and joked and quizzed, the liveliest of them all.

Ned stared at him in astonishment. He seemed like somebody else. He discussed his own verses with a strange absence of egotism. Evidently he was used to standing fire.

"The metaphor in that third verse seems to me rather forced," said Stratton finally. "And I think George is right. 'Rushes' does sound better than 'wanders.' I like that 'rudely punctuated' line, but I think I'd go right through it again if it was mine."

"I think I will, too," answered Arty. "There are half-a-dozen alterations I want to make now. I'll touch it up to-morrow. It'll keep till then."

"That sort of stuff would keep for years if it wasn't for the Scrutineer," said Stratton. "Very few papers care to publish it nowadays."

"The Scrutineer is getting just like all the rest of them," commented George. "It's being run for money, only they make their pile as yet by playing to the gallery while the other papers play to the stalls and dress circle."

"It has done splendid work for the movement, just the same," said Ford.

"Admit it's a business concern and that everybody growls at it, it's the only paper that dares knock things."

"It's a pity there isn't a good straight daily here," said Geisner.

"That's the want all over the world. It seems impossible to get them, though."

"Why is it?" demanded Nellie. "It's the working people who buy the evening papers at least. Why shouldn't they buy straight papers sooner than these sheets of lies that are published?"

"I've seen it tried," answered Geisner, "but I never saw it done. The London Star is going as crooked as the others I'm told."

"I don't see why the unions shouldn't start dailies," insisted Nellie. "I suppose it costs a great deal but they could find the money if they tried hard."

"They haven't been able to run weeklies yet," said George, authoritatively. "And they never will until they get a system, much less run dailies."

"Why?" asked Ned. "You see," he continued, "our fellows are always talking of getting a paper. They get so wild sometimes when they read what the papers say about the unions and know what lies most of it is that I've seen them tear the papers up and dance a war-dance on the pieces."

"It's along story to explain properly," said George. "Roughly it amounts to this that papers live on advertis.e.m.e.nts as well as on circulation and that advertisers are sharp business men who generally put the boycott on papers that talk straight. Then the cable matter, the telegraph matter, the news matter, is all procured by syndicates and companies and mutual arrangement between papers which cover the big cities between them and run on much the same lines, the solid capitalistic lines, you know. Then newspaper stock, when it pays, is valuable enough to make the holder a capitalist; when it doesn't pay he's still more under the thumb of the advertisers. The whole complex organisation of the press is against the movement and only those who're in it know how complex it is."

"Then there'll never be a Labour press, you think?"

"There will be a Labour press, I think," said George, turning Josie's hair round his fingers. "When the unions get a sound system it'll come."

"What do you mean by your sound system, George?" asked Geisner.

"Just this! That the unions themselves will publish their own papers, own their own plant, elect their own editors, paying for it all by levies or subscriptions. Then they can snap their fingers at advertisers and as every union man will get the union paper there'll be a circulation established at once. They can begin with monthlies and come down to weeklies. When they have learnt thoroughly the system, and when every colony has its weekly or weeklies, then they'll have a chance for dailies, not before."

"How would you get your daily?" enquired Geisner.

"Expand the weeklies into dailies simultaneously in every Australian capital," said George, waxing enthusiastic. "That would be a syndicate at once to co-operate on cablegrams and exchange intercolonial telegrams.

Start with good machinery, get a subsidy of 6d. a month for a year and 3d. a month afterwards, if necessary, from the unions for every member, and then bring out a small-sized, neat, first-rate daily for a ha'penny, three-pence a week, and knock the penny evenings off their feet."

"A grand idea!" said Geisner, his eyes sparkling. "It sounds practical.

It would revolutionise politics."

"Who'd own the papers, though, after the unions had subsidised them?"

asked Ned, a little suspiciously.

"Why, the unions, of course," said George. "Who else? The unions would find the machinery and subsidise the papers on to their feet, for you couldn't very well get every man to take a daily. And the unions would elect trustees to hold them and manage them and an editor to edit each one and would be able to dismiss editors or trustees either if it wasn't being run straight. There'd be no profits because every penny made would go to make the papers better, there being no advertising income or very little. And every day, all over the continent, there would be printing hundreds of thousands of copies, each one advancing and defending the Labour movement."

"It's a grand idea," said Geisner again, "but who'd man the papers, George. Could Labour papers afford to pay managers and editors what the big dailies do?"

"I don't know much about managers, but an editor who wouldn't give up a lot to push the Cause can't think much of it. Why, we're nothing but literary prost.i.tutes," said George, energetically. "We just write now what we're told, selling our brains as women on the streets do their bodies, and some of us don't like it, some of the best too, as you know well, Geisner. My idea would be to pay a living salary, the same all round, to every man on the literary staff. That would be fair enough as an all round wage if it was low pay for editing and leader writing and fancy work. Many a good man would jump at it, to be free to write as he felt, and as for the rest of the staff by paying such a wage we'd get the tip-top pick of the ordinary men who do the pick-up work that generally isn't considered important but in my opinion is one of the main points of a newspaper."

"Would you take what you call a 'living salary' on such a paper?" asked Connie.

"I'd take half if Josie--" He looked at her with tender confidence. The love-light was in her answering eyes. She nodded, proud of him.

"And they'd all publish my poetry?" asked Arty.

"Would they? They'd jump at it."

"Then when they come along, I'll write for a year for nothing."

"How about me?" asked Ford, "Where do I come in?"

"And me?" asked Connie.

"You can all come in," laughed George. "Geisner shall do the political and get his editor ten years for sedition. Stratton will supply the mild fatherly sociological leaders. Mrs. Stratton shall prove that there can't be any true Art so long as we don't put the police on to everything that is ugly and repulsive. Nellie, here, shall blossom out as the Joan of Arc of women's rights, with a pen for a sword. And Arty we'll keep chained upon the premises and feed him with peppercorns when we want something particularly hot. Ford can retire to painting and pour his whole supply of bile out in one cartoon a week that we'll publish as a Sat.u.r.day's supplement. Hawkins shall be our own correspondent who'll give the gentle squatter completely away in weekly instalments. And Josie and I'll slash the stuffing out of your 'copy' if you go writing three columns when there's only room for one. We'll boil down on our papers. Every line will be essence of extract. Don't you see how it's done already?"

"We see it," said Nellie, stifling a yawn. "The next thing is to get the unions to see it."

"That's so," retorted George, "so I'll give you my idea to do what you can with."

"We must go," said Nellie, getting up from her chair. "It must be after one and I'm tired."

"It's ten minutes to two," said Ford, having pulled out his watch.

"Why don't you stay all night, Nellie," asked Connie. "We can put Ned up, if he doesn't mind a shake-down. Then we can make a night of it. Geisner is off again on Monday or Tuesday."

"Tuesday," said Geisner, who had gone to the book-shelf again.

"Then I'll come Monday evening," said Nellie, for his tone was an invitation. "I feel like a walk, and I don't feel like talking much."