The Workingman's Paradise Part 18

"You don't mean that a man working in England or France earns more than a man working in Australia?" demanded Ned, sitting up. "I thought it was the other way."

"I don't mean he gets more but I certainly mean that he produces more.

The appliances are so much better, and the sub-division of labour, that is each man doing one thing until he becomes an expert at it, is carried so much further by very virtue of the thicker population."

"That's to say they have things fixed so that they crush more to the ton of work."

"About that. Taking the people all round, and throwing in kings and queens and aristocrats and the parsons that Ford loves so, every average Englishman produced yesterday more wealth--more boots, more tools, more cloth, more anything of value--than every average Australian. And every average Belgian produced yesterday, or any day, more wealth than every average Englishman. These are facts you can see in any collection of statistics. The conservative political economists don't deny them; they only try to explain them away."

"But how does it come? Men produce more there than we do here and earn less. How's that?"

"Simply because they're robbed more."

"Look here, Mr. Geisner!" said Ned, gathering his knees into his arms.

"That's what I want to know. I know we're robbed. Any fool can see that those who work the least or don't work at all get pretty much everything, but I don't quite see how they get it. We're only just beginning to think of these things in the bush, and we don't know much yet. We only know there's something wrong, but we don't know what to do except to get a union and keep up wages."

"That's the first step, to get a union," said Geisner. "But unless unionists understand what it's all about they'll only be able to keep up wages for a little while. You see, Ned, this is the difficulty: a man can't work when he likes."

"A man can't work when he likes!"

"No; not the average man and it's the average man who has to be considered always. Let's take a case--yourself. You want to live.

Accordingly, you must work, that is you must produce what you need to live upon from the earth by your labour or you must produce something which other working men need and these other men will give you in exchange for it something they have produced which you need. Now, let's imagine you wanting to live and desiring to start to-morrow morning to work for your living. What would you do?"

"I suppose I'd ask somebody."

"Ask what?"

"Well, I'd have to ask somebody or other if there was any work."

"What work?"

"Well, if they had a job they wanted me to do, that I could do, you know."

"I don't 'You know' anything. I want you to explain. Now what would you say?"

"Oh! I'd kind of go down to the hut likely and see the boys if 'twas any use staying about and then, perhaps, or it might be before I went to the hut, that would be all according, I'd see the boss and sound him."

"How sound him?"

"Well, that would be all according, too. If I was pretty flush and didn't care a stiver whether I got a job or not I'd waltz right up to him just as I might to you to ask the time, and if he came any of his law-de-dah squatter funny business on me I'd give him the straight wire, I promise you. But it stands to reason--don't it?--that if I've been out of graft for months and haven't got any money and my horses are played out and there's no chance of another job, well, I'm going to humor him a bit more than I'd like to, ain't I?"

Geisner laughed "You see it all right, Ned. Suppose the first man you sounded said no?"

"I'd try another."

"And if the other said no?"

"Well, I'd have to keep on trying."

"And you'd get more inclined to humour the boss every time you had to try again."

"Naturally. That's how they get at us. No man's a crawler who's sure of a job."

"Then you might take lower wages, and work longer hours, after you'd been out of work till you'd got thoroughly disheartened than you would now."

"I wouldn't. Not while there was--I might have to, though I say I'd starve or steal first. There are lots who do, I suppose."

"Lots who wouldn't dream of doing it if there was plenty of work to be had?"

"Of course. Who'd work for less than another man if he needn't, easily?

There isn't one man in a thousand who'd do another fellow out of a job for pure meanness. The chaps who do the mischief are those who're so afraid the boss'll sack them, and that another boss won't take them on, that they'd almost lick his boots if they thought it would please him."

"Now we're coming to it. It is work being hard to get that lowers wages and increases hours, and makes a workman, or workwoman either, put up with what n.o.body would dream of putting up with if they could help it?"

"Of course that's it."

"Now! Is the day's work done by a poorly-paid man less than that done by a highly-paid one?"

"No," answered Ned. "I've seen it more," he added.

"How's that?"

"Well, when a man's anxious to keep a job and afraid he won't get another he'll often nearly break his back bullocking at it. When he feels independent he'll do the fair thing, and sling the job up if the boss tries to bullock him. It's the same thing all along the line, it seems to me. When you can get work easily you get higher wages, shorter hours, some civility, and only do the fair thing. When you can't, wages come down, hours spin out, the boss puts on side, and you've got to work like a n.i.g.g.e.r."

"Then, roughly speaking, the amount of work you do hasn't got very much to do with the pay you get for it?"

"I suppose not. It's not likely a man ever gets more than his work is worth. The boss would soon knock him off and let the work slide. I suppose a man is only put on to a job when its worth more than the boss has to pay for getting it done. And I reckon the less a man can be got to do it for the better it is for the fellow who gets the job done."

"That's it. Suppose you can't get work no matter how often you ask, what do you do?"

"Keep on looking. Live on rations that the squatters serve out to keep men travelling the country so they can get them if they want them or on mutton you manage to pick up or else your mates give you a bit of a lift.

You must live. It's beg or steal or else starve."

"I think men and women are beginning to starve in Australia. Many are quite starving in the old countries and have been starving longer. That's why the workers are somewhat worse off there than here. The gold rushes gave things a lift here and raised the condition of the workers wonderfully. But the same causes that have been working in the old countries have been working here and are fast beating things down again."

"A gold rus.h.!.+" exclaimed Ned. "That's the thing to make wages rise, particularly if it's a poor man's digging."

"What's that?"

"Don't you know? An alluvial field is where you can dig out gold with a pick and shovel and wash it out with a pannikin. You don't want any machines, and everybody digs for himself, or mates with other fellows, and if you want a man to do a job you've got to pay him as much as he could dig for himself in the time."

"I see. 'Poor man's digging,' you call it, eh? You don't think much of a reefing field?"

"Of course not," answered Ned, smiling at this apparent ignorance.

"Reefing fields employ men, and give a market, and a few strike it, but the average man, as you call him, hasn't got a chance. It takes so much capital for sinking and pumping and crus.h.i.+ng, and things of that sort, that companies have to be formed outside, and the miners mostly work just for wages. And when a reefing field gets old it's as bad as a coal-field or a factory town. You're just working for other people, and the bigger the dividends the more anxious they seem to be to knock wages"

"Then this is what it all amounts to. If you aren't working for yourself you're working for somebody else who pays as little as he can for as much as he can get, and rubs the dirt in, often, into the bargain."

"A man may not earn wages working for himself," answered Ned.