The Workingman's Paradise Part 31

"Well, Melsom, you may be right when it's a question of wages, but this is a question of principle. We're willing to confer if they'll admit 'freedom of contract.' That's all there is to say about it."

"But what is 'freedom of contract?' Besides, if it is questioned, there can't be much harm in understanding why. For my part, I find it an interminable point of discussion when it is raised and one of the questions that settles itself easily when it isn't."

"It is the key of the whole position. If we haven't a right to employ whoever we like at any terms we may make with any individual we employ what rights have we?" "Hear what they think of it, Strong! It can surely do no harm to find out what makes them fight so."

And so on for half an hour.

"Well, I don't mind having a chat with one of them," conceded Strong at last. "It's only because you persist so, Melsom. I suppose this man you've been told is in town is an oily, ignorant fellow, who'll split words and wrangle up a cloud of dust until n.o.body can tell what we're talking about. I've heard these fellows."

Thus it was that Ned, calling at the Trades Hall, after having washed and breakfasted at his hotel and seen to various items of union business about town, was greeted with the information that Mr. Melsom was looking for him.

"Who's Melsom?"

"Oh! A sort of four-leaved clover, a reasonable employer," answered his genial informant. "He's in a large way of business, interested in a good many concerns, and whenever he's got a finger in anything we can always get on with it. He's a great man for arbitration and conciliation and has managed to settle two or three disputes that I never thought would be arranged peaceably. He's a thoroughly decent fellow, I can a.s.sure you."

"What does he want with me, I wonder?"

"He wants you to see Strong, just to talk matters over and let Strong know how you Queenslanders look at things."

"Who's Strong?"

"Don't you know? He's managing director of the Great Southern Mortgage Agency. He's the man who's running the whole show on the other side and a clever man, too, don't you forget it."

Ned recollected the man he had seen at the restaurant and what Nellie had said of him, two years ago.

"But I can't see him without instructions. I must wire up to know what they say about it," said Ned.

"That's just what you mustn't do, old man. Strong won't consent to any formal interview, but told Melsom, that he'd be glad to see anybody who knew how the other side saw things, to chat the matter over as between one man and another. I told Melsom yesterday that you were in town till to-night and he came this morning to get you to see Strong at eleven.

He'll be back before then. I told him I thought it would be all right."

"I don't see how I can do that without instructions," repeated Ned.

"If it were formal there could be only one possible instruction, surely,"

urged the other. "As it is absolutely informal and as all that Melsom hopes is that it may lead to a formal conference, I think you should go.

You'd talk to anybody, wouldn't you? Besides, Melsom has his heart set on this. I don't believe it will lead to anything, mind you, but it will oblige him and he often does a good turn for us."

"That settles it," said Ned. "Only I'll have to say I'm only giving my own opinion and I'll have to talk straight whether he likes it or not."

"Of course. By the way, here are some wires that'll interest you, and I want to arrange about sending money up in case they proclaim the unions illegal. Heaven knows what they can't do now-a-days! Have you heard what they did here during the maritime strike?"

Shortly before eleven, Strong was closeted in his private office with a burly man of unmistakably bush appearance, modified both in voice and dress by considerable contact with the towns. Of sandy complexion, broad features and light-coloured eyes that did not look one full in the face, the man was of the type that attracts upon casual acquaintance but about which there is an indefinable something which, without actually repelling, effectually prevents any implicit confidence.

"You have been an officer of the shearers' union, you say?" enquired Strong, coldly.

"I've been an honorary officer, never a paid one," answered the man, who held his hat on his knee.

"There's a man in Sydney now, named Hawkins. Do you know him?"

"Yes. I've shorn with him out at the--"

"What sort of a man is he?" interrupted Strong.

"He's a young fellow. There's not much in him. He talks wild."

"Has he got much influence?"

"Only with his own set. Most of the men only want a start to break away from fellows like Hawkins. I'm confident the new anion I was talking of, admitting 'freedom of contract,' would break the other up and that Hawkins and the rest of them couldn't stop it."

"It seems feasible," said Strong, sharply. "At any rate, there's nothing lost by trying it. This is what we will do. We will pay you all expenses and six pounds a week from to-day to go up to Queensland, publicly denounce the union, support 'freedom of contract' and try to start another union against the present one; generally to act as an agent of ours. Payment will be made after you come out. Until then you must pay your own expenses."

"I think I should have expenses advanced," said the man.

"We know nothing of you. You represent yourself as so-and-so and if you are genuine there is no injustice done by our offer. You must take or leave it."

"I'll take it," said the man, after a slight hesitation.

"There's another matter. Do you know the union officials in Brisbane?"

"I know all of them, intimately."

"Then you may be able to do something with them. We are informed that they are implicated in all that's going on, the instigators of it. Bring us evidence criminally implicating them and we will pay well."

"This is business," said the man, a little shamefacedly. "What will you pay?"

Strong jotted some figures on a slip of paper. "If you are a friend of these men," he said, pa.s.sing the slip over, "you will know their value apiece to you." A sneer he could not quite conceal peeped from under his business tone.

"That concludes our business, I think," he continued, tearing the slip up, having received it back. "I will instruct our secretary and you can call on him this afternoon."

He touched an electric bell-b.u.t.ton on his desk. A clerk appeared at the door instantly.

"Show this man out by the back way," ordered Strong, glancing at the clock. "Good-day!"

The summarily dismissed visitor had hardly gone when another clerk announced Mr. Melsom.

"Anybody with him?"

"Yes, sir. A tall, bush-looking man."

"Show them both in."

"What sneaking brutes these fellows are!" Strong thought, contemptuously, jotting instructions on some letters he was glancing through, working away as one accustomed to making the most of spare minutes.

Mr. Melsom had left Ned and Strong together, having to attend to his own business which had already been sufficiently interfered with by his exertions on behalf of his pet theory of "getting things talked over."

Ned had felt inwardly agitated as he walked under the great archway and up the broad iron stairway that led to the inner offices of this great fortress-like building, the centre of the southern money-power. He had noted the ma.s.sive walls of hewn stone, the ma.s.sive gates and the enormous bolts, chains and bars. In the outer office he had glanced a little nervously around the lofty, stuccoed, hall-like room, of which the wood-work was as ma.s.sive in its way as were the stone walls without and of which the very gla.s.s of the part.i.tions looked put in to stay, while the counters and desks, with their polished bra.s.s-work and great leathern-bound ledgers, seemed as solid as the floor itself; he wondered curiously what all these clerks did who leaned engrossed over their desks or flitted noiselessly here and there on the matting-covered flagstones of the flooring. Why he should be nervous he could not have explained.

But he was cool enough when, after a minute's delay, a clerk led Melsom and himself through a smaller archway opening from this great office hall and up a carpetted stone stairway loading between two great bare walls and along a long lofty pa.s.sage, wherein footfalls echoed softly on the carpetted stone floor. Finally they reached a polished, pannelled door which being opened showed Strong writing busily at a cabinet desk placed in the centre of the handsomely furnished office-room. The great financier greeted Melsom cordially, nodded civilly enough to Ned and agreed with the latter's immediate statement that he came, as a private individual solely, to see a private individual, at the request of Mr.