Why should the few dictate to the many.

*THE WORKER*

Brisbane May 5, 1894

The idea of a dozen men dictating to some thousands – probably over thirty – throughout the colonies what price they shall charge for their labour. Surely the shearers and bushmen are entitled to some voice in the figure they shall ask for their services if there is any liberty or freedom in the country. If a squatter walks into the Courier office with an advertisement he does not say to the clerk, “Here, insert this advertisement and I will pay you 1s. per inch.” He does not go to a theatre and say, “Give me a dress circle ticket and I will pay you 2s. 6d.;” or into the Queensland Club and put down 3s. for a half – guinea bottle of champagne. It is true there is no conference as to the price of the advertisement theatre ticket, or champagne, but that makes our case all the stronger. The bushmen who have their labour to sell are not asked what is their price. They must take what is offered. According to the Pastoralists' freedom of contract, the squatters can say to eight or nine thousand bushmen in this province, “Here, you must sell your labour at whatever price we choose to pay you.” As Mr. Allan says, the squatters “sent the agreement out and the men subscribed to it.” The few dictate to the many the terms on which they must sell their labour. Is there any justice, or liberty, or freedom, in this sort of thing?

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It would appear that it is nearly time the many ceased to permit the few to dictate to them. The many have been too anxious to conciliate the few and the few have interpreted this as a sign of weakness. The squatters look upon the request for a conference as an evidence that the men won't fight, and the United Pastoralists continue the “bluff” by informing the union officers that their request for a conference will be laid before the {Council} in June. And were it not for Mr. Allan's brutal candour we should be hoping on, hoping on until probably in June next we should receive word that the proposal for a conference would be laid before a meeting of the Federal Council of Australia in November next, after which a curt note might be forwarded the unions that the squatters could not see any reason for a conference on the grounds mentioned by Mr. Allan in the Courier, viz, “that such a meeting would be one-sided and unsatisfactory, as a great body of non-unionists (which the pastoralists consider are more in touch with the pastoralists than with the Labour unions) would not be represented on such a conference.”

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The Worker is of opinion the squatters had better alter their tactics. There is a limit to human endurance, and although we look to Parliament to redress the wrongs of not only shearers and station hands but all workers of every occupation, still we have not abandoned faith in the time honoured strike – that last resource which has proved so useful to wage earners in times gone by and which lately enabled the miners of England, threatened with a reduction in wages, to win an increase of pay amounting in some cases to 25 per cent. The men in the bush are not usually timid. Their occupations compel them to lead devil-may-care lives, and if they are set going, squatter Allan and his co-pastoralists may be sorry they turned a deaf ear to a polite request to settle matters in dispute by conciliatory methods.                                        W. G. H.