Wage-earner as a mere Commodity.

*THE WORKER*

Brisbane September 1, 1894

THE EDITORIAL MILL.

Our Motto: “Socialism in our time.”

The attitude of employers and employers' combinations towards employ'es and employ'es unions should be contemplated by those who discuss the lawlessness of the bush workers out West, before deciding on wholesale denunciation. The modern employer appears to look upon the wage-earner as a mere commodity similar to a bag of potatoes or a long-handled shovel; and employers' unions treat workers' unions with far less consideration than they would be stow on a collection of such commodities. Prior to all the big industrial disputes which have taken place during the past few years in England, America, and Australia the employers have been invited by the employ'es to submit the questions in dispute to arbitration. No stone has been left unturned, no means neglected to try to obtain conferences which would avoid a resort to strikes.

These conciliatory efforts should have been met with some show of respect, but in nearly all cases the response has been of an exasperating nature. “We have no quarrel with our employ'es,” sarcastically replied the Australian shipowners in 1893, having filled with blacklegs the places of the men who asked for conferences. “ We have nothing to arbitrate about,” said the representative of the monopolist Pullman on the eve of the late big strike, which resulted in an approach to civil war. “We decline to confer,” writes the representative of the great pastoralist monopoly in the country.

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Can it be wondered that unionists take arms and forcibly seize steamers and blacklegs when employers turn a deaf ear to all appeals for reasonable if not friendly discussion? Is there the slightest ground for astonishment that the more aggressive strikers should show little respect for law and order when employers treat them as bondsmen who should be dumb and respectful no matter what terms the squatters in their stiff-necked, wilful pride of wealth and power choose to offer? I confess I am not surprised at the threatening aspect of affairs. As Labour Members M'Donald recently remarked. I am only surprised the strike has not assumed a much more serious aspect.

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Even the Brisbane Courier acknowledges that “the social and industrial condition of Western Queensland is unsatisfactory and discreditable. The outlook upon the human life which is scattered over those vast western plains is a painful one. It is difficult for persons living in cities like Brisbane to understand or imagine how great are the sacrifices and hardships demanded from settlers and workers on the plains. Life is isolated and monotonous; the great world seems far away; resources of amusement and of intellectual interest are meagre and few. Workers have to wander over great spaces of country in search of employment, and many of them cannot escape months of compulsory idleness.”

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Yet the United Pastoralists – the well-to-do fat and sleek squatters – who are as well aware as the Courier of the wretched condition of the bush workers' existence, the wearisome and fatiguing marches, the dark prospects, the aimless life – would make those conditions worse. Their response to the bush workers' appeal against lowered wages and an altered agreement is “Take the work or leave it.” Does any sensible person think that human nature can stand cruelty and arrogance of this description without a strong protest. Only the greedy employer would expect such a thing. It is indeed gratifying to find that the hard-pressed bushmen have made a strong protest, that they have shown the workers of Australia how to carry on a strike without large funds to the credit of the union. For nine long weeks they have stood shoulder to shoulder in a manner that will prove an example to all future strikers throughout these colonies. For nine long, weary weeks the wealthiest combination in Australia has scoured the continent for vile and worthless specimens of Humanity, who may be used for a few weeks and then be cast adrift, but only about one man out of every 1000 of the population has been crawler enough to do the squatters' dirty work. Unionism dead! Unionism was only sleeping when the pastoralists thought they could, like thieves in the night, steal more of the bush workers' wages by their so-called agreement and union-crushing tactics.

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If the combined employers persist in trying to degrade the Australian workers to the level of underpaid European slaves, there may occur in this country a similar scene to that which took place at Sacramento (U.S.) during the late big railway strike. The railway depot was crowed with strikers, and the military had been called out, when orders came to move the Pullman cars at all hazards. Says the EXAMINER: “As the Sacramento troops came to a halt immediately in front of the strikers' phalanx, the strikers began to talk to them. 'Are you boys going to shoot into us?' called out one. 'Don't you know that we were raised with you, that we are your brothers, and that the fight that you are making on us is only to enable a hungry corporation to grind its employ'es down?' 'Colonel Guthrie,' called another striker, 'I went to school with you. We have been friends ever since we knew what the word meant. Are you going to order your men to stab me with their bayonets?' 'Throw down your guns, boys,' called another voice. 'We know you have no stomachs for the work you are at, don't let pride make you shoot down your own people.' 'Jack.' said one young fellow, 'are you going to stick that in my breast?' He tore open his shirt as he spoke and pointed to the gleaming bayonet. The man addressed as 'Jack' bit his lip, but that did not prevent the tears from rolling down his cheeks. This was the dramatic situation of the day. To advance a single step the soldiers must have first cleared a way through the men. Presently the marshal shouted out an order. The men came to attention. Then he gave another order. The strikers heard it, but they did not give way a foot. The bayonets were levelled now at the strikers' breasts, almost touching them, and the troops waiting for the next word which would have sent them matching over the bodies of the strikers.

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“That command was not carried out. The men did not march into the crowd with bayonets fixed, and fire. They merely stood with their bright steel levelled, and waited. The strikers, giving back not an inch, doubled their pleadings and protests. They called the men in the ranks by name, and brought back to them memories of boyhood passed together. “Frank,” cried a man from the thickest part of there opposing mob, “if you kill me you make your sister a widow. Would you rather murder her husband than hold your hand from increasing Pullman's fortune?” Suddenly several companies of soldiers turned about and marched away from the scene amid the cheers of the multitude. Those companies were deprived of their arms and uniforms, but they preserved their honour, although dismissed in disgrace.”

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This pathetic picture marks an epoch in the history of strikes, and is a straw which shows how the wind is blowing. It furnishes a gleam of hope that the gruesome slaughter, predicted by Ignatius Donnelly in his “Caesar's Column,” where the employers engage hordes of workers to shoot down strikers without mercy, will not take place, but that when organised Greed and Capital give the word for “the firing to be effective,” the troops will refuse to legally murder their comrades, and Justice will win the day without a drop of blood being shed – unless, of course, the capitalists themselves undertake to fire, which is extremely doubtful, for they, like the average daily press editors who prate of courage, would rather – short winded and flabby thought they are – run five miles than fight for five seconds. The lesson to be learned is that strikes must be on a large scale. Every wage-earner must be a unionist. Unions must be affiliated in a large and powerful federation. Then we shall have something like a decent show of meeting the disgraceful tactics of the corrupt politicians and greedy monopolists who are a disgrace to civilisation.

                                                                                                                                          W. G. Higgs.