Justice for all.

*THE WORKER*

Brisbane, December 8, 1894.

Machinery, all Hail!

To those who have never suffered, whose every day life is made up of the usual number of meals, with a cosy bed to slumber in when night comes on, life does'nt seem such a sad affair after all. “Give a man, and especially an Englishman, plenty to eat, and he will not grumble,” is an old saying that applies to vast numbers, who on their way to work see others with a hopeless look on their faces, which tells of vain and weary search for work. But, what of that. Has'nt it always been so; and, anyway, it's no business of mine? Poor deluded fool. A few more weeks, and perhaps you are fated to join the crowd – that vast army of hopeless, idle, poor, that grows in number day by day, drawing recruits from all quarters and all classes. You'll begin to think then, and come to the conclusion that something is wrong somewhere; and, as the days pass, and you are still idle, you will lose hope, and perhaps end by cursing society and everything you once looked upon as right without knowing the cause of your distress.

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One of the greatest educational factors of the present day is machinery. All the lecturing, all the pamphleteering, has but little effect upon your average in work mechanic, or labourer. But the introduction of a machine among them quickens their thoughts. When they see half the hands being discharged to make way for this new comer, dismay seizes them. They inwardly know and fear it is but the advance guard of an invading power, which will dispose and rob them of their chance to live, and their outlook is very gloomy. In days gone by it was the habit of workmen to destroy machinery. They saw only a thing of iron and wheels, which had come to rob them, and in their blind rage they destroyed it. Those days are past, and, however great the hard-ship entailed upon any class of labour where machinery is introduced, Socialists must hail with satisfaction any power which will make the selfish think, which will convert sceptics to believe in their beautiful doctrine that machinery with all other means of production shall be owned by the people for the good of all. Hail then to machinery. Before you, under present conditions, men must go, and our crowded highways swarm with those you have driven out. Machinery forces conviction to the minds of thousands, who never troubled their heads about social economics, who pooh-poohed the Socialists' clamour for State ownership of land and all means of production. Ah! My Individualist friend, you begin to see things now; you begin to think there's something in the Socialistic principle that no man has the right to hold the pleasures and lives of fellow creatures in his hand. Homestead steel workers, or the pseudo-philanthropist Pullman, who controls the lives and happiness of a whole town, or the coal barons of England, who failed to crush their wage slaves because there is a limit beyond which Labour won't submit.

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Who and what are we that take no heed of events which are chapters in the history of the human race? Are we so fatuous as to think we shall escape the general destruction. No one is safe. It is not only the workman who goes down before the ruthless commercialism of the age. You may be a prosperous business man, but where are you when bank smashes and false speculations leave you stranded? Your children have to battle through life under conditions which you have made more intolerable by your resistance to reform and persecution of the labourers. Every year the ranks of the Proletariat is swelled by the small business man, who have been forced out by larger capitalists and machinery; the whole system of industry is changing, and it is only a matter of time when the control of everything by which we live shall be in the hands of a few. Look to America, and see what has taken place there, little by little the small fry have been swallowed up, until now whole towns and thousands of miles of country are in the hand of a few soulless men of business. Heroes of civilisation who would ruin an empire to increase their dividends and add to their millions. Industry is carried on by the aid of bayonets, discontented men are clubbed into submission by a ruthless police, or shot down like dogs by hireling Pinkertons. These things have been done in Queensland; the bushmen were dragooned in 1891, their leaders led away in chains, whilst now Ireland's curse Coercion is in force in our western districts. We should look to it, and see that these things cease.

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It is monstrous to think that the workers, as a rule, are so blindly selfish as not to realise that a wrong done to one of them is a wrong done them all. We know the awful amount of misery and destitution that surrounds us. Why is it? Surely there is a cause; the same thing is in every land. Why don't we find a remedy, and apply it? No; we seem content to jog along and let things right themselves.

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Rouse up, men of Queensland; unite, and in a solidarity that all the efforts of your enemies will fail to break. Press onward, and never waver till the fight is won. In spite of your unions capital has won the fight every time. Though the fact of your being united has saved you from being crushed entirely. Plutocracy fights you not only with your withheld wages (capital), but with that great reserve force the unemployed from whom it draws those renegade workers, who, bribed with gold, fight against their brothers to the degradation of both. It has the power of the Government at its back, which at all times takes sides against the workers. It imprisons your leaders under obsolete conspiracy laws, and insults your representatives in Parliament.

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Press onward with stern face and grim resolve, no matter what may occur be not drawn aside, and though the way be long and the road heavy we will reach the goal at last. No class hatred imbues us. We war against conditions not individuals; we seek no man's wrong, but we ask rights for the many, and woe to those who by fraud and force keep those rights from us. We demand in the name of Humanity justice for all, that the land, like the air and the sunshine, should be free to all, a gift from nature for the use of the children of men, and that all the great scientific discoveries shall be applied to the lightening of men's labour. When this is accomplished, poverty and misery, such as we know, will be no more in the land.