*THE
WORKER*
BRISBANE,
AUGUST 10, 1895.
Bystanders'
Notebook.
ARE WE
READY?
Soon
the general election will be upon us fellow workers. Are we ready to
vote for freedom or shall we, who have nothing to lose but our
chains, vote once more for wages slavery? We who have a vote have a
double duty forced upon us – that is to vote for the emancipation
of those whom necessity and unjust laws disallow the vote. You have
been told often by your oppressors that the power lies in your own
hands to effect whatever change you desire. If this is correct, and I
for one believe it is, how is it we do not make more progress towards
that freedom that everyone who values the future desires? Let us
explain it. You see Jack Jones and Bill Smith riding about in their
carriages, and of course they tell you that you have the same
opportunity as they have of becoming rich, and you believe it. Yes,
and more than that, you send them into the Assembly to make laws for
you. In most cases such laws crush you down and down. Do you not know
that to keep one drone in idleness and luxury there must be many
without even the necessaries of life. And you, O' wage slave! it is
you who are helping to crush yourself, and by voting wrong you drag
that large body of disenfranchised ones down with you. If a man
wishes to climb a hill it is of no use sitting down and looking at
it. He must get up and walk. So it is with the workers if they want
reform; they must learn to work, and not only work but learn to fight
as well – ever on the aggressive, ever marching on, ever fighting
against wrong; and then, comrades, freedom will come. And to-day we
have the opportunity which poets and philosophers have longed to see.
We are living in the golden age if we only avail ourselves of its
many opportunities, for under proper representative Government
whatever the people desire shall be theirs. Let not history have to
place on record that the people of Queensland were offered their
freedom and refused it. Perhaps, fellow workers, you will refuse it.
You have often done so in the past, led away by thou who profess to
be your friends. Watch closely lest they do so again by bringing
forward some mongrel policy, or even by taking some of your present
labour platform. FERDINAND
*
* *
GAOL
DISCIPLINE.
Reader,
did it ever dawn on your mind that the proper man to make rules and
regulations for a gaol is not the manikin who has never “done his
bit of time,” but the man who has been there innocently for a few
years. The man who has been in gaol has an idea as to how the
different regulations act, and how the punishments affect a man, and
consequently he would be more fitted for the job. But he who has
never been there except in an official capacity is too apt to forget
that the men there have just the same feelings as he has, and is too
prone to look on them as brutes, “Dammed animals," haw, haw! TRUTHFUL DICK
*
* *
UNINFORMED
ALDERMAN.
Alderman
Thurlow certainly does not know much about conducting municipal
affairs on Democratic principles. He is indignant at the idea of the
Workers' Union offering suggestions to the council on the question of
contracting and workmen's wages. The law may provide for calling
tenders, but it does not follow that tenders must be called for for
all work done, and as some of the work of the council is being done
by day labour, there can be no logical objection to extending the
principle. It has been proved that much of the work now let to
contractors, could be as well and as cheaply done by day labour and
with far more satisfaction to the workmen. The poor ferries are again
trotted out by this intelligent individual, who proposes not only to
lease the ferries but also sell the whole plant. It's time aldermen
of the Thurlow type were given to understand that the people most
interested in efficient ferries were tired of their nonsense. Instead
of leasing the ferries, the movement should be towards making them as
free as the rest of the highways, for they are only part of the
common thoroughfares, made and maintained by public money for the
benefit of the public. All the talk about employing ratepayers is so
much cant. Are not all workmen ratepayers, directly or through the
landlord as tenants, or through the householder as a lodger, but then
the two last named very often have no vote, and that accounts for the
fatherly consideration these gentlemen profess for the ratepayers. C.W. MARTIN
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