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Title: The Melbourne Riots Author: David Andrew Andrade Date: 1892 Language: en Topics: Australia, fiction, class struggle, Melbourne Anarchist Club, individualist, mutualism Source: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Melbourne_Riots
The present time is a most hazardous one. Good men and women, of all
stations in society, recognize that the existing social conditions are
most unjust and likely to suffer a serious crash in the not far distant
future. Naturally enough the thinkers of the age, are trying, through
the channels of pleasing fiction, to present a solution of the knotty
social problem which confronts us; but, in the present writer's opinion,
although their efforts have been an inestimable boon to humanity, they
have all, with perhaps one exception, fallen short of the desired goal.
“Looking Backward” is too impracticable, and too authoritarian to be
desirable even if it were practicable; as the clever Writer of “Looking
Further Forward” has well shown; “Caesar's Column,” although a
masterpiece of destructive reasoning, is unsatisfactory to those who
would see society build itself anew; “News from Nowhere” is too
exclusively sentimental; while the hosts of minor works are not
characterized by any ideas of special value in the solution of the
problem. Even “Freeland,” the able work of Dr. Hertzka which towers
above all the others in profundity of thought and correct economic
insight, is based upon a scheme of such colossal magnitude as to
somewhat detract from its immediate utility, and furthermore it relies
for its execution upon the means of the wealthy. In the present work the
writer endeavors to show how the oppressed classes can work out their
own emancipation without reliance upon the uncertain assistance of the
wealthy.
The author gladly acknowledges the valuable assistance rendered by Mr.
Philip Kleinmann and Mr. David A. Crichton (late Government Agricultural
lecturer), who have supplied valuable information used in working out
some of the details; and also several other gentlemen and ladies, who
have kindly furnished some useful particulars.
If the present work should be the means of stimulating the workers to
strive to emancipate themselves by rational methods, the author's labors
will not have been in vain.
D.A.A.
Melbourne, November, 1892.
“Harry, if you take my advice you'll not go to that meeting.”
“But I don't intend to take your advice, John. I know what I'm about.
And I know that my presence will have an important effect in deciding
the fate of those unfortunate wretches, who are almost driven mad with
hunger and oppression. What with those crafty capitalistic wire-pullers
aggravating them to deeds of rashness and riot on the one side, and the
equally unprincipled tactics and dangerous utterances of those
favour-seeking demagogues on the other, they are in the greatest danger
that they could possibly be. They might as well be at the mercy of wild
beasts in a jungle. I have strong misgivings that some serious calamity
will befall them to-night.”
“A very good reason why you should stay at home, instead of getting into
trouble over other people.”
But Harry Holdfast was determined. No argument or appeal could possibly
affect him—unless, indeed, to intensify his determination—and without
taking any notice of his brother's retort, he immediately left the
house, and made his way to town where the “monster indignation labor
meeting” was advertised to be held.
Harry was a popular character amongst the working people of Melbourne,
because he was not only an eloquent labor agitator, but he had a happy
method of putting himself on friendly terms with his hearers by
appealing to the better natures of friend and foe alike. Of course, he
had his enemies, as every one has had who has tried to make the world
better than he found it; but they were not many, and he gave them little
opportunity of pointing the finger of slander against him, the worst
that they could say of him being that he was an “agitator.” But as he
was proud of the title, that did not trouble him.
But there were other things that did trouble Harry, and troubled him
deeply.
There was a terrible state of destitution amongst thousands of the
working classes, not only in Melbourne, but throughout the whole colony
of Victoria; in fact, the “depression,” as it was called, had become
common throughout the whole civilized world. Men were out of employment
in all directions. Work had ceased to be scarce, and had become totally
unobtainable for great numbers of them. The ranks of the unemployed were
growing greater and greater from week to week. Charitable societies were
organizing in every big centre of population, but they were powerless to
effect any material change in the state of affairs; all the wealth they
dispensed in six months could not keep those already out of employment
supplied with the necessaries of life for a single day. The Government
had been compelled to start various relief works, but they only
employed, a very few, and only succeeded in swelling the already heavy
burden of taxation. Economy was sought by retrenchment in the civil
service, hundreds of public servants being dispensed with, but this only
helped to throw more men into the growing ranks of the unemployed and
left the solution of the difficulty as far off as ever. The labor party
who after many years of untiring struggle had got a very numerous
representation in the legislature, were powerless to tear down the
strong vested interests arrayed against them as they had hoped to do,
and were as ignorant of the ultimate causes of the terrible depression
which was threatening to break up society as they were divided in
opinion as to the wisest expedients to tide over the present
difficulties; as to a radical and permanent cure, they did not dare to
entertain the thought of it.
The streets of Melbourne were thronged with men in vain search of
employment; there were a few of the genuine genus “loafer” amongst them,
but the great mass were strong; steady, worthy fellows, anxious and
willing to work, but with no work that they might put their hands to. It
was estimated that they numbered no less than 50,000 persons. And yet it
was pointed out that, by the statistics of Hayter's “Year Book,” the
Colony was wealthier than it had ever been before; in fact, it had
become in proportion to its size, one of the wealthiest countries in the
world. But despite this fact, the very employers themselves were
beginning to share the fate of the wretched workers; bankruptcies were,
increasing daily, shop after shop was closing its shutters, merchants
were reducing their imports and farmers ceasing to send their products
to market for want of buyers. Some of the largest firms in the city,
which had always been felt to be as stable as the Government itself,
found themselves compelled to suspend operations, and in many cases to
give up their entire estate, thus throwing thousands out to starve.
The climax was reached when, on the day before out story opens, the
gigantic firm of Goldschmidt, Beere and Co. had dismissed their entire
staff at the shortest notice, and men, women and children were rendered
workless, homeless and without prospect of food before them.
It was not long before Harry reached the spot where the Monster
Indignation Labor Meeting was being held. There were already a large
number present and fresh visitors continued to arrive until the meeting
had assumed larger dimensions than any other that had ever been held in
Melbourne, and it yet wanted several minutes to the time when the
proceedings were to commence. It was with some difficulty that Harry
managed to elbow his way through the crowd to the lorry which was in
readiness for the speakers of the evening to “orate” from; but at last,
amidst loud cheering, he-mounted the “platform” along with the others.
The sight was one calculated to cheer the heart of any enthusiast who
longed to see the workers strive for a higher social level than the one
they now occupied. The lorry stood some fifty yards from the footpath,
in the centre of a large block of land where several immense stores had
stood only a few months before. On both sides and behind, were thousands
of working men, many of whom had their wives and children with them; and
away in front, stretching right across Flinders Street, until traffic
was well-nigh impeded, the immense ocean of proletaires stretched forth
in its rugged grandeur. Harry felt strange sensation pass over him as he
beheld this extraordinary sight. Here and there were policemen mixing up
in the crowd and preserving “order,” while down the street were a few
dozen mounted troopers. But these were; such a mere handful, compared
with the great mass of working people present, that they attracted
little attention. On the lorry were about twenty other men besides
Harry, and a remarkable assortment of physiognomies they presented. One
big fellow, with firm set limbs, rather dark complexion and heavy
frowning brow, was perhaps the most noticeable of all; but alongside him
was a remarkable little fellow, fussing about and gesticulating to those
about him, and acting as though he fancied himself the host of those
present. This strange personage caught one's eye at a glance—his
peculiar attire, somewhat resembling that of the French peasantry, his
small limbs, his big bullet head out of all proportion to the rest of
the body, and his bull-like neck, all showed him to he a man of unusual
characteristics, and did not favorably impress a spectator upon first
seeing him; but when one looked closer into his face, and saw the
cunning, piercing little eyes, the big, sharply-cut and thin-lipped
mouth, and the strained effort at a permanent smile, which, like Harte's
Heathen Chinee, was “child-like and bland” to a degree, the interest in
this little individual became intense, and made one almost forget the
presence of the Herculean agitator beside him. On the precise moment
that the Post Office clock in Elizabeth Street chimed seven o'clock, the
big man arose to his feet to address the meeting. Loud applause and
ringing hurras greeted him from thousands of throats. When the deafening
noise had subsided he addressed them as follows:—“Comrades, in the war
of labor against the tyranny of capital (loud applause), it is with
pleasure that I can't express that I open this mighty meeting, a meeting
which I hope and believe will never be forgotten in the history of human
progress (hear, hear, and bravo), a meeting that is not summoned like
its predecessors to talk, and talk, and never do more than talking, but
a meeting that is resolved to strike the final blow at the monster of
capitalism which is devouring us (vociferous applause). We are here
to-night, friends, not to ask our rights—we have done that too long
already—we are here to take our stand as men and women, and to enter
into a fight to the death for a world which has been stolen from us and
which awaits us under our very feet” (tremendous cheering and hooraying
interrupted the speaker, who presently proceeded), We are here, I say,
to fight the greatest fight in all history, not to repeat the little
petty contest between a few thousand English and Russian warriors, or to
lead the hired butchers of Germany to cut the throats of the hired
butchers of France; we are not here to massacre Afghans, Egyptians,
Zulus, or Maories; we are not here to perpetuate the senseless feuds
between nations and nations, between creeds and castes, or between race
and color; but we are here to affirm the unity of all humanity, to
assert that in the future the world shall only know one race, one
people, one country, without creeds or colors to disunite them; and we
are here to assert the dominion of the people and the final subjugation
of the race of luxurious vampires who have held them in bondage since
the dawn of civilization (loud applause). We are here to protest against
the fiendish inhumanity of the Goldschmidt Beere and Co's (hisses and
groaning), and to avenge ourselves upon their kind the whole world over.
Permit me, comrades, to call upon the first speaker, Samuel Sharples.”
An intelligent-looking young fellow here arose, and after the applause
following the oration of the last speaker had subsided, he spoke, with
considerable emotion, as follows:—
“Friends, you have heard what our worthy chairman, Tom Treadway, has
said, and I am afraid any words of mine will sound very dull after his
fiery eloquence (cries of “No”, “no”), but I should be ashamed of myself
if I did not do all in my power to help the cause of labor in this awful
period of distress and death. Why do we have all these troubles year
after year? Have we not a government to protect us, and to look after
our welfare? True, they don't do so; but that, I am afraid, is our own
fault (cries of “No,” and interruption). Well, friends, I think it is
so. We put bad men to rule over us, and then wonder why they rob us and
compel us to be idle; we should send men to represent us who would know
our interests and look after them. We want the land of the people thrown
open to the use of the people (hear, hear); we want all the capital and
machinery to be in the hands of the State instead of in the hands of
private parasites; we want to tax the absentee and the land-grabber
instead of taxing the poorly-paid laborer; we want—” Here someone
interjected “We're tired of wanting,” and a restless chain of
interruption made itself gradually felt over the meeting, entirely
drowning the voice of the speaker, who was compelled to resume his seat
on the lorry.
Treadway then announced that Harry Holdfast would next address the
meeting.
Harry was up in a moment. His familiar face was greeted with the most
enthusiastic applause. “Friends,” said he, “and foes, if any are
present, we are met as the chairman has said, to open the greatest war
the world has ever seen (hear, hear), but are we to come out victors or
vanquished? (“Victors” was echoed from some thousand throats). Let us
hope so. The great Shakespeare has said, ‘Beware of entrance to a
quarrel, but being in't, bear it, that the opposer may beware of thee,’
and I feel that we are now in such a quarrel; long have we feared to
enter it—for centuries have we and our forefathers groaned beneath
injustice and oppression, but we can wait no longer; the blight of
capital is fast crushing us out of existence, our wives and children are
dying in front of us because we cannot, we dare not win the bread with
which to sustain their lives. We have not courted the quarrel; we are in
the thick of the fight; capital has its knee upon our throat and is fast
strangling the breath from our bodies. Shall we longer endure it? (loud
cries of “No”) No, friends, let us bear our quarrel; and let us bear it
like true men and women, that those who oppose may admire our courage
and determination, and fear our strength, our numbers, and our undying
resolve to be free (enthusiastic applause). But how are we to be free?
Shall we wait for freedom with our arms folded? Shall we follow the
advice of friend Sharples and ask our wealthy oppressors to tax
themselves instead of us? (cries “No”) Shall we ask them to free the
land when they all exist by keeping it from us, and making us work upon
it for their profit because they call it theirs? No, comrades, we are
truly told that ‘God helps those who help themselves,’ and we need never
hope to be free while we wait for others to set us free; we must free
ourselves (applause). The actions of Goldschmidt, Beere &. Co (loud
groans) I was about to say that the action of that firm in dismissing
their hands, cruel as it is in its effects; upon us, was inevitable
under the conditions in which we all live. They dared not do otherwise.
You or I in their place must have done the same (cries of “No, no,” and
interruption). You disbelieve me friends, but I can assure you it is as
I say. Had they not closed yesterday, in a few weeks at most their
creditors would have compelled them to close, for their stores are
glutted with the goods which we have made, and we, the workers, who
should be their principal customers, as we embrace the greater part of
the population, have no money to purchase our requirements of them and
thus to provide them the revenue with which they pay their own debts
(hear, hear). No, friends, we have entered on the labor war, but let us
fight to win. Let us get the tools with which we work into the hands of
us who use them, instead of letting them bring the revenue to those who
work not to create it—I refer to the capitalists. We must learn—and
learn immediately—how to co-operate together so as to secure the
products of our labor for ourselves, to peacefully acquire possession of
the lands which legal robbery has despoiled us of, and to become
independent of the speculative individual who under pretext of lending
us the requisite machinery with which to work for our own benefit, dips
his hand deep into our pockets, depriving us of nearly all we have
produced, and makes us the wretched slave of his accursed gold.”
The chairman next called upon Felix Slymer, the remarkable little
bullet-headed agitator who sat next to him, and whom we have already
briefly described. The applause that greeted this intimation was simply
astounding. If the other speakers were popular, Slymer was more than
popular—he was their very idol.
Gently rising to his feet, he softly stroked together his delicate and
flabby little hands, apparent strangers to toil from their appearance,
and slowly bowing before before them he delivered himself deliberately
and in a markedly simulating manner of the following:—“Mr. Chairman,
fellow Proletaires, Ladies and Gentlemen,—It is with the greatest
pleasure that I note the unusual warm with which you greet my
appearance. I feel it keenly. It gives me confidence. It tells me that
you repose in me the confidence I have in you. I trust I shall be worthy
of your esteem (Hear, hear, and cries of “You are worthy,” &c.). Well
friends, I again thank you for your kind opinion of me; and I must now
tell you what I think, and what I feel, and what I intend to do in the
present desperate crisis. That it is desperate you all know as well as I
do. Absolute slavery is not worse than it. This wage-slavery we are
suffering under our bourgeoisie system of cut-throat competition is
worse than death itself. But what are we to do? I agree with friend
Sharples that we want worthy men to represent us (a cry, “We want you
there”). Thanks, friend, but I am afraid I am not so worthy: I only wish
I were. But when do we get proper representation? Never. All we get is
representation of the squatters, the bankers, the swindling syndicates,
the Jewish sweaters, the land sharks, and all who represent the vested
interests of the time. Our present governments are rotten—rotten to the
core; we need hope for nothing from them. But can we hope for anything
from those co-operative ‘castles in the air’ that our individualistic
friend, Holdfast, is recommending us? No; they're the panacea of the
capitalist, a bone that the bourgeoisie throws out of his mansion window
to keep the starving dog of labor quiet. If it were not an insult, I
would almost think that Holdfast is in the hands of the capitalists, and
is employed by them to draw co-operation as a red herring across our
trail to take us off the scent. No, friends, we mustn't be deceived by
these bogus remedies. We must strike the tree at its root. We must meet
like with like. The present government is in armed force against the
people. Soft words and co-operative stores can't resist jails and
bullets. We must meet force with force. (Here a group of gruff-voiced
followers of Slymer grunted assent, and the great part of the meeting
applauded). Yes, we must arm ourselves; we must train our unemployed and
drill them as soldiers that they may fight the hired soldiers of the
capitalists and defend the homes of the laborers against the deadly fire
of the paid murderers in the employ of our bureaucratic government. We
must teach them how to make explosives, and to use them; (applause,
dissent, and serious interruptions now kept increasing and the speaker's
voice was only heard at intervals)—we must drive them into——” (rest of
sentence lost in the uproar)——“capitalistic hounds must be swept into
——,” “dynamite and other——” “capture and hang or burn the ——,” these,
and a similar lot of detached phrases were heard above the uproar, which
had now become terrific; but nothing could be distinctly understood that
the speaker was uttering.
Suddenly the police moved forward, and ordered the lorry and its
occupants to disperse before further trouble was caused by their
inflammatory utterances. A great rush ensued. The din was terrific.
Large crowds of soldiers were seen hurriedly marching up St. Kilda Road
headed by torches, and mounted police were gathering in immense numbers
in all directions. The driver of the lorry, fearing danger, instantly
turned his horses heads, and endeavoured to make for the street, which
he gained after considerable delay and difficulty. No sooner had he
reached Russell Street than he turned up to escape the crowd; but they
followed him. The scene now became one of wild confusion, and it was
with difficulty that the powerful horses managed to draw their burdens
up the steep hill owing to the surging mass pressing and swaying so
heavily against it, many being thrown down and trampled to death by one
another, and numbers falling under the wheels of the lorry. Upon
arriving at the corner of Collins Street further progress became
absolutely impossible. The crowd had now increased by thousands, and
rumours were all over the city bringing fresh throngs to the scene. No
horse, or no body of horses, could possibly force its way through the
immense wall of humanity that came surging up from Bourke Street. One
would think that all Victoria had come to witness the indescribable
scene.
Seeing that they could make no further retreat the occupants of the
lorry held council together as to what they should do under the
extraordinary circumstances. The general feeling was to quietly leave
the wagon, one at a time, and silently disperse to their homes; but
Felix Slymer would not hear of such a thing. He charged them with
cowardice, and said that those who were so anxious to fight capital were
trying to flee at the first sniff of danger. This rebuke was too much,
and they decided to remain.
Taking in the state of affairs, and noticing the perplexity of the labor
leaders, Slymer instantly brought himself “in evidence” before the
crowd. Hastily rising to his legs, he once more addressed the masses of
people who thronged the streets, urging them to resist this “unwarranted
breach of discipline on the part of the officials” as he called it, and
inciting them to deeds of violence to redress this wrong; he called, in
the name of justice, upon those who had been “spoliated” by the
capitalists to take their revenge and “loot the shops of the Collins
Street aristocracy.” Instantly a rush was made down the street, shutters
were torn down, windows smashed with the broken shutters, and the
jewellers' and other shops were burst open. A cry was raised “To the
banks!” and large numbers rushed for these time-honored representatives
of vested interests, but they were too firmly constructed to be burst
open, and the crowds returned to the shops of the “small-fry”
capitalists. The police and the troopers were powerless to stop the
furious onslaught of the people, although they mercilessly beat them
with their batons and their swords until wounded and dying rioters were
lying about in all directions.
While all this was going on, the lorry remained in its old place, and
the great mass of the crowd stayed around it, and hopelessly hemmed it
in, while Slymer continued his oration calling on the people to resist
force with force. Suddenly Slymer disappeared, and it was thought he had
been violently kidnapped by an agent of the capitalists. Harry, noticing
his disappearance, hastened to fill his place, and stepping forward on
the lorry he cried out “Friends, be calm. There is some treachery here.
Let us disperse.” But he spoke too late.
All at once, the mayor of the city appeared, armed with a sheet of paper
which turned out to be the Riot Act, and he appeared to read from it,
although no one, not even himself, could hear a word of it, and no
sooner had he done than a general rush was made by the police and a
number of civilians upon the occupants of the lorry. Men were fighting
each other indiscriminately. Women and children were screaming and
fainting, and the horses plunging about wildly and trampling many many
poor wretches to death. All of a sudden a series of terrific explosions
occurred, shaking the earth like an earthquake and causing the steeple
of one of the neighbouring churches to fall on the heads of a number of
unfortunate victims beneath. Instantly there was a stoppage of the
firing and fighting. All seemed to think that the world had come to its
long-expected end, and gazed awe-stricken at each other in the sickly
glare of the few torches that still continued to be held aloft.
Recovering their presence of mind, and taking advantage of the temporary
astonishment of the crowd, the police rushed for the occupants of the
lorry, and after serious fighting, with the assistance of the soldiery,
they captured eleven of them and, with considerable difficulty, marched
them off in custody to the watchhouse where they were securely lodged.
The effect was marvellous. All the fighting ceased instantly. The crowd,
having lost their leaders, seemed to have lost their hopes. Their
frantic fury gave place to anxious fear. Slowly the streets commenced to
assume their former appearance, the throng dispersed, the torches ceased
to lend their ghastly glare to the ghastly scene; and although thousands
continued to hang about the streets during the whole of the night, the
greater part wended their way to their homes to brood in silence over
the terrible drama they had been the unexpected witnesses of.
“It's late now, and Harry not yet home, I fear my worst suspicions are
realized, mother,” said John Holdfast that night.
“Oh, don’t fear,” said the old lady, “Harry is certainly a rash young
fellow, and a foolish chap to bother about other people's troubles when
he always gets constant work himself, but he's not likely to get into
any serious trouble. He's too temperate and cool-headed for that.”
But Harry lay in the cell along with his comrades, waiting to he tried
on a charge of murder.
It was a beautiful spring morning that followed the events depicted in
the last chapter. The sky was clear, the air fresh and bracing, the sun
delightfully warm without being oppressive. In fact, everything seemed
cheerful and contented, except man. Even he, poor wretched mortal, was
more or less influenced by the invigorating weather, and was in a better
mood than he might otherwise have been. For the worst man amongst us is
not wholly insensible to good surrounding influences, whatever theorists
may say to the contrary.
It was on this cheerful morning that a young man might be seen walking,
or rather slinking along some of the smaller streets of the city,
availing himself of the many little rights-of-way and semi-private
thoroughfares, as though to escape observation, until he reached a
certain little cottage in the western end of Little Lonsdale Street,
where he suddenly halted, and anxiously looked round him, as though
fearful of being observed. Evidently seeing no one about, he pulled a
little note book from his pocket, looked at the number on the door, as
though to make sure that it tallied with the one in the book, and then
gently stepped forward and knocked at the door. Presently a somewhat
elderly man opened it, and without a word passing between them the
visitor entered and the door was instantly closed behind him.
“Well, Slymer,” said the host, as soon as his visitor was seated, “did
you do as I instructed you?”
“Yes,” was the curt reply.
Felix Slymer, without further ceremony, pulled out some papers from his
pocket and handed them to his friend, who very carefully perused them,
while the little eyes of his visitor were busily employed in taking in a
very exhaustive view of the apartment in which he was waiting.
Presently the elderly man folded up the papers, placed them carefully in
his pocket, and turning to Slymer, said:
“That will do, Slymer; you have faithfully performed your mission, and
here is your reward.”
Slymer's eyes glistened, as his flabby hands clutched the ten bright
sovereigns that were handed to him; but there was not that expression of
glee that one would expect to see exhibited by one of so humble an
appearance upon receipt of such a relatively large sum. Having carefully
deposited the money in a secret pocket in the inner lining of his
vest—he considered it unbecoming or inexpedient for one in his position
to be seen using a purse—he was about to withdraw, when the other
suddenly called him over to him.
“Felix,” said he, “I wish to ask you something before you go.”
“What's the matter now, Grindall,” was the reply, “I am not going to
open my mouth for nothing.”
“Oh, don’t trouble yourself on that score, my friend, I am not going to
ask you for ‘professional’ information just now. But I am a little
uneasy about a paragraph I read in The Daily Weathercock this morning,
and I thought you might enlighten me a little on the matter. Here, read
it for yourself.”
Taking up the newspaper as directed, Slymer instantly read the
following:—
TERRIFIC RIOT IN THE CITY.
Suspicious Agencies at Work.
In another part of this issue we give full and startling particulars of
the extraordinary tumult which occurred in the city last evening. The
labor party, intoxicated with recent legislative victories and eager for
the plunder which they have so long threatened in dark and mysterious
hints, burst out in full fury last night, upon the occasion of a
“monster indignation meeting” as they called it, which was held in
Flinders Street and subsequently shifted to the corner of Collins Street
and Russell Street where the tragic events narrated elsewhere took
place. It appears that several of the discontented loafers, who scorn to
live except upon “agitation” and charity, convened a meeting of
similarly-disposed ne'er-do-wells, presumably to “consider” the present
grave depression, which is sorely taxing the minds of our wisest
philanthropists and statesmen, though really to carry out the nefarious
designs which they had brutally conceived and prearranged at a secret
meeting held for the purpose some weeks before. Sharples, Holdfast, and
a number of other roughs, who are well known to the police, are mainly
instrumental for the disturbances and the terrific loss of life which
has accompanied them, but the public will be glad to hear that they are
all, or nearly all, in safe custody, and ready to take their quietus at
the proper moment. It will not be prudent, at the present moment, to say
too much on the subject, as the police have the matter in hand and are
diligently working to forge such of chain of evidence as shall rid
society of this terrible pest that has so long been allowed to destroy
all public confidence, to frighten capital out of the colony, to
absolutely stop all commercial enterprize, and to drive tens of
thousands of deserving men and women to poverty and destitution. It is
sufficient, for the present, to say, that one of the miserable cowardly
wretches has shown the white feather already, and has exposed the whole
of their nefarious designs, their operations for the past four years,
the names and whereabouts of the ringleaders, and several other facts
that we dare not mention. We cannot disclose the name of the miserable
traitor, as he is still allowed to move among his old confreres in order
to report their further proceedings, he still being one of the most
trusted among them; and were we to name him they would set upon him and
ferociously murder him, as they murdered those poor innocent men, women
and children last night. We may, however, mention that our old and
esteemed fellow-citizen, Gregory Grindall, our late and much-respected
mayor of Melbourne, has munificently offered a reward of £50 to anyone
who will give such information as will lead to the conviction of the
thief or thieves, who during the riot carried off £20,000 worth of
jewellery from his magnificent warehouses in Collins Street, and £25 to
anyone who will expose the secrets of the labor organizations.
When Slymer had finished reading the paragraph, Grindall looked steadily
at him, as though waiting some expression of feeling from him.
“Do you know anything of this matter?” he asked at length.
“Why do you ask?” responded Slymer.
"Do you not see? You know what I mean.”
“Yes, I know; but you underestimate the risk.”
“You think £25 too little. Of course; I understand. What would you have
me make it?”
“One thousand.”
“Great heavens! man, you seem to think I am made of money.”
“I dont know what else you're made of.”
“Slymer, you know I can't afford to resist your cruel insinuation, now
that I have reposed such confidence in you. But really, the depression
is so serious just now that one needs to look at every £5 note to keep
out of the Insolvency Court.”
“My price is a thousand. If it don't suit you don't bargain. I know very
well you won't get anyone else to do your dirty work for fifty times
that sum, and you know it too.”
“Agreed, then,” said Grindall, “but give me time.”
“I will wait one month, provided you give me £100 now.”
“Right, then. But before you go, one word more. Were you present at this
meeting last night?”
“I was. Don't you see my name amongst the speakers?”
“Yes; but how is it you were not incarcerated with the others?” “In the
melee, I feigned being shot, and was able to crawl under the cart
unobserved, where I waited until the disturbances were over, and then
escaped unnoticed.”
“That will do. Good-bye. I wish you success.”
“Yes, but only for the sake of your own banking account, you old miser,”
muttered Felix to himself as the door closed behind him and he was once
again in the street.
Gregory Grindall was unhappy. Not that that was anything unusual with
him because he was never a happy individual at the best of times. He had
money certainly—abundance of it, in fact—but what pleasure could he
derive from it when he was in constant danger of losing it? He had hosts
of friends, too, amongst the higher, as well as the lower classes of
society, but what did all their friendship benefit him when he
mistrusted everyone of them and believed that most of them mistrusted
him? True, he had the press extolling his innumerable virtues (real or
imaginary) and the principal daily organ, of which he was part
proprietor, lauded him to the skies; but as others in his own position
understood the worth of the eulogies lavished upon him by the press, and
as the pesky rabble were beginning to mistrust everything and everyone
recommended by the “bourgeoisie press,” as they termed it, and as
moreover the other papers had now and then a mercenary interest in
supporting his rivals, what good, after all, would the press be to him
in time of adversity, and with all the anxieties it brought upon him did
it assist in his happiness? Certainly not. There is no happiness in
life, where one is in constant anxiety. Although money rendered
miserable all those poor wretches without money, there was no concealing
the fact that it didn’t succeed very well either in bringing happiness
to those who had lots of it. At least, so Grindall thought. He believed
himself to be worth considerably over a million pounds, but then his
liabilities were something enormous. As to his assets, he could not
possibly estimate them, because half his investments appeared to be
unsound now that the terrible depression was settling on
everything—mines were failing, banks bursting, creditors failing without
paying a shilling in the pound; and worse than all, he could not
immediately convert his assets into cash as he desired to do, and the
banks were so panic-stricken they feared to make advances to anyone
except upon the most ruinous terms.
Gregory Grindall had lived a life full of varied business experience.
Starting humbly, as many successful men have done before him, he had
terrible odds to fight against. Often would he look back at the happy
time when as a little errand boy he honestly worked for the few
shillings which every week he took home to his anxious parents. Then he
showed such intelligence and diligence that he got a situation as a
clerk in a position of trust; but owing to the dishonesty of a
fellow-worker, he was dismissed in disgrace on a false charge of
embezzlement. Then he skipped from one thing to another until he chanced
to form the acquaintance of an influential local councillor, who got him
a job working for the corporation, and he gradually ingratiated himself
into the favours of the councillors by his willing ways and his friendly
manner. Then he saw the petty scheming, the selfish intrigues and the
unscrupulous overreaching that appear to constitute about three-fourths
of the raison d' etre of municipal governing bodies; and he was at first
disgusted. Then he got so accustomed to seeing privileged intrigue
trampling down meritorious effort that he became quite used to it, and
he began to look upon it as the right thing after all—“the right of
might” as he used to ease his conscience by labelling it. Then he
watched his opportunity until he got in a few little swindles himself,
“made money” as the saying is; got a little property somehow or other;
began to be known publicly; got elected to the council, and proceeded
step by step until he became mayor of the city of Melbourne, proprietor
of one of the largest jewellery establishments in the colony, newspaper
proprietor, mining share-broker, and a large shareholder in several of
the largest banking syndicates in Australia. But still he wasn't happy.
Gregory paced up and down the room like a caged lion, and it was very
evident some terrible weight was upon his mind. “I wish the damned thing
was all over,” he muttered to himself; “what's the good of a fellow
worrying and worrying his short life out if its all going to come to
this? What's the good of wealth when you can't realize upon it, and
honors when only a lot of avaricious hounds respect for them—and even
their respect is only envy after all. It's all very fine for Parson
Wilkins to talk about “the duty of the rich towards the poor”—bah! why
doesn't the fat old beast, with his twenty pounds a week rolling in for
doing nothing, why doesn't he practise those duties to the poor that he
talks about? The miserable old wretch, he growled at me the other day
because the interest on his shares in the International Chartered Bank
had fallen two-and-a-half per cent., and only the month before I had
cautioned him against leaving his ten thousand deposit in the Perpetual
Prosperity Bank just in time for him to withdraw before it went smash.
And that Slymer! the ungrateful little wretch! snivelling about my not
being able to get anyone else to do my ‘dirty work.’ Dirty work, indeed,
the insolent wretch! but I'll be even with him yet. If I don't get that
thousand pounds back some day, aye, and with interest added, my name's
not Grindall, by heavens it isn't!” The prospect of revenge seemed
greatly to please the irate old millionaire, and to banish the prospects
of his downfall from his mind; for he hastily put on his hat and gloves,
and marched out into the street, slamming the door after him, with the
air of one who had accomplished a decisive victory.
It was a red-letter day in the history of Victorian labor, when Holdfast
and his comrades were arraigned before the magistrates on the charge of
murdering their fellow citizens. Never had the walls of the court held a
more eager and expectant throng of men and women. The excitement a few
years before over the fiendish murderer, Deeming, was nothing in
comparison with it. And no wonder, for all seemed to realize that the
case before the bench meant nothing less than the first decisive blow in
the great struggle for supremacy between the classes and the masses.
Eager speculations were indulged in as to the ultimate outcome of the
impending trial. Would the authorities be severe with the prisoners, and
if so what frightful revenge would the friends of the prisoners take
upon their adversaries? Would the poor man have justice for the first
time in civilisation's history, or had money already decided the fatal
verdict? Such were the questions troubling the brains of the amazed
spectators, and forming the topic of conversation amongst the thousands
who thronged the streets for miles around. After the usual batch of
drunks, larcenies, and petty misdeameanors had been rapidly disposed of,
the great case of the Melbourne Rioters came on for hearing. After the
usual preliminaries, the Crown Prosecutor stated the case, which was
briefly as follows:—For a considerable time past, the police had been
diligently watching a secret society, which had its headquarters in
Melbourne, and had branches ramifying throughout all the industrial
centres of the colonies. This society bore the ominous title of “The
Knights of Revenge.” For a long time their purpose was unknown, and for
a considerable time even their very existence was unsuspected. But
thanks to the vigilance of the police and their practised agents the
nefarious operations of the villains had all been ascertained and their
base designs thwarted. The president of the society was one Thomas
Treadway who he was glad to say was in safe custody amongst the accused.
This monster had a scheme on hand to destroy every public building in
Melbourne, to take the life of every man whose wealth was excessive and
who attempted to resist his murderous onslaught. Harry Holdfast, the
secretary to the gang, had written letters which were now in possession
of the authorities and which he was certain would send every one of them
to the gallows. It was the Knights of Revenge who had convened the fatal
meeting held on the First day of May, a day celebrated everywhere as the
festival of labor, and it was at their instigation, and through their
organization, that the atrocious deeds of that day were committed, when
six hundred and five men, women and children were cruelly and
remorselessly massacred and many thousands seriously wounded, in most
cases beyond hopes of recovery. Many wealthy men had been “marked” for
destruction by the Society among whom was their most worthy and
respected citizen, Gregory Grindall; all the banks were to be plundered;
the establishments of certain tradesmen, who had not supported the
return of the labor party to parliamentary power, were to be looted; and
every special constable, or any other person who endeavoured in any way
to oppose their designs was to be “removed.” The official prosecutor
said he would not occupy the time of the court with full details of the
ghastly plots; but would produce witnesses who would furnish the fullest
and most reliable particulars.
Jonah Johnson, the first witness called, said he had known the accused
for several years past. He had been a member of the Knights of Revenge
for four years, having joined it when Treadway was president, a few
months after its formation, when a friend of his in a state of
semi-intoxication had divulged its existence. Treadway, one of the
defendants, had then told witness that he meant to “destroy every
wealthy loafer and every loafer's mansion before another five years were
over their heads,” and he believed the present riot was the first
organized attempt to carry the threat into execution. He could show them
copies of a newspaper called Vengeance [paper produced] in which the
plans of destruction were depicted exactly as Treadway had described
them to his sanguinary confreres.
Ralph Washington, the next witness called, said he knew several of the
defendants personally, being himself a member of the Knights of Revenge,
having joined when in poverty and despair. He had long since ceased to
be an actual member, having been for two years established in business
as a hair-pin manufacturer through the charitable assistance of a
wealthy gentleman, but he dared not hitherto leave it formally under
penalty of death. Now that the miscreants were brought to justice and
out of harm's way, he did not fear to proclaim his secession from the
secret body, although he had long made known his true position to the
police. He had known Treadway very intimately, having come out with him
in the Royal Rover, from England, nearly three years ago, when he first
broached his wicked plan to organize the society now known as the
Knights of Revenge. He had now at his factory in Elizabeth Street, a
large quantity of bombs and other explosives, which he had allowed
another member of the gang, Sharples, to deposit there immediately upon
their being manufactured; the whereabouts of the “plant” being well
known to police who had arranged with witness to allow the diabolical
fiends to deposit all their dangerous products there without official
detection. Besides the bombs, there were a large number of rifles
belonging to the members of the gang; but which were fortunately called
into requisition by the authorities in suppressing the great riot.
A great number of other witnesses were called, all of whom agreed in
denouncing the accused as members of a secret gang of assassins whose
machinations had caused the wholesale human slaughters on May Day. They
also swore that Holdfast and the others had used inflammatory language
inciting the mob to use violence.
Upon the prisoners being asked if they had any witnesses to bring
forward or anything they wished to say in their defence, unless they
wished to reserve it for their trial,
Tom Treadway boldly asserted his innocence of the crime laid to his
charge. He had not taken any life during the so-called riots, for he had
come there unarmed and had solely relied on his muscles to help him
fight his way out of the dreadful fray. He had even taken his wife with
him, so little had he anticipated the sad events. He firmly believed the
whole thing was a vile concoction of the police or the capitalists.
[Here the witness was sternly reminded that he must confine himself to
his own defence instead of casting slurs on reputable citizens if he
desired to he heard]. He would say, then, that the charges were a tissue
of lies. The Knights of Revenge was a myth, as far as he knew, for he
had never heard of such an organization. He had only been in the colony
two years, and yet two of the witnesses had perjured themselves, and
furthermore perjured each other, one saying that he (Treadway) had been
president of the asserted society in Melbourne over four years ago, and
another pretended member of the pretended society had stated that
witness came out in the same ship with him two years later. The paper
called Vengeance witness had never seen before its production in court,
and he firmly believed some capitalists had printed it to make certain
of the legal murder of the defendants. [The magistrates here stopped the
defendant's speech, and threatened that the next one who dared to make
such scandalous imputations would be committed for contempt of court and
deprived of further opportunity to speak].
Holdfast stoutly denied he had used language inciting to violence, and
declared that the language put into his mouth by some of the witnesses
for the prosecution had actually been used by one Felix Slymer, who had
not been arrested for some reason but had mysteriously disappeared.
Although he himself believed that a people suffering wrong at the hands
of the authorities were fully justified in resorting to force to resist
that wrong, still he did not think those violent measures would produce
the desirable results that the labor party anticipated, and therefore he
had not advised them. The witnesses were a crowd of unblushing
perjurors; and the documents produced in court and said to be written by
him were all deliberate forgeries and a very bad imitation of his own
handwriting as he would show by some letters he had sent to his friends
on several occasions. [Letters produced.]
The other seventeen prisoners asserted their innocence, and supported
the statements of Treadway; one of the number, Sharples, almost foaming
with rage when he contradicted the assertion that he had manufactured,
and secreted bombs and other explosives with Washington, whom he denied
ever having seen before any more than he had ever seen a bomb until one
had been introduced in court during the examination of witnesses.
After the defendants had finished speaking, the magistrates held
consultation together for a few moments, when they ordered the prisoners
to be committed for trial. The nineteen miserable wretches were hurried
off to their cells, and the court cleared for the day.
“Ah, yes, that is the question of all questions, after all. Whatever
will become of the poor working men and women if things go on as they
are doing? I sometimes think I am the most unfortunate being in the
world, lying here in this cold, dark cell, with no face to cheer me—not
even that of my worst enemy, much less of my friends. And I am remanded
for trial, eh? Oh, yes, of course, the same old mockery to be repeated,
lying perjurors to concoct falsehoods and predetermined judges to pass
unjust judgment upon me. I suppose I'll be hung. But what of that. ‘Good
men must not obey the laws too well,’ said Emerson, which of course
means that good men must pay the penalty of their disobedience to those
unjust laws. But what's the penalty after all? The worst they can do is
take one's life. And what is the life of a proletariat? Only a life of
drudgery, anxiety, poverty, and anguish; a life of death, for all life's
noblest pleasure are denied us, and what we call our life is but one
ceaseless round of toiling bondage to our fellows who whip and starve us
to a welcome grave. Hallo! who's this?”
It was the turnkey who entered and announced that a visitor was waiting
an interview with the prisoner. Holdfast was removed to the visiting
place, a sort of bird-cage, with strong iron bars between the prisoner
and the visitor, and wire work all round it to prevent friends from
passing anything through to the unfortunate occupants. Looking through
the bars, Harry instantly recognised who it was, and a sort of painful
joy flitted across his troubled, though sanguine, features. It was a
pale young woman, trembling with emotion, and striving hard to thrust
back the bitter tears that come to solace woman in despair.
“Hypatia” said Harry, “is it you?”
“Yes, my poor friend, it is. What can I do for you?”
“Nothing, Hypatia, nothing.”
There was a silence—a painful silence such as one almost fancies one can
hear. These two brave spirits, male and female, stood looking in each
other's faces. Oh! that the foes of humanity could have seen that look.
Oh, that the cold heart of a Shylock might have been there to have
withered under the burning intellectual glances.
“Harry, I must do something for you,” said Hypatia at last. “I cannot,
dare not, stand idly by, and see these human tigers take your life. I
cannot part with you. To know and understand each other as you and I
have done for these long years is to be united in a bond whose strength
no earthly priest or lawyer could conceive. I would not die for you, as
lovers do in lackadaisy tales. For one to live without the other would
be death to that one that remained. No, Harry rather than die to save
your life, I'd kill the fiend who took that life and kill off all his
kind.”
Here the turnkey rudely interrupted the conversation and said it must be
confined to family matters.
“Harry,” continued Hypatia, “listen while I tell you something. Since
your committal, I have had a proposal of salvation offered out to me.
Ugh! how it infuriates me to think of it! That fiend, that human and
licentious monster, Grindall, has dared to promise me your perfect
freedom if I will sate his lust with holy matrimony. As though Love's
passion could he bought and sold! As though a woman could become a
prostitute in marriage e'en though it save her lover's life. No, Harry,
I resented the insult. I struck him. He called the servants and ordered
my arrest. But I was a match for the tyrant, and he well knew it. I told
him that if he laid a hand upon me, the injury would cost him his life.
I told him, too, that scores, aye hundreds of victims of his past
wrong-doing were waiting at his gate to help me should I call upon them.
And I reminded him that not one single servant could he depend upon when
once I told them his unholy motives. It was enough. It struck the cur,
and smote his wretched semblance of a conscience. Dismissing the
servants, he ordered my departure before further trouble ensued. But
calling me aside, he guaranteed your freedom if I would sojourn with him
one brief day. Again I struck him; and he fell. He glared at me just
like some wretched quadruped defeated in its carnal lust—a tyrant and a
cur! I left, and have not seen him since.”
“Hypatia, noble girl, you have suffered more than I. Oh, that we could
brave the world together! But no, I must wait my captors' pleasure I
cannot help you yet, Hypatia, nor can you help me. But let us wait our
time. For years I have waited for a home that I could take you to, there
to call you wife and know you worthy to accept that name; for years have
I struggled against wrong and injustice to get a little hold upon this
poor brigand-captured earth that you and I may dwell together on a spot
that even greedy tyrants would not drive us from. But our time has not
yet come. We can only wait, and nerve ourselves to endure the blows of
our oppressors. Some day we may strike the blow.”
“And we shall. And now I must be gone; the turnkey objects to our
conversation. Good-bye, Harry.”
“Good-bye.”
At last the day for the hearing of the eventful trial arrived. Throngs
of people were assembled about the junction of Lonsdale and William
Streets long before the appointed hour, anxious to be among the
fortunate few to get into the courthouse or to learn the latest scraps
of information concerning the unfortunate prisoners. Large numbers of
troopers and militiamen were stationed amongst the crowd to preserve
order and to prevent any serious breach of the peace, for a strong
feeling had grown up amongst the people that the prisoners were the
victims of a vile persecution and that the almost certain sentence of
death would be an unearned martyrdom that should be resisted at all
hazards. No one had dared to openly express sympathy with the accused,
for the press had already significantly hinted at the fate of any who
should be so daring. All labor meetings had been strictly forbidden; red
flags were confiscated wherever they could be found; revolutionary
literature was being seized in all directions; and open air meetings of
any kind absolutely forbidden. In fact, the Legislature had taken
special measures to meet the emergency, and a special act of Parliament
was passed making it a penal offence for anyone at any meeting whatever
to advocate any unlawful course to accomplish a lawful object; and it
furthermore decreed that if anyone did so suggest, by speech or print,
any unlawful course to accomplish any lawful or unlawful object, that he
should be held guilty of conspiracy, and that if any life were lost he
should be guilty of murder, even if he had not heard the speech or read
the print; and it furthermore decreed that anyone present at such a
meeting, or assisting in the compilation, printing, or distributing of
such print, should be held equally responsible with the speaker or
writer thereof. And this astounding outrage on the boasted liberty of
the subject was allowed to become law practically without protest or
delay. The workers had waited many scores of years for legislation to
ensure them steady employment and the fruits of their labor, and they
had witnessed governments go in and out, but the legislative measure
that was to bring justice to them had never come. And yet this dastardly
measure to gag and destroy them was passed through both houses of the
legislature, and had become law in three brief hours! It was rumoured
that the labor representatives, and others who would in all probability
have opposed the passage of the Bill, were bribed by large grants of
land in an estate through which a proposed railway service was to be
carried, and for which an enormous sum of money was voted just after the
infamous “Seditious Conspiracy Bill” became law, and which promised
enormous fortunes to its lucky promoters.
It was during the excitement consequent upon these remarkable
legislative measures that the trial of the Melbourne Rioters took place.
The evidence at the Criminal Court was alike to that in the lower court,
and very little fresh matter was introduced, the witnesses for the
prosecution repeating their former evidence and forging a complete
network of damnatory evidence around the prisoners, who on their part
repeated their innocence, refused to bring witnesses to what they
asserted to be hatched up conspiracies that never existed and which
could therefore have no witnesses, and asked the jury to honorably
acquit them. The whole affair did not take long, for none were anxious
to prolong it. And then came the judicial address to the bench. There
was a fearful silence for a few moments. Then the judge solemnly and
quietly delivered his charge. After the usual preliminary instructions
regarding the nature of the charges, the duties of the jury, and the
heavy responsibility that rested upon their shoulders, he proceeded as
follows:—
“Gentlemen of the jury—It is now your solemn duty, after considering the
evidence and hearing the instructions I have given you, to decide
whether the prisoners are guilty or guiltless of the charges laid
against them. The charge is the worst that can possibly be laid against
any human being, for it is that of violently and maliciously depriving
another human being of that, which is dearer than all else to him, his
life. Do not be guided by the sentiments that the learned counsel for
both sides have conjured before you; for it is not your place to be
swayed by fine sentiments, or any appeal to the sympathies; but it is
your place to now finally decide, from the evidence placed before you,
whether those unfortunate men now standing in the dock are guilty, or
not guilty, of the charges laid against them. Their lives hang by a
thread, and that thread is in your hands with all its grave
responsibilities. If you cut that thread, you take those human lives.
Hence you must be discreet, you must be certain, you must be true in
your convictions, and courageous in your verdict. Society now reposes
its confidence for security in yourselves. If those men are guilty of
the ferocious deeds assigned to them, it looks to you to preserve it
from the ravages of them and others like them, by deciding the one small
word that shall launch them into eternity. Do not be swayed by
considerations concerning your own personal security, or the threats of
vengeance held out by the friends of the accused, nor do you allow
friendships or other ties of sympathy to turn you from the strict
execution of justice. But if on the evidence you are satisfied they are
deserving of the extreme penalty of the law, find them ‘Guilty’. On the
other hand, if you do not think the evidence conclusive against them; if
there is doubt of guilt in your minds; if you believe from the evidence
they have not committed the crimes laid to their charge, but that the
guilt rests with others; or if you think they were justified in such
actions as they took, according to the laws of the land, then hesitate
ere you seal their doom—acquit them. But whatever you decide, do not
decide rashly, but let justice and the law sway your deliberations and
determine your conclusions. Turning to the evidence, we find it asserted
the accused are members of a gang of conspirators, belonging to an
organization known as the Knights of Revenge. The prisoners are
unanimous in denying this, though unfortunately they do not bring
evidence to attempt to disprove it, and they have the sworn evidence
against them of different witnesses who assert that such a body does
exist and that the accused are members of it. This society; according to
the witnesses for the prosecution, publishes, or published, an unlawful
and seditious paper called Vengeance, wherein the cruel massacre of May
1st was planned and the lives and properties of certain worthy citizens,
threatened with destruction. Explosives were secreted by one or more of
the prisoners, similar to those used during the riot and produced in
court. The accused used violent and seditious language at the meeting in
question and called on the populace to resort to the violence that
subsequently took place, when six hundred and five men, women and
children were massacred, the accused having caused and assisted in that
murder, according to the evidence of the prosecution. For the defence,
there was unfortunately no sworn evidence forthcoming, the accused
doggedly refusing to bring forward witnesses, or to give sworn evidence
themselves, declaring the verdict to be a predetermined conspiracy
against them. All they had done had been to protest their innocence—a
thing nearly all criminal, as well as guiltless persons had done before
them; and therefore their protest had no value in the eyes of the law.
The manufacture and storage of the explosives had been proven, and
although the accused had denied complicity they had failed to bring
forward any evidence in support of their denial. The letters from the
secretary of the organization had had their authenticity denied by the
reputed writer of them, who had produced other letters asserted to have
been written by him and which certainly did not appear to be from the
same pen. He had, however, failed to bring the reputed recipients of the
letters into the witness box, and it was for the jury to determine
whether they were genuine and of any value as evidence. They had also
attempted to show that the witnesses had contradicted each other, thus
destroying the reliability of the evidence, one of the witnesses having
stated that a member of the accused had come out to the colony with him
two years after the time that another witness had asserted his presence
in Melbourne in complicity with the secret society. . . . . Such is the
nature of the evidence before you, Gentlemen of the Jury, and I charge
you to consider it well, that you may deal justly with the accused, not
convicting them if you think any uncertainty exists concerning the guilt
alleged against them, but giving them an impartial and honorable
acquittal by a verdict of ‘Not Guilty;’ and, on the other hand, if the
evidence seems to you conclusive proof of their guilt, that you bring in
the only verdict possible under the circumstances,—the verdict which
shall cause these wretched men to suffer the extreme penalty of the
law—the verdict of ‘Guilty’!”
The jury retired for a few minutes, and a painful suspense was felt all
through the court while the fatal verdict was waited for. After about
fifteen minutes the jury reappeared; and the foreman, his voice
trembling with emotion, reported their decision as follows:—“We find the
prisoners, Thomas Treadway, Harry Holdfast, Samuel Sharples, Thomas
Smith, Frederick Thompson, Thomas Harrison, William Spencer, James
Grace, Alfred Jackson, Michael O'Halloran, Phillip Williams, Joseph
Marks, William Wilson, Adolph Nortier, Henry White, Rupert Blackman,
Edwin Christopherson, Patrick Murphy, and Phelim O'Dowd guilty of wilful
murder; but we recommend Thomas Treadway and Harry Holdfast to mercy on
account of the inconclusive nature of some of the evidence brought
against them.”
The judge was not long in passing the fatal sentences. With a few well
chosen words, warning them of the awful fate that awaited them, he
condemned Tom Treadway and Harry Holdfast to imprisonment for life; the
others he sentenced to death.
There was a sigh of relief, and all eyes were turned towards the
prisoners, some of whom broke down with grief at the awful sentence;
though most of them retained their composure and prepared to meet their
doom as only martyrs in a glorious cause can do. There was, however, a
feeling of dissatisfaction on the brows of Treadway and Holdfast, who
begged to be “murdered” along with their comrades rather than rot to
death in a prison cell. But their request was unheeded. All the
prisoners were hastily removed, and the court cleared. Immediately on
the sentence being made known outside the court, loud groans were heard;
the faces of the multitude were sullen and angered. It was threatened
that if the men's lives were to be forfeited an attempt would he made to
liberate them and to destroy the judge and every juryman and witness who
had gone against them. And now the terrible hour had arrived. Now the
fatal blow was to be struck, and Melbourne was to reek with blood, and a
“Cæsar's Column” to be played in grim reality!
In the front room of a small brick cottage in Carlton, a number of men
and women were gathered together, talking earnestly over the great trial
of the Melbourne Rioters, with an earnestness and an intimacy with the
facts that showed them to be active participators in the struggle just
described. One of the men present had in his hand a copy of the Evening
Echo, from which he was reading the latest particulars of the trial to
his attentive listeners.
“There,” said he at length, placing the paper on the table, “now you see
what it has come to. I told you these villains would have their blood,
as they had already taken the blood of the noble martyrs of Chicago; and
if we don't look out, mark my words, they’ll have the lives of everyone
else of us too.”
“That wouldn't much matter, Smythers; life isn't worth much to us when
we can't earn a pound a week, and it costs us more than that to pay our
rent and purchase our food and clothing,” said one of the younger
members of the party.
“More fool you to pay your rent, Wilberforce, when the money you earn
belongs to your starving family and not to an overfed landlord. If you
had all refused to pay your rents and pointed a revolver at the first
chap who demanded it, these troubles would never have overtaken us. What
are you going to do now? I suppose you are going to sit here like a lot
of curs and let those poor devils be murdered, when—”
“It’s not that we are curs,” interjected another, “ we'd as soon put an
end to this cursed business as you would yourself, Bill, but we can't do
what we like, and no more can you. I only wish I could see some way of
frustrating their schemes, and preventing more bloodshed. But what can
we do against the power of money? When it comes to this, that hundreds
of innocent working men and women can be shot down at the secret
instigation of the wealthy, and then hang our leaders who are equally
innocent with the other victims, I think it's time we called a halt
somewhere and began to talk sense instead of violence.”
“That's always you, Walton, showing the white feather just like Holdfast
does with his talk about peaceful co-operation,” remarked Felix Slymer,
who occupied an arm chair in the corner of the room, “you haven't the
courage of Bill Smythers, so you want to stop him because he shows
some.”
“Look here, Slymer,” said Hypatia Stephens, who had hitherto kept an
attentive silence, “if you don't stop your shameful allusions to Harry
Holdfast, I'll make you regret it. Don't dare charge him with cowardice
in my presence, for I cannot endure it. I know Harry too well to think
him a coward. He is as brave and honorable a fellow as ever breathed.
Oh, that there were more like him! Never slander him in my presence, or
by the living God, Slymer, you'll incur the wrath of an injured woman;
and I think you know what that means.”
“I don’t think we ought to quarrel now,” said Walton, “and I certainly
think Slymer's remark uncalled for. We are met to fight the common
enemy, not each other.”
This remark met with general approval, and the business of the meeting
was proceeded with.
“Well, comrades,” said Smythers, “to test the feeling of the meeting,
I'll propose that we post spies in all directions to watch the movements
of our adversaries. Each spy shall carry a bomb to protect his life in
case of emergency, but not for purposes of aggression. Near each spy we
shall put a group of secret soldiers, each of whom shall be well armed
with bombs and other weapons of destruction carefully concealed about
their persons; their dress shall also be disguised to make them resemble
ordinary working men carrying on their usual occupations, and as
messengers of the plutocracy carrying letters and messages; they shall
also be sworn in as Special Constables under fictitious names, and shall
now and then furnish secret reports of bogus plots to influential public
personages. We have full lists of all the jurymen and witnesses who
assisted the judge in ordering the murder of our comrades, and have
already a number of trustworthy men and women watching their every
movement and in many cases in close confidence with them. In fact, since
the trial first came on, we have been carefully working up an
organization similar to that hoax called the Knights of Revenge, and
have met with unexpected support and encouragement. Comrade Slymer can
corroborate my words.”
“Yes,” said Slymer, “Smythers is correct; and although it would not be
prudent for me to say much about it here, because ‘walls have ears,’ I
have no hesitation in saying that our success is certain. I gladly
support the proposition.”
“Am I to understand that these persons of whom you speak, the spies and
‘soldiers,’ are under any organized direction from some executive body
or other recognized authority?” asked one.
“I can only answer Mr. Millar's question by stating that all who have
volunteered those duties, and are now performing them, have hitherto
done so solely under the supervision of myself and Slymer, and two
others who for certain reasons dare not be present. We are mainly met
here to consider what to do in the present crisis, and to see if we can
appoint such an executive out of the present meeting.”
After a considerable amount of talking, the proposed executive was
formed and the majority of those present swore in their adherence to the
new body; the remainder, among whom were Hypatia Stephens, Harry Walton,
and Fred Wilberforce, taking their departure. Then the remainder
proceeded to “business.” The new organization was named The Band of
Justice; but they also adopted another name by which to be known to the
outside world—The Excelsior Mutual Improvement Society. The adoption of
this latter name would enable them to stave off the curiosity of the
public, and to conduct private meetings without raising suspicion, even
in the ante-rooms of public halls. Then the necessary arrangements were
made to carry out the objects of the Band by appointing each to his
particular office, having the necessary pass-words and grips, fixing the
dates and places of their future movements, and attending to many other
details that were necessary to deal with on the occasion.Special pains
were taken to avoid the finding of any documentary evidence of any
members of the Band by any of the authorities or spies; and for that
reason an easily remembered cypher was adopted to express several
important words that would be in frequent use by them, and the
secretary, Felix Slymer, was instructed to keep no minutes or accounts
of the Band's transactions. Having made all these necessary
arrangements, the members dispersed for the night, each entrusted with a
part in the fulfilment of their dangerous mission.
When Hypatia and the others left the conspirators' meeting in the
Carlton cottage, they did not go each at once to their several homes;
but slowly walking down Lygon Street together, and keeping on the road
to avoid listeners as much as possible, they talked quietly together
over the meeting they had just left and the general state of public
affairs. They did not dare stand together conversing, as it would be
sure to excite suspicion, and they did not know but that the first
person they met might be some secret detective.
“I am afraid,” said Fred Wilberforce, after they had been conversing for
some time, “that nothing will come of all our efforts after all. The
more I think over it, the more satisfied I am that the present state of
affairs is as likely to endure as it was to come. What can you do with
the workers when they never trouble about their condition until it is
too late? They are certainly very anxious just now, and seem as if they
were fully resolved on doing desperate deeds; but they won't do
anything. Look at Smythers and those fellows trying to organize a
revolutionary conspiracy amongst a lot of fools whose whole thoughts are
occupied with such childish absurdities as a football or cricket match,
who can tell you the names, weights and pedigrees of the winners of the
Melbourne Cup in past years or the probable winning horses of this, and
whose chief literary food is the perusal of penny comic papers whose is
on an intellectual level with that of a children's nursery; while the
preservation of their health or their liberty is a thing they never
think about, but only call you a ‘crank’ if you mention it to them!”
“That is very true,” replied Harry, “but it isn't everything. You might
have added that when they can't find food for themselves and their
families they always manage to poison themselves with alcohol or
tobacco. But on the other hand, you must remember that nations in the
past have had the same vices and yet have effected mighty changes of one
kind or another. The legislative charlatans who now bamboozle the
proletaire by granting land for football grounds are only imitating the
tyrants of mediæval days who blinded the people with gladiatorial
combats while they forged the chains of slavery tighter round their
necks. But some day the slave awakes, and the chains are broken; and who
knows but what the slaves of modern Melbourne capitalism may not someday
do likewise? I shall not be surprised to see them do so in the present
struggle, even before the fatal verdict of to-day is carried out; but I
am afraid they are not yet ripe for a victorious rebellion.”
“Do you think the penalties will be carried out?” asked Hypatia.
“I do not see why they should not,” replied Walton. “The machinery of
the law is powerful; the execution of its decrees are firmly established
by custom, and are not likely to be generally resisted; the people
willingly permit their rulers to pass laws to gag them; and even were
they resolved on resistance they cannot trust each other, for each does
not know but what his dearest friend may prove a traitor. The
authorities, on the other hand, have to deal with a people who are
proverbially apathetic, stupid, helpless, and loyal. For generations
they have submitted to the most outrageously unjust laws, and shamefully
proclaimed their allegiance to them by boasting that all their actions
were ‘constitutional’!”
“You spoke of traitors,” responded Hypatia, “don't you think that Felix
Slymer is one?”
“No; I don't, Miss Stephens; and really I think you are wronging a
worthy fellow when you suggest that he is. I know there is a sort of
jealousy or dislike between Holdfast and him; but I see nothing to
warrant it. He is always to the front—”
“No; not always.”
“Well, as often as anyone. He is now working up this new secret
organization; he is a courageous and able advocate of revolutionary
principles; and he is one of the most popular and influential members
the labor party have. Although I cannot always agree with him or work
with him, I often wish we had more like him.”
“l quite agree with you, Walton,” remarked Fred. “I think our friend
misjudges him. Although I believe him to be rather rash and altogether
too sanguine, we couldn't very readily dispense with him.”
“But he would very readily dispense with you,” was Hypatia's sarcastic
reply.
The three had now reached Victoria Street, where Hypatia entered a
passing tram, and they all separated and sought their respective homes,
there to enjoy nature's kindest gift to the troubled brain of man—that
delightful state of mental annihilation that he calls “sleep.”
The day at length arrived for the execution of the now famous “Rioters.”
Ever since the trial, the public had kept very quiet. The dreaded attack
on the jurymen and witnesses after the trial not been made, and
disappointed curiosity thirsted in vain for sensation. Day after day,
angry groups of men were to be seen moving here and there as though
eager for the moment to arrive when the blow should be struck; but still
that moment did not arrive. Men were seen loitering mysteriously about
different parts of the city, and every now and then they would be rudely
told to “move on” by the police, which they generally did with alacrity,
either thinking discretion “the better part valor” or perhaps patiently
waiting for their time to come when they should do the moving on and the
authorities of to-day should be their supplicants. Rumor had it that
every man “loafing” about the streets was a member of the Knights of
Revenge, or some such daring body. A few others said they were only
hungry victims of the present grave depression, which, by the way, had
almost been forgotten now that affairs had assumed such a militant
aspect. But no one seemed very clear about the matter; and but for the
their fears they might have tired of speculating about it at all. But
when the day arrived for the dread ceremony to be performed, the pent up
feelings of the populace could not be subdued any longer. Men began to
say what they were thinking, and to say it rather noisily. Women vied
with the men in threats of vengeance, and showed by their demeanor that
they were in desperate earnest. Even the police seemed to feel as if
they had been sitting on a slumbering volcano quite long enough, for
they began to be unusually haughty and officious, and were not at all
scrupulous about maltreating the citizens who had deputed them to
carefully watch over the them. All along the walls of the jail, at every
possible point, armed men were stationed. Thousands of police in uniform
or plain clothes mixed up with the tens of thousands who waited outside
its grim walls. Large bodies of soldiers were stationed in all
directions, and others throughout the city, at the request of the
Victorian Government many of them having come from the adjoining
colonies. The latter were carefully posted in the most dangerous
positions, the authorities rightly reasoning that as they were
necessarily ill-informed on Melbourne affairs they would be less in
sympathy with the people, and therefore more amenable to duty and more
likely to fire upon their unfortunate fellow-men when ordered to do so
by their commanding officers. All the available mounted troopers had
been brought to the scene; and in their case, too, care had been taken
to place those accustomed to country duty in the thickest part of the
crowds. At last the hour for the execution drew near, and the favored
few within the walls prepared to assist in, or witness, the revolting
details with a zeal worthy of a cannibal feast. The attendants went
about their accustomed work with almost as little unconcern as a cook
would show in preparing her meals. And the spectators showed a zeal even
more intense. There they waited, like human vultures, thirsting for the
blood of the unfortunate victims, waiting to gloat over the sight of a
species destroying its kind, waiting to hear the last despairing words
of the tortured, or to note the quivering muscles of the unfortunate
victims of human brutality. There they were, like so many tigers—no, not
like tigers, for tigers and other quadrupeds do not devour their own
species: it is only man, brutal man, the boasted “lord of creation” who
stoops to such base deeds as that—there they were, waiting anxiously to
feast their brutal eyes on their actions. And at last those victims
came. Manfully and did they eye their captors. Nobly did they hold their
heads erect, as only men can hold them. Then there was a profound
silence as the brave fellows prepared to say their parting words to
their earthly tormentors. But, alas, this was denied them. Tyranny durst
not let its victims speak. The devourer of his kind dare not hear the
voice of him he would devour. The martyrs words might echo outside the
walls, and perchance that echo might never die, but might herald in the
victim's retribution. So the authorities had decided that the victims,
like the martyrs of Chicago should be gagged before being murdered. A
few stifled cries were all that was heard; and seventeen more human
beings had suffered the utmost penalty of man's brutality. The
spectators were delighted. Law was triumphant. It's power was
vindicated. Its institutions were assured. And its foes were crushed
like worms beneath its feet!
Immediately that the news reached outside that the dread penalty had
been fulfilled, fearful groans rent the air, bitter curses were heard in
all directions, and the indignant millions madly and despairingly rushed
against the foes before them. Then followed a scene that baffles all
description. Men and women were frantically rushing at each other like
starving wild beasts; the armed butchers of the law shooting down all
who failed to assist them; truncheons of police breaking every available
skull; troopers' horses trampling down anyone, and lances and swords
spilling blood like a bursted reservoir; buildings were flaming and
consuming their inmates; while in all directions explosives were flying,
hurling master and slave together to destruction. The combat was sharp;
but it was short. Madmen act with frenzy; but frenzy does not last.
Ammunition destroys; but ammunition runs out. And before long this
frightful combat was nothing but a few skirmishes here and there;
presently the earth slept in murderous silence.
But the conflict between master and servant had not been ended.
The proletaire had not triumphed.
It was a sad day that followed on the events just described. No rioters
were prosecuted, for no rioters remained. Blood had been spilt, but
freedom had not been found. Comrades, relatives, were all missing. All,
or nearly all, of the labor leaders were dead. Though hundreds of the
authorities were no more, thousands of others filled their places. Men
commenced again to seek for bread, and failed to get it. They sought
employers as of yore, but few found employment. Landlords commenced
again to send their collectors for the rents, and the starving
proletaire again attempted his vain task of paying it. The plutocracy
offered their accursed gold, and the poor once more bowed down before it
and pawned their lives to Mammon from whom they could never redeem.
Crime went on merrily as of yore, and legislative charlatans waxed fat
on its creation; while the proletaire and the parasite vied with each
other in the practice of vice to drown their cares. Jails continued to
be built, and laws made to fill them. Women sold their purity to man for
a crust; and men made themselves bestial to win woman's flattery.
Children continued to be educated without learning sense. Vanity and
pomp flourished as destructively as ever, and self-respect continued to
be the rarest virtue.
The Melbourne Riots were over.
The Workers yet awaited their emancipation.
Fifteen years had passed since the events narrated in the last chapter.
The Melbourne Riots had become a matter of past history, and the actors
in it were getting fewer as years rolled on. Melbourne, with all its
wickedness, had grown, as all other wicked cities grow, and had become a
modern wonder. Industrial improvements of all kinds had built it into
something scarcely conceivable by those who had existed in the “riot
days,” as they got to be called. The finest architects of the world had
come there to take up their abode, and wealthy men had employed them to
build some of the finest edifices in the world. The city was like a
magnificent palace, fit dwelling-place almost for a demigod. The
decorations of the houses, the dresses of the wealthy citizens, and the
wonderful advances made in locomotive, dietetic, and other comforts,
were amazing. Such was the appearance that it gave one on first seeing
it that the great international traveller, Sir Hercules Crayon, could
not help remarking that “If Paradise were to be re-instituted on earth,
this is where we would find it.” Certainly, that was but one side of the
mighty city; and the remarks of a critic were well chosen when he said
that “Were Paradise to visit us, unless she stopped her nose and stifled
every other sense, she'd soon turn up her toes.” As a matter of fact,
things had gone on drifting in the one direction. Invention had grown
and had brought grand homes to the wealthy. But poverty had grown just
as rapidly and so had its accompanying vices. There was no turning back
from the order of social evolution; but a constant extension of the old
order of things. It may easily be surmised that along with this growth
of poverty, alongside of wealth, the organizations of the discontented
still continued to find a place. One of the most important of those
organizations was that of The Brotherhood of the New Socialism which met
weekly in a large room in a house in Latrobe Street.
The meetings of the Brotherhood of the New Socialism were usually not
much out of the ordinary run of such gatherings. The workers met there
to declaim against the injustices of the existing social order, the
perfidy of the politicians, the increasing disparity between rich and
poor, and the hopes that the newest schools of socialistic thought held
out to the hungry and oppressed. There were generally the usual stock
speakers, armed with the usual stock resolutions that signified nothing.
Sometimes, however, there was a more or less unexpected change of
programme; and at the particular meeting that is just going to be
described the proceedings were enlivened by affairs certainly very much
out of the common. It was the usual Thursday evening when the
Brotherhood were to meet, and various people were making their way up
the steps to the room where the proceedings were to be carried on, when
a rather elderly man, whom one might take to be close on fifty years of
age, but whose manner nevertheless was more like that of a younger man,
accosted one of the Brotherhood stationed at the door.
“Is this where the Socialists are meeting, and if so, are strangers
permitted to attend?” he asked.
“Certainly,” was the reply, “everybody is welcome. Go upstairs after the
others there.”
The old gentleman followed as directed, and soon found himself in a
large comfortable room, capable of seating about two hundred persons,
although there were only about fifty present. It was now time to
commence, and the chairman called on the pianist to open with a suitable
piece, which he did by playing the “Marseillaise” in first-rate style.
Then a few songs were sung, mostly the familiar songs of the day, and
one gentleman recited Charles Mackay's stirring poem “Eternal Justice,”
which elicited vigorous applause. After which one of the Brotherhood
recited the following with some warmth:—
A CALL TO THE WORKERS.
Come lads, rouse yourselves, for the night is grown darker,
The sad cry of anguish is louder than yore,
The victims of labor—of unwanted labor—
Are crying at your feet, and their numbers grow more.
'Twas said, in the sweat of his brow, that the toiler
Should eat his bread; but, alas, 'tis too true
That he who toils hardest has least of earth's bounties,
Whilst plenty rewards him who toil scorns to do.
Oh, brothers, is this what our fathers have fought for?
Is this but the outcome of thousands of years
Of thinking, and trying, and doing for their fellows
By lawgivers, scientists, thinkers and seers!
Is man born to live and to die unrewarded?
Are all his best efforts to be spent in vain?
Shall idleness always enjoy of the good things?
Is labor doomed always to toil and complain?
'Tis said that the poor we have with us at all times;
Alas for the world, that 'twas so in the past;
But, brothers, because we have long suffered evil,
Dost follow we should suffer evil to last?
Oh, poor fellow-creatures! so long thy injustice—
So long hast thou bent under tyranny's hand—
So long hast thou crouched 'neath the whip of thy master,
Thou durst not look upright, thou fearest to stand.
Oh, brothers, cast off the dead load of oppression
That Cunning has heaped upon Labor's strong form—
So cunningly heaped that the victim who bears it
Scarce knows of its presence, except when the storm
Of righteous rebellion breaks out in its fury,
And Slavery strikes in its blind frenzied might,
And throws at proud Capital, bloated, but helpless,
The force of a True Thought, the bombshell of Right.
Alas, ah my brothers, so long used to serfdom,
So ready to fawn, and to cringe, and to crawl
Before the vile monster thy toil hath created,
The Door of Nothing, the Filcher of all!
Then courage, my brothers, arise in your manhood,
Stand firmly together and dare the whole world—
A world in which thou hast no claim of possession,
The Idler's domain, from which Labor is hurled.
Rise up, and ask not your oppressors for favors,
For loans, or for mercy, or justice, or gain;
To Hell with Monopoly and its defenders:
The world is your own when you dare lay the claim.
The chairman then thanked the comrades for entertaining them, and said
William Treadway would introduce the principal business of the evening
with his promised address on “Labor's Hopes and Prospects.” An
intelligent looking young man here arose, and mounted the platform, the
applause that greeted him showing that he was a familiar favorite
amongst them. Without any ceremony, he commenced his address, the
elderly stranger eyeing him with eager attention.
“I shall not trouble you to-night,” said he, “with a repetition of the
questions we are always discussing as to the sufferings of the working
classes. We are already too painfully familiar with them. Nor will I
weary you with the conventional platitudes that must be as tiring to you
as to myself. But I will endeavor to treat the subject as thoroughly and
clearly as I can in order that some real good may come of it. It is now
fifteen years since my poor father lost his liberty in striving to do
what we are still striving for; and when I look back I ask myself, What
has been accomplished in that time? I think, comrades, you will agree
with me when I say ‘nothing.’ Of course, I was but a lad at the time of
the famous riots, and have a very imperfect knowledge of the facts
connected with it. I lost my dear mother, as many of you may know, in
the bloody massacre that took place upon the execution of ‘the Noble
Seventeen,’ and my father was taken from me at the same time, never to
see my face again; for as you know, he died three years ago in
jail—died, so they say, from an hereditary and incurable disease; though
I firmly believe they foully murdered him because they could not break
his indomitable spirit. I have no relatives surviving that unhappy day,
so I can but glean my information from the historical sources known to
you all. I have principally taken my facts from ‘McCulloch's History of
the Melbourne Riots,’ of which a valuable three-volume edition is in the
Public Library. What do I find from a carefully study of it? Why, that
matters are no better now than they were in the pre-Riot days; that
poverty is as keen as then, if not worse; that the apathy of the masses,
their ignorance, their scramble after recreation when they required
bread, and their treacherous actions towards their truest champions were
as common then as now. And I find too that they rested on the same hopes
as we do. They vainly waited, as we are waiting, for honest legislators,
just laws, a wide diffusion of humanitarian sentiments, mutual
sympathies, the disappearance of vicious habits, and all those other
elements that we contend are the essential precursors of the glorious
social life for which we are striving. But I now see where they erred,
and where you, friends, are erring along with them. They trusted to bad
conditions to create good human beings. They tolerated the institutions
of human slavery, and hoped, poor fools, for the day when the slave
should be noble and the slave-master kind. They believed that the human
race was wicked, that it gloried in its wickedness, and that all the
vices and crimes it committed were but the natural manifestations of its
totally depraved nature. They thought the individual character was
superior to the conditions environing it—that the human will was free,
and therefore responsible for the individual's wicked actions (although
inconsistently giving it small credit for his good actions)—that man's
nature was bad, bad, irretrievably bad, and therefore that his fellows
should treat him with the brutality inherent in their own brutal natures
and so richly deserved by the brutal nature of himself. But, friends, I
find this is a lie, a fiendish falsehood, a slander on humanity. I find
that the man is what his circumstances make him. That great reformer,
Robert Owen, was right when he said that ‘the character is not made by
but for the individual.’ If you put me in bad circumstances, you make me
a bad man. If you enslave me, I learn in to rejoice in slavery. If you
treat me brutally, you encourage brutality in my nature, and I act
brutally to you. If in this land, which naturally belongs to all you who
live upon it, you give me a special privilege to the ownership of this
land, you make me a tyrant, and I cannot help but act like a tyrant; and
you make yourselves my serfs and cowardly cringing curs willing to lick
my feet in truly slave-like fashion, that I may graciously afford you
permit to toil on the land I have deprived you of. Then you hate me,
because I am your master; and I hate you because you are my slave. We
pretend to love each other to win each other's favors, but in our hearts
we love each one himself and eye the other with suspicion and mistrust.
So it is throughout all society. All true morality is forbidden by the
very laws under which we are associated. The landlord, despite his
higher sentiments of love and justice, must rack the rents from starving
toilers lest he become a toiler and wear out his life's blood for
others. The remorseless usurer must stifle his conscience, and forge the
yoke of Mammon round the neck of the proletaire that he may extort, by
interest, the product of their toil, lest he someday perform that
endless, fruitless toil himself. The legislator, offered bribes of
wealth and power, dare not be true to manhood and refuse those bribes,
lest he lose all his power and join the toiling proletaires who waste
their wretched lives in others' gain. No, friends, we have fought on
wrong lines. We have hoped to achieve fraternity by creating bitter
antipathy. Our preachers have called on men to he honorable, while
supporting all the institutions which compel us to be dishonorable.
Every so-called ‘revolution’ has been a failure, because all the evil
conditions were allowed to remain and new tyrants were created out of
old institutions. The cannibal, with his chiefs and warriors, makes war
upon his brother cannibal and eats him. The civilized man, with his
rulers and their subordinates, makes war also upon his civilized
brother, and he too devours him, but he devours him with the law instead
of with his teeth. All those men,—cannibal or civilized,—are the
creatures of their conditions, the victims of power and plunder. But,
fortunately for the human race, there are exceptions to the general rule
of mutual theft and destruction. The Doukhoborys, the Masinkers, the
Veddahs, and others who lack our civilized customs of law and disorder,
have shown us that man is moral when the conditions of his existence are
such as necessitate morality. They have shown us that when man lives on
his own efforts, instead of on his neighbor, that he daily enjoys the
noble virtues of universal friendship, health and contentment that we
only dream of; and that they who have no laws over them are ‘a law unto
themselves,’ and that self-instructing law invariably teaches them that
as they do unto others so do others unto them; and they have shown us
that while dishonesty, lying and poverty are the general lot of those
who tolerate our institutions, such evils are utterly unknown to them,
and everyone is honest, truthful and as wealthy as he chooses to be by
his own efforts. What a world of wasted efforts might have been spared
had humanity but learned these lessons that nature is everywhere
teaching him! Generations after generations have passed away, while
poets, philosophers, and preachers were calling on the people to live
good lives in harmony with each other; but the efforts of all those
generations have been spent in vain. Had those noble minds but united
their efforts in finding out the social conditions that generate
morality, and then worked together to establish those conditions, in a
few months or years they could have achieved them; and you and I,
friends, might now be enjoying the glorious benefits of their wise
actions, and the Melbourne Riots need never have blotted the pages of
earth's history. If we tolerate bad conditions, we will preach in vain
to make good men and women. If we create good conditions, we would
preach in vain to make those men and women bad. For they are ever the
creatures of their circumstances—the moral product of their surrounding.
In lands where monopolies and legal plunders flourish, there the
priesthoods preach morality, but they and their hearers continue
immoral. In lands of freedom and unrestricted opportunity, there no
preachers are found or needed to teach morality, because all are moral.
Our present society, therefore, cannot progress as we wish it; and all
our socialistic teaching is but labor thrown away, because the
conditions of life are opposed to our teachings, the present order is
not a social but an anti-social one, and even we who aspire to lead
society are corrupted by it. Socialistic propaganda is like the cry of
the shipwrecked mariner in mid-ocean, and meets with no response. If we
want to succeed, we must carry our thoughts into practice. The world has
learned how to hate: we must teach it how to love. It has learned how to
oppress and steal: we must teach it how to render mutual assistance and
be honest. Can we do this? If not, then Socialism is a failure, and
Goodness is a word that deserves no place in man's vocabulary. But I
believe, friends, it is possible for us to introduce here the elements
of goodness that others have found, and to find, even in barbarous
Melbourne, a congenial soil in which to transplant them. But how shall
we do it? What determined, united action shall we take? That, friends, I
do not pretend to be able yet to answer. I can only say that I have
determined to find the way from chaos into freedom, and when I have
found it to devote my whole life's efforts into carrying it out for the
mutual good of myself and my fellow men.”
The applause that followed on young Treadway's speech was marked with
real enthusiasm, and the chairman took occasion to remark that he felt
it worth more than mere passing comment, and hoped that something really
tangible would come out of it. The platform was declared open for other
speakers; but no one seemed anxious to come forward after the brilliant
speech they had just listened to.
At last the elderly stranger stood up in the hall. “Do you permit a
visitor to speak?” he asked.
“Certainly,” replied the chairman, “come to the platform.”
The elderly gentleman lost no time in doing as requested.
“Friends,” said he, “for I feel I must address you thus, although an
utter stranger,—I have listened attentively to the able and thoughtful
speech of the young man who has just spoken, and I must say he deserves
more than credit for it—he fully deserves to have his wish fulfilled
(applause). I may tell you that I have gone through the scenes he has
spoken of, and although I never before heard of McCulloch's work on the
subject, I can assure you the conditions of society in those days, and
the hopes and aspirations of the people, were just as he has described
them. Although I have been scarcely three weeks roaming in your city, I
can see that no change has occurred in the past fifteen years for which
you need be grateful. Certainly the buildings have become more
stupendous, and the luxury of the few is more like that of an Eastern
monarch than what the plutocracy of Melbourne enjoyed before; but the
conditions of life are no better—in fact, they are actually worse than I
knew them. I told you I have been roaming through your streets for the
past few weeks, but do not think I come from any other city, for I have
been all these years an inmate of your jail, having been incarcerated
there for complicity in the riots.
“But you are not Holdfast?” asked the chairman.
“Yes, Sir, I used to be well known as Harry Holdfast, although I don't
suppose I have ‘carried my years’ quite so well in confinement as I
might have done with proper air and sunshine. The authorities have
released me, as my conduct appears to have satisfied them; though I
understand they did it as quietly as possible to prevent any
demonstration on the part of the public, and that is why I have not
found you before. However, here I am, And now I wish to say that all the
time I have been confined I have brooded over this awful problem of the
struggle between Labor and Monopoly, and while coming to the same
conclusions as the brilliant son of my poor old friend, Treadway, I have
found what I am sure is the true solution. Therefore, if you will, grant
me a little time, I will be very glad to explain it to you, so that I
can help you to give the desired application to Treadway's principles,
and assist you by devoting my remaining days to the glorious cause of
labor's emancipation (applause). You all realize that the great trouble
now is that the few are very rich, and the many very poor; and you also
know that the wealthy are rich out of the legal robbery of the others
whom they thus impoverish. Of course, you know how this comes about. The
world is monopolized in the hands of the few, and the governments of the
world exist to secure them in that monopoly. All the great masses
outside of that monopoly thus become the unwilling slaves to the few
favored monopolists. Of course they want to live; but to do so they must
work. They can't work in the air so they turn to the land. But instantly
the landlord catches them and tells them it is his land, and if they
want to use it they must give him a part of their product from that land
for the privilege of using it. Of course, they can't do without it; so
they give him what he asks. That is the first step in the plunder of the
workers, and we call it rent. Then when the worker wants to exchange the
surplus part of that product, over and above what he consumes and gives
to his landlord, for the surplus product of someone else, he has to do
so through a legal medium, which we call money. This of course he has to
borrow from the privileged monopolists who are ‘chartered’ by the
landlord government to issue it. But they demand that when he pays it
back, in a given time, he shall repay more than he borrowed. This
extortion is the next burden on the laborer, and they call it interest,
or usury. Of course, he can't pay more then he borrows, though he agrees
to; and so someday the banker, who lent him the money, metaphorically
gobbles him up, robs him of all he has got and makes him a pauper, when
he will perhaps finish by imprisoning him for vagrancy. Then the
officers, who run this landlords' and bankers' government, want paying,
as they are not producers themselves, and that makes another big hole in
the worker's product, which we call taxation. But that is not all. A man
can't work on land unless he has tools. So if he is only a worker, with
nothing but his arms, he goes to one of the fortunate possessors of the
money (which alone buys the monopolized lands and tools), and he asks
him to let him use those tools. This the employer agrees to do provided
he gives him another large slice out of his product, which of course the
worker does, and we call that slice the profit. The little slice that
now remains to the worker we call his wages; it is sometimes so small
that it takes a powerful economic microscope to find it (laughter). Now,
here is the way such an unjust system operates. You go to work for a
man, and in a given time produce an article, say a suit of clothes,
which he offers to sell you for £6. But he only gives you £1 for your
labor in producing it. So you produce five more suits before you can
afford to buy one, which you then do. You have now a suit, and he has
five, one of which he uses himself. But you want to buy something else,
so you ask him to let you make more suits, as you want to earn more
money. But he tells you he can't till you buy the four that he has got
by him. And so you are thrown out of work. He calls that
‘overproduction’ and you call yourself ‘unemployed.’ All the workers
under our present slave system are in exactly the some position; and
although there is a division of labor and a distribution of products it
doesn't alter the relations between employer and employee a bit, but
leaves them just as I have described them. Now you see that if you got
the full £6 for making that suit, you could have bought it at once, and
all this trouble would have been avoided; you would have remained at
work making another to exchange with someone else; your employer would
have had to make his own instead of being idle; and everyone else would
be doing the same, and we would never have depressions or riots,
excessive wealth or poverty, but would all be happy and prosperous mates
like the Masinkers that Treadway told us about. Now, if you will help
me, I will show you how we can do it, and thereby earn the gratitude of
our fellow-men and better our own condition. If you are agreeable I will
fully explain the whole thing to you at another meeting when you have
more time, so that you can fully understand it, and be prepared to help
me in my efforts to emancipate the workers of Melbourne and the whole
civilized world.”
Immediately that Harry had done speaking, the meeting burst out in
furious applause; all the etiquette of public meetings was forgotten,
and nearly all rushed forward to greet the veteran “agitator,” with a
warmth of handshaking that would have made one think they had been
intimate friends of years' standing instead of a few minutes.
It was decided that the next week's meeting should be devoted to
Holdfast's lecture.
“One more thing before I go,” said Holdfast. “Can you tell me the
present address of Miss Hypatia Stephens?” asked Harry.
No one could tell him, but some of them thought she had gone to Benalla
in a situation as general servant. She was rather well known, although
taking little part in public affairs, and had not been heard of for over
twelve months.
Harry went away, thanking them sincerely for their cordial reception and
their friendly intentions. But he thought of his poor lost Hypatia; and
he felt sad. Where could she be? Why was she not near the jail when he
was released; and now that he had been a free (?) man for a fortnight
why had he heard nothing from her in the meantime? Perhaps, thought he,
she is dead; she would not be silent otherwise. And with this cruel
thought racking his brains, he sought the establishment wherein he
lodged and tried to forget his dear one in slumber. But sleep had
forsaken him; and the poor fellow laid in his bed in a mental agony more
severe than any he had experienced during his long imprisonment. He had
faced the world's torture all these years, only to find his life's hope
gone!
“I think I have seen your face before!”
“And I think I remember your's!”
The speakers were Harry Holdfast and a gentleman he had met in the
street a few days after the evening of Treadway's lecture. The two had
looked steadfastly into each other's face while passing, and their eyes
met and a mutual glance of recognition had prompted the above remarks.
“Might I ask you your name?”
“Certainly. My name is Holdfast—Harry Holdfast. And yours?”
“Frederick Wilberforce, your old friend and co-worker. Dear me, to think
I should meet you again! But how you have changed! It can't be twenty
years since I last saw you, and yet you look like an old man. Where are
you living?”
“Living? Well, I suppose it's living. I am trying to exist at Fillemup's
Restaurant, where I get a shilling a week, besides board and lodging,
such as it is, for doing all sorts of odd work and helping in the
kitchen.”
“Come along with me, then; I'll find something better for you than
that.”
Harry, after a short conversation on the matter, willingly agreed to go
along with his old friend, being careful, however, to deliver the letter
with which he had been sent by his employer before going to
Wilberforce's. Arrived there, he wrote out a short note to Mr. Fillemup,
telling him he would not hold his situation any longer, as he had found
one more suitable, and he would forfeit the week's wages due to him.
Wilberforce's place was a really comfortable one for Harry to be in. It
was a nice roomy house, with plenty of accommodation for a few visitors,
and adjoining it was a large hay and corn store, of which Fred was the
sole proprietor, and which was doing a very large business indeed.
“And now, Harry, tell me a little of how you have been getting on all
these years. I have often thought of you, and wondered whether I would
ever see you again; and now that you are here, I long to know all about
you.”
“All I can tell you is very little, Fred. A prisoner's life is very much
like that of any other prisoner, and the fact of his being a political
offender falsely charged with crime does not cause him to he treated
otherwise than as an actual criminal. One thing, however, was in my
favor, and of course distinguished me from the exact treatment of a
criminal: I commanded the respect of the individuals in immediate
authority over me, and was as kindly treated by them as they dared let
me be. I took every opportunity to explain to them my true position, and
I know they were really sorry for me. One of them told me he often felt
the falsity of his own position, and realized that while he was there to
assist in keeping the criminal elements of society under subjection that
he knew many who were detained there were not really as bad as the
majority who still enjoyed their freedom, while the greatest villains of
all enjoyed their freedom. He could not see how we could do without
jails, but he thought we might almost be as well without them when
scores of legislators and plutocrats were allowed to rob the struggling
masses by fraudulently conducting bogus building societies, banks, and
other financing institutions with impunity, and rarely paid the penalty
of their roguery, because they had a mutual understanding to protect
each other against legal prosecution when any of them were detected by
the public. But, Fred, I can tell you about all this sort of thing any
other time. I am longing to know how all my old friends are getting on.
Can you tell me anything about them?”
“Well, of course you know about your widowed mother?”
“Yes, I learned that she died of a broken heart shortly after my
sentence, and just before my final imprisonment. What became of my
brother John?”
“I believe he went to America about twelve years ago. He couldn't make
much of a living here, and he gave the place up in disgust, and has
settled I believe in San Francisco. He told me just before his departure
that he did not think the Melbourne people deserved to have a decent
person stopping in their midst: they appeared to like being plundered,
and therefore should have what they liked. He wasn't going to waste his
life for them as his foolish brother had done.”
“Yes, that's just the way he used to rebuke me,” responded Harry, “he
was always saying I should not meddle with the business of other people,
and that I would get into trouble over it. He turned out right in his
prophecy, unfortunately, though his stupid idea of non-interference with
wrong never improved him or anyone else who held it.”
“But surely, after your recent experiences, you agree with the principle
of not interfering with another's liberty, don't you?”
“Certainly I do. But can't you see that interfering with another's
liberty, and interfering with another's slavery, are two very different
things? The laissez faire doctrine is a very good thing if rightly
understood; it simply means that each individual should be let alone to
follow out his own natural desires to satisfy his wants by his own
efforts. And I like to see a man exercising that right. But when he
won't stop there, but demands that he be let alone when oppressing or
exploiting others, it's time we interfered. That man's victim requires
to be let alone just as much as the other fellow, and it is to our
mutual self-interest to see that he is left alone. Laissez faire isn't a
one-sided virtue; but to become a living principle, it must be universal
in its application. When the authorities imprisoned me they destroyed
that principle, because I was not limiting the liberty of others and
wrongly lost my own. Had I limited others' liberty, by legal or illegal
means (it is immaterial which) I should then have been a destroyer of
that principle of non-interference, and society to preserve itself would
be justified in removing me out of harm's way.”
“But the capitalist and the legislator do not directly interfere with
the liberty of the proletaire, who are free to work for an employer or
not, as they choose.”
“No, Fred, they are not free to do anything of the kind; they are
compelled by unjust conditions to do so—not by their own free choice.
The old Socialist cry of ‘Freedom of Contract,’ which the plutocrats
have tried to appropriate, expresses the true idea of economic freedom.
Your own success in business is obscuring your sense of justice, as it
does so many others, and in endeavouring to vindicate your well-deserved
efforts at success under unjust conditions, you make the common mistake
of endeavoring to vindicate those conditions; instead of stopping short
after having vindicated your efforts to subsist, and then honestly
condemning the conditions through which you successfully struggled.
Every landlord, every usurer (or banker, if you prefer the word), and
every other parasite on labor is justified in his success under our
present exploiting system; just as every proletariat is equally
justified with his poverty under that system. But landlordism, usury,
and all other forms of exploitation and restriction, are unjustifiable.
It is the system that is wrong, not the men who suffer or succeed
beneath that system. Society has forbidden you to live in the full
enjoyment of your own efforts and has enacted in all its Statute Books a
new commandment, ‘THOU SHALT ROB OR BE ROBBED,’ and you have succeeded
in leaving the robbed classes and in joining the robbers. You have done
your best, and merit your success. Society has done its worst, and
merits the undying hatred of both you and me—the parasite and the
proletaire.” “I understand your vigorous, if not very polite, language,
Harry, and know how to appreciate it. You are quite right in blaming the
conditions, instead of the individuals who live under those conditions.
And with you, I would like to see better conditions existing, but I have
little hopes of them coming in my day, and can only put them aside as
out of the range of ‘practical politics.’”
“Well, Fred, I hope soon to take you out of this horrible pessimistic
mood of yours by showing you an object lesson in justice. But about my
old friends and, acquaintances. You haven't told me about them yet.”
“Your acquaintances! Of course, you know all about Felix Slymer, your
old time enemy?”
“No. Is he still living?”
“Living! I should think so. And likely to live, if he doesn't die
prematurely by gorging himself with too much luxury.”
“You don't mean to say he is wealthy?”
“Yes. He is the wealthiest man in the colony to-day; although, when you
and I first knew him together he was one of the poorest, or at all
events, believed to be such. After the Riots that followed on the
execution of your comrades the workers were in desperate straits. They
had no leaders, and no decided plan of action. Slymer used to continue
to address them on revolutionary subjects and succeeded in retaining
their favors, until he succeeded in getting them to return him as their
representative to Parliament. He got in by an astounding majority, far
exceeding that ever polled by any previous candidate for the
constituency which he was contesting. Not only did the labor parties
support him, but the capitalists gave him their support also in the
majority of instances. This was inexplicable at the time, although rumor
had it that he was a secret agent of the latter and a spy in the labor
camp—a suspicion that was strengthened by his subsequent career. Having
entered Parliament, he lost no opportunity to support all the measures
introduced in the interests of the wealthy classes. This, of course,
brought all sorts of opportunities to his feet, and he became a little
god amongst the capitalists and their representatives. But the most
astounding part of it was that he continued to retain the good opinions
of the labor parties in spite of his persistent support of their foes.
And this is how he did it. Whenever he supported a capitalistic measure,
he told his laboring constituents (in an undertone, of course) that he
was doing so only as a matter of expediency; so that when he someday
introduced his own revolutionary measures he would have friends in the
House who would support him in them as he had supported them. Thus
hoodwinked, the workers let him and his party support the most vile
legislative enactments year after year; while of course the long
expected socialistic legislation never took place, and Slymer always
managed to get them put off by pressure of ‘other business,’ and never
failed to get his dupes to exonerate his actions. After he had been in
the Legislature a few years he succeeded, by his excellent business tact
and cunning, in forming several large and influential trading
Syndicates, mostly amongst the members of the Legislature. This extended
his popularity. The other members of the House, having now an interest
in common with his own, supported him in any measure he brought forward,
no matter how daringly oppressive it might be. Even this did not cause
him to lose the confidence of the proletaire, for every time that a
depression occurred, as the inevitable results of his financial
undertaking, he would organize charitable societies to distribute relief
and handsomely contribute to their funds a few thousand pounds out of
the hundreds of thousands of pounds which he had robbed from the workers
by means of those undertakings. Honors continued to shower upon him, and
he got the title of Sir Felix Slymer which he now holds. That mansion
which you saw just round the corner is his city office; but he has far
more delightful residences in different parts of the country, each of
which is connected with the city by a line of railway, constructed, in
most cases, specially for him. His wealth was greatly augmented by your
old friend (?) Gregory Grindall, who, on his demise about nine years
ago, bequeathed to him nearly all his possessions on account of services
performed.”
“And is Slymer happy with all this luxury?”
“Well, that's a funny question to ask, and one I really can't answer. I
know he has tremendous worry with it all, and is in constant danger from
the number of starving tramps who are always threatening to take his
life. and have made one or two attempts already. But I think he's
happier than he would have been in jail as you have been.”
“But not as happy as he might have been living in a state of social
justice and freedom.”
“Perhaps not.”
“But, Fred, you have told me about the others, and yet I have not heard
you say anything about Hypatia Stephens. Where is she?”
“Ah, poor fellow, I understand your anxiety. I think I can set your mind
at rest on that score.”
“I hope she is all right?”
“Yes, I hope so, and have every reason to think she is. As you know, we
have always been intimate friends, and although you did unintentionally
cross my path in our affections, I have never let that interfere in the
relations between us. Hypatia has often been in my company and she
generally spoke of you and longed for the day when she should again
behold you. Having no parents, or other relations, and being boycotted
by strangers owing to her confessed sympathies with the workers, she was
unable to get employment here, and I assisted her in going to Sydney. I
would have liked her to stop with me and assist me in the business I was
working up. But she thought as I was a bachelor and she a spinster it
would be better for her to go elsewhere among strangers; not that she
feared the scandal of tittle-tattling society, as you know, but she
contended that ‘human nature was human nature,’ and that it would
require a too strong resolution on the part of both of us if she were to
remain true to the pledge she had given you. I tried to dissuade her
from going away at the time; but I think it is as well that she did do
so, for I confess that I still cherish the old regard for her, and if
our relations had become more intimate it would certainly have caused
unpleasant relations between you and me, perhaps between her and
yourself, and very likely even between Hypatia and myself. Marriage is
not a very satisfactory institution. The evils it often occasions are
easier done than undone. Love has no difficulty in uniting us with our
eyes shut, but Reason can't always sever us when our eyes get opened.
Hypatia, as you know, holds very strict and somewhat unpopular views on
the marital relations, which she looks upon as the necessary outcome of
our present system of industrial slavery, and totally incompatible with
the dignity of a true woman who should never enter into what she calls
sexual slavery. So she had her own way, as I have told you, and went to
Sydney, where she got a quiet situation as housekeeper. Here is her
address. Shall I wire her to return at once?”
“Do, Fred; and tell her to come immediately.”
Fred wrote the following message:—“Return immediately. Holdfast waiting
here. I pay all expenses. Call Bank of Australasia, Sydney, for money.”
Fred sent a messenger to the telegraph office, and then went to the bank
and got them to telegraph twenty pounds to Sydney.
When Fred returned, he began to initiate Harry into the mysteries of a
hay and corn business, and the latter recounted his past experiences
while performing the light work set him.
Thursday had arrived, and Harry was that evening to propound his scheme
of social salvation. But, although the day had far advanced Hypatia had
not arrived, nor had any word come from her. He had hoped to see her
before the meeting, but there would be no train in till late at night,
so he decided to lose no more time but prepared for the meeting.
Fred had agreed to go with him that evening, although he had not been in
the habit of frequenting the socialists' meetings for several years
past; and after they had taken tea, the two went out together to the
rooms of the Brotherhood.
On arriving at the hall, Harry found it yet wanted half an hour to the
time when they would commence the proceedings, so he filled in the time
looking around the place, and reading the numerous labor newspapers from
all parts of the world that were hung round the walls. Taking down a
copy of the London Revolutionist, his eye caught the following;—“Our
comrades in Manchester, finding the co-operative schemes a failure, so
far as the improvement of the workers are concerned, are taking
important measures to force on a better state of affairs. They are now
carrying on a vigorous campaign against the payment of rent, and are
calling on all the workers to inaugurate a universal strike, when they
will quietly seize all the machinery and product in the factories and
mines and start to work it for themselves, offering to let the
proprietors join them in the undertaking provided they do their share of
the work and accept an equal share of the common product along with the
rest. There are already half the tenants of the houses in that town
positively refusing to pay their rents, which they have not the means to
pay even if they desired to do so; and they are readily joining in the
grand campaign. We wish our comrades every success. If the other
industrial centres imitate their example we will soon accomplish the
Social Revolution.”
“What do you think of that?” said Harry, showing the paragraph to Fred.
“I think it disgraceful,” replied Fred.
“I don't,” said Harry, “I think it foolish.”
It was now time to commence, and the chairman called the meeting to
order. He said he was glad to see the hall so packed; it showed respect
to a worthy veteran (applause), and also showed they appreciated an
earnest attempt to end the present social injustice (renewed applause).
He had to announce that, at the request of the lecturer, a new departure
would be made in the conduct of the meeting: instead of the usual debate
at the close, members of the audience would be invited to interject
pertinent questions throughout the discourse, so as to clear up the
subject and create a thorough understanding of the lecturer's methods.
Before introducing the lecturer, he would ask the whole audience to join
in singing the “Anthem of Labor.”
THE ANTHEM OF LABOR.
|
In the good old days when the Roman power
Held sway o'er the human race,
And the working millions like oxen toiled
In sorrow and disgrace,
The wise men of that day did say
Man should toil thus for ever;
But Slavery's day has since passed away
To return amongst us never.
Chorus.—For Labor shall be free; yes, Labor shall be free;
In spite of Mammon's cruel theft—
In spite of Law's decree—
We'll yet make Labor free—we'll yet make Labor free,
O'er all the world we'll brothers be,
And Labor shall be free!
But, alas, from the ashes of slavery rose
The lords in their Feudal might,
Reducing to serfdom the laboring throngs,
And seizing the land as their right.
But the Feudal barons and their castles strong
Are relics of the past;
And the worker's no longer sold with his land—
He strives to be free at last.
Chorus—For Labor, etc.
But alas for the day that saw Capital reign
With Labor prostrate at its feet;
The indolent few overburdened with wealth,
While labor has nothing to eat.
The worker is ‘free’? yes, free to starve,
Or work at a tyrant's call!
The gold of the idler has bought the whole world:
The worker has nothing at all.
Chorus—For Labor, etc.
Then hail to the day when the worker shall say:
“The world 'neath my feet is mine,
“The wealth in your hands is the fruit of my toil;
“Restore it—it is not thine;
“The coal and the metals I bring from the mine,
“The Engines I make with my brain,
“The homes I have built, and the clothing I weave
“Are all part of Labor's domain!”
Chorus—For Labor, etc.
And here's a health to all who toil
In this and every land;
Whoe'er they be, where'er they roam,
We stretch a friendly hand.
We know no race, nor creed, nor clan:
We fear not Russ or Turk:
The only one whom Labor fears
Are they who will not work.
Chorus—For Labor, etc.
When the audience had finished singing, the chairman reminded them of
his previous announcements, and called on Harry Holdfast to give his
promised address on the all important question, “How You and I Can
Emancipate the Workers.”
When the deafening applause, that followed on the chairman's remarks had
subsided, Harry proceeded as follows:—
“I intend to-night, friends, to convey to you the thoughts that I have
evolved during fifteen years' confinement in your jail. During the whole
of that time I have never ceased to think of the unhappy conditions of
those outside it, and to work out some method by which I could end those
conditions if I ever became liberated. At last I have matured my plans,
and to-night I shall lay them before you before I carry them out
(applause). Understand, I am going to ask you to help me, and I want
every one of you here to lend me a hand; but if you don't—if not one of
you assist me, I shall go on carrying it out all the same, and seeking
the assistance of more willing co-operators (applause). I will presume
that you have realized already that government will do nothing for you,
that philanthropy can't afford to do anything for you, and that you need
expect no wealth or power outside of your own selves to emancipate you;
but that you are resolved on working out your own salvation (hear,
hear). I will also presume that you have seen through the fallacious
methods of your trades unions, which never alter the false relations
existing between employer and employee, but allow them to continue—set
the worker to fighting his master instead of dispensing with his master;
and which accomplish nothing but futile strikes which always in the end
succeed in striking the strikers while the master waits his time and
then puts on the screw tighter when defeated labor comes begging for the
right to toil. It is you, deprived of all political or other privileged
powers—you, with nothing but a precarious starvation wage—who are to
create from yourselves both the power and the wealth necessary for your
emancipation. Now you know that every time you work under the present
system, you give your employer nearly the whole of your product, simply
because he is your employer. That great philosopher, Adam Smith, tells
you that the natural wages of labor are the whole product of labor; but
then you don't read his famous Wealth of Nations, so you haven't been
trying to secure those just wages that he shows you are yours, but have
always allowed the capitalists to rob you of nearly the whole of them.
Your fellow-workers in the United States of America realized from their
statistics a few years ago the awful fact that every time they produce
eight dollars, they only get one dollar returned them as wages. Now I
want them to keep that other seven dollars, and to devote it to building
up their own capital and assisting to find wealth and employment for
their fellows. And I want you to show them how to do it (applause). I am
going to ask you to club together your earnings to buy land and
machinery and to employ each other. (A voice: “We never have any
earnings.”) Yes you do, or you would all be dead long ago. If you got
twenty shillings wages Iast week it shows you earned six pounds in that
time, although you don't perhaps know where it went. At any rate you got
the pound. And it is very apparent you didn't do any good with it,
because you never get any better off with all your little earnings (“We
get worse off.”) Just so and you will continue to do so while you waste
your money as you have been doing. Now, how many of you can raise ten
shillings to go towards freeing yourselves? You none seem to think you
can, and yet you squander that every week over your rent. How many of
you could afford to put a pound into the next Melbourne Cup, six months
before it is run, if you knew it would win you a thousand pounds?
(“Plenty of us.”) Certainly you could. You have but to realize the
necessity of a thing, and you soon find a way of doing it. Now you all
know that many attempts have been made, by communists, co-operators and
others, to find a better way of living in society than we are now doing.
You have heard of the experiments of Icaria, Brook Farm, Harmony,
Bethel, and hundreds of others that have been made in different parts of
the world; and you know they have all failed. But why have they failed?
Was it because those who took part in them were unhappy under the new
conditions? No; we know very well that many of them deplored bitterly
the failure of many of those experiments, eagerly sought to take part in
subsequent ones very often, and testified to the fact that the happiest
days of their lives were those they spent in those communities,
notwithstanding the many difficulties they had to contend against. Were
they troubled with disputes over the use of their land as we are, and
did they find the common use of land worse than our present system of
buying, selling, and monopolizing it? No; we know their system of using
their land proved far superior to our's, in most, if not in all, cases,
and that it taught us a lesson we cannot soon forget. Did they find
themselves inconvenienced for the want of money with which to transact
the mutual interchanges of commodity with each other? Certainly not; for
in many cases that interchange was entirely spontaneous and unregulated,
and in others it was successfully directed by a labor-note system that
gave results quite the reverse of the pauperizing monetary system that
we are suffering under. Then what were the causes of their failure? Let
us find them, that we may not fail also, but may take advantage of their
example by imitating their successes but avoiding their stumbles. If we
study their history, we soon find that their successes were due to the
fact that they freed the lands, gave employment to the labor upon it,
worked with their own machinery instead of the machinery of others, and
rendered themselves dependent upon the product of their own labor
instead of upon the money belonging to the usurer. And their failures we
find were due to the fact that they frequently made the products of the
individual laborers the common property of all, whether they assisted in
the creation of those products or not, and utterly regardless of the
amount of exertion each individual put forth in their creation; some
failed because the land they were throwing open to the free use of all
their members was not out of the monopolist's grip before they commenced
to use it, and they had to relinquished it to the cruel mortgagee, with
all the improvements they had placed upon it; others failed because
although they they had the land properly, but like many a poor
struggling farmer they lack sufficient means to ‘hang out’ until the
crops begin to ripen and the harvest comes to reward their patient toil;
or they have means too small to tide over famines, droughts, fires, or
other calamities; and others yet again failed because they were
overburdened with authority, hemmed in by laws, and regulations, and
restrictions imposed upon men who knew little of the requirements of
hard pioneering life by others who knew still less of those
requirements, and who unintentionally only brought about the old order
of things that existed in the old exploitative society from which they
had just fled. Now, friends, I propose that you assist me to imitate
their successes, and avoid their failures, by the following means. Club
together a stated sum each, say ten shillings. If there are a hundred of
you that means fifty pounds; a thousand of you five hundred pounds; and
ten thousand of you five thousand pounds. Now that five thousand pounds
employed in securing you what I have suggested would do more good than
five hundred thousands of pounds employed in charity or government
relief works (hear, hear). After that you can pay a small sum every
week, say a shilling, until you have paid up some five or ten pounds
each. Now that isn't much to pay to secure your emancipation, is it?
You'd think nothing of paying a hundred pounds through a building
society for a house and land, and a poor one at that. And yet that small
ten pounds will gain you not only a house and land free of all
liabilities, but it will find you capital to work it, and sufficient
food and clothing for you to carry on with until you become absolutely
independent. And here is how you go about it. You have clubbed together
say the five thousand pounds. With some of that you buy enough land
somewhere in the country, and decide amongst yourselves by ballot who
shall first go and live on it. You don't need to all go on it once, as
they did in the experiments I have told you of, because you'd soon come
back again as they did. You wouldn't have enough means to live on. But
suppose you sent a hundred of your number. Let them take plenty of
tents, food, seed, live stock, and all the other things they require
with them. You can easily do this, because you have plenty of means. Now
there is already a hundred of you on your own lands and out of the
crowded city—a hundred less proletaires to compete at the capitalist's
feet for a starvation wage. Well you continue to supply them with food,
week after week, while they are up there; it doesn't cost much to live
rent free in the country, and your united capital can easily do it
without diminishing much. While you are finding these comrades food,
they are doing their share towards sustaining you. They are building
little homes away up there, so that they can live in them instead of the
tents; and they are also building others for you; they also dig and
prepare the ground so that fruit and vegetables may be planted in it to
sustain you and them in the near future, and they erect sheds for the
cattle and poultry. After a while, they begin to get ‘the house’ ready,
as we would say; and you ballot to select a few more pioneers to go and
help them. You might this time send their wives and sweethearts; because
you know no community will hold together long if there are no
sweethearts there (laughter), the men would soon return to the city with
all its sorrows, rather than suffer country bachelordom. Then you
gradually send more and more of your numbers up there, according to your
means, which are constantly being increased by your own weekly
contributions, and buy more and more land as you require it. And now you
will begin to see the advantage of securing this surplus product that I
was telling you about—the big profit that the capitalist appropriates
out of your labors. Some of your crops begin to come up, your poultry
begins to supply you with eggs, your cows to give milk, and so on. And
your friends in the country send all these things, over and above what
they require for their own food, to you for you to sell in Melbourne.
You accordingly dispose of it, and the money realized goes to swell your
fund which had been somewhat decreased by the purchases of land and the
settlement of your members upon it. As time goes on this surplus product
gets more and more in proportion; your few dozen head of poultry will
have increased to hundreds, and then to thousands; your few shillings'
worth of seeds will have grown to loads of grain and vegetables, and
will also have furnished you with thousands of times as many seeds as
you started with; your cattle will have multiplied from dozens to
hundreds; and your exports will be increasing every year. This prolific
increase of nature, which used to be the principle agency by which you
were impoverished because it did not belong to you, becomes the means by
which you all get wealthy now that it does belong to you. You soon have
realized so much by the sale of your growing surplus product that you
can easily buy more land than you need; you can send your remaining
members in larger batches to colonize, and can buy them costlier and
more efficient machinery. And you can keep on doing this until one after
another, member after member has gone up to assist in the pioneering
work, until at last the whole of you have been absorbed in it, and not
one of you remains in Melbourne to struggle with each other for a bare
crust of bread.”
“I would like to ask the lecturer what chance there is of a body of men
succeeding as he has so graphically described when we know very well
that individual farmers, with far greater means, are always coming to
grief. If these pioneers got fairly started, there is no doubt they
might succeed as he says. But the thing is for them to start. Many a
farmer might make a successful start; but when the crops fail him, or a
drought comes, or his goods do not realise sufficient in the market to
pay him, he is compelled to mortgage his little farm to raise sufficient
money to tide over his difficulties with. But even then, he generally
loses it. What would these people in your scheme do under such
circumstances?”
“In the first place,” respond Harry, “there wouldn't be such
circumstances. It would be impossible. The individual farmer, who has to
struggle along unaided is in a very different position to the
co-operative pioneers I have been describing. If the farmer comes to
grief when his crop fails, it is because he is dependent on those crops
to pay his rent or the interest on his loans, or to purchase the food he
cannot produce; but these pioneers have no rent to pay at all, no
interest to meet, and no food to buy, because those remaining behind are
sending them a sufficient supply from the city every week to keep them
going. It doesn't matter to them if not one of their crops came up for
six months, or not one cow gave milk, or not one hen laid a single egg;
because their supplies are guaranteed and forwarded to them regularly;
and while the farmer is starving because a drought has set in, and he
cannot afford to employ labor to irrigate his lands, or the markets are
not realizing a price sufficient to pay him properly, the pioneers are
irrigating their own lands, instead of racking their brains to find out
how to get others to do it, and the prices their commodities are
fetching in the market concerns them very little, because they don't
depend upon it for their living, and the smallest fraction it brings
them in is a fraction more towards the accumulation of the mutual
capital which is to free them from the dependence on the capital
belonging to the outside capitalist and to ultimately employ every one
of their members in the same manner. Now I have shown you briefly how
the collected money of the members will act in finding them employment,
in providing them with capital in the form of machinery, seed, live
stock &c., in providing them with houses, and in drawing them out of the
city of exploitation and into a newer city or village of freedom. You
see they have no swindling building society to gobble them up, no rent
collector to worry them, no grinding lease to pay, because they have
paid for their lands in full already. But they have now to guard against
the evils of the present property system cropping up again in their
midst, and they do so by not permitting anyone to monopolize land to
another's detriment, nor to charge another for the use of any lands they
may be using or desirous of using, but according to the constitution
adopted by them all, and incorporated in the registered deeds of their
association, they are legally and morally bound to recognize no other
title but the usufruct. That is to say, every individual has the right
to certain land only because he is using it; he is only entitled to the
exact area that he is using; and he has only a claim upon it while he is
using it. The instant he ceases to use any part of it, he ceases to have
any right to posses that part. That is the only just system of holding
and working land. It is the natural land law that existed before the
world was ever cursed with statute law; and it is the law which will
live and be recognised in society when all our statute laws are
forgotten.”
“But won't some greedy fellows take more land than others, while the
rest will not have enough?” asked someone. “You can't expect to have
people taken out of the city, and possessing all the greedy vices of
city life—you can't expect to have these people acting justly towards
each other, and only taking a fair share of the land. Now if everyone
had a certain allotment given entirely to him by the society, or leased
to him by the society, or even gratuitously allotted to him, it would
prevent all the land scrambling that would be bound to exist if all the
place were a sort of ‘no-man's land.’ If you didn't want to have the
members always going to the law courts to redress their grievances, and
all the old troubles would be repeated.”
“Not so fast,” replied Harry, “not so fast my friend. Do not conjure up
thoughts of legal warfare amongst the members, because it would be one
of the last things they would be likely to seek. Nobody seeks anything
thing unless he sees, or fancies he sees, some advantage in it; and no
sensible person appeals to the law when he thinks he can settle a thing
without it. Lord Bacon wisely advised that ‘everyone should know enough
of the law to keep out of it,’ and most people soon learn from
experience that Bacon's advice is best. But still, under present
conditions, it is sometimes wise to have recourse to the law, because we
are living in a world ruled by robbers, and law is the only weapon which
these robber rulers will permit us to use to fight our battles. But with
these pioneers the case is entirely different. Their circumstances are
just the reverse to our's. The questioner and myself, for instance, are
not likely to quarrel over the use of the air in this hall which we both
require for the purpose of respiration. He doesn't say, ‘Holdfast you're
breathing too much air, there won't be enough for me if you persist in
breathing so hard and consuming some of my share of oxygen’ (laughter).
You laugh, friends, but the illustration I have made is no more
grotesque than the one of my questioner has put to me. Why don't you
object to my consuming so much of the air, which is equally essential to
all of you as is the land? (“Because there is plenty for all.”) Not at
all; there is plenty of land for all, and apparently more than enough
for all the inhabitants that the world is ever likely to contain (hear,
hear). So you see there is some other reason why you don't growl at the
quantity of air I use. I'll tell you what it is. It's because the air
isn't monopolized as the earth is. The capitalists haven't yet found out
how to bottle it up and charge us for the use of it; they don't know how
to secure it, or they'd have sold it to us at the rate of so much per
cubic acre, and leased it to us according to law, while those who had no
money would have to die for want of breath, just as they now do for want
of land. The unfortunate occupants of the Black Hole of Calcutta would
have given all their worldly possessions to have had good pure air to
breathe there, so that their lives could have been spared; and it would
be just so with us, were the air monopolized; we would willingly pay the
monopolists' own price for the use of the air, just as we now pay his
price for the use of the land. But with our pioneers it is very
different. The land with them is as free as the air with us. It costs
nothing to use it, so no one has any incentive to monopolize it from
another who also requires to use it, because he could get nothing from
that other for the loan of it even if he wanted to. It is only because
the land has become monopolized and transformed into a marketable
commodity, that we try to secure more of it than we need. When it ceases
to have that market value, and becomes valueless in a financial sense,
we take good care not to have more than we can just use ourselves. The
Bethel community, who owned their land in common, but used it
individually, never had any dispute about the area each one should
occupy. Each member, or his family, had their own little house, and
there wasn't even a fence round it. You couldn't tell where one man's
ground ended, and another man's commenced. If you did see a little
enclosure here and there, you found it was one to keep the fowls in so
that they wouldn't destroy the crops; or it was one to protect certain
vegetable growths from different animals who roamed about and might
destroy them; or for some similar reason. But there wasn't any fence to
say which was my land and which was your's. If ever we see a fence round
some land, we know it is a sort of public notice to say ‘This land’s
mine’; but you see the land of our pioneers, like the land of the Bethel
people, is nobody's, so they don't want any fence round it to say whose
it is. And they would not quarrel over it, any more than they would need
to fence it from each other. The Bethel people were happy, contented and
prosperous; and although they had not the perfect social organization
that might be desired, their system of using the land gave every
satisfaction that could be desired, and showed to all who want to live a
noble life, where there are no such things as landed proprietors and
rack-rented tenants, that that life can only be attained when the land
is as free as the air, and no one has the right to own any of it, but
each one has the right to use just as much as he requires. Now that is
the grand lesson that Communism has taught us—that the natural resources
of nature should be absolutely free to all. That is the lesson to be
learned from its successes. But we know that all experiments in
communism have sooner or later failed; and we have to learn the reason
of its failure. Communism did good when it secured the common use of
natural wealth not produced by the efforts of human labor; but it did
harm when it secured the common use of artificial wealth produced by the
efforts of human labor. That is the rock on which communism has always
foundered and which its unfortunate wrecked crews have forsaken,
preferring to struggle in the maelstrom of capitalism. Many a good has
been spoilt owing to this one serious defect, many a brilliant
enthusiast has been turned into a disheartened pessimist through
witnessing the failure that inevitably follows such a rash denial of the
right of the worker—the right to the product of his own work. If Labor
is to rejoice in its labor, it must reap the full rewards of its labor.
It must have the whole of what it produces—nothing more, nothing less.
It must not share with the with the capitalist, as in capitalism; it
must not share with the community, as in communism. Because in every
community there are apt to be some idlers; and the only way to create
idlers is by making it possible for an idler to live—a thing he can only
do at the expense of the worker. Thus it is that in the communist
experiments, the hard-worker has had to see the non-worker enjoying the
fruits of others' toil because he did not toil himself; and so it has
invariably come to pass that the most vigorous, the most intelligent,
and the most industrious members have one after another forsaken these
communities, and only the few enthusiasts along with the laziest and
most unprincipled have been left in possession, until they eventually
came to grief. Now it is very easy to secure this private possession of
product, simultaneously with the free access to nature that necessarily
precedes it. And the doing of this is what is rightly called
‘co-operation.’ Of course, we know that what is often called
co-operation is only so in name, but is in reality stock-jobbing,
dividend hunting, or respectable usury. True co-operation precludes
dividends, profits, or interest. True co-operation is that form of
laboring where each works with the other for mutual benefit, but not for
mutual plunder; where each gets the full equivalent of what he produces;
and where each sells his surplus product for its real worth—that to say,
that he sells it for just what it costs him in labor, receiving in
exchange the equivalent in what it cost another in labor for his
commodity. That is the true individualism—it is that individualism which
exalts the individuality of the laborer to the highest possible point,
by making him a truly independent man, one living entirely by his own
labors and not living in any degree on the labors of others; it is that
individualism which makes him a real sovereign over his own
individuality, and a worthy being to associate with others, equally
elevated to the same social, economical, and moral level. It is not the
‘individualism’ that the capitalist talks and boasts about—the
individualism of the few only that rejoices in and lives upon the
suppression of the individualism of the many; that isn't individualism
at all—it's only domination. The present system isn't individualistic;
it's exploitative. We live on each other instead of each one living on
himself; and it's only those who succeed in living on plenty of others
who ever get wealthy; no man ever got enormously wealthy out of his own
efforts, but only by enslaving others and living upon them. But these
pioneers couldn't possibly do this. Each one can only get what he makes
by his own exertions, so he can't become a millionaire or a pauper; but
he would earn about twelve pounds a week, when his city brethren would
be earning only two pounds for doing the same thing and the ‘sweating’
capitalist who employs them would be getting two or three hundred pounds
a week out of his fifty or a hundred hands. And there's another thing
these pioneers can do when they get fairly started—they can commence
making their own money. I don't mean lending gold out to others and
robbing the borrowers of more than they borrowed; that’s called making
money, but it isn't anything of the kind: it's only a polite way of
legally thieving money. I mean they can commence making labor money, not
plutocrats' money—money that represents product created by labor, not
money that represents the mines that the usurpers have stolen from the
laborers by their wicked schemes of law and disorder. I mean the money
that Robert Owen used to issue, that Josia Warren used to issue, and
that Proudhon and all the other great champions of the working classes
have tried to introduce as the laborers substitute for the plutocrats'
gold. These pioneers can easily make a paper money to give to any member
who raises a certain product and deposits it with them for sale. It's a
sort of I.O.U., that the receiver gives to the producer to record his
indebtedness to the producer. This Labor I.O.U., or Labor-note as it is
called, can pass from one to another just as the plutocrat's money does
to-day; and, so far as the pioneers are concerned, it can take its
place. It's just the thing that Labor wants; it helps us to exchange our
product with each other, by giving equal value for equal value; it
dosn't cost anything to make, beyond the trifling cost of paper, ink,
and labor, of which it takes but very little to produce; it can't rob us
as gold does, because it doesn't bear interest. ‘Bearing’ interest, you
know, is the polite name for filching interest; because money hasn't the
power to reproduce its species, as animals and plants do, but it only
gains for some that which others have lost. Now I think I have shown you
the nature of the undertaking that I had resolved upon when I got
released from your jail; and I think I have said enough to show you that
it is the readiest, if not the only way, to secure justice, not alone
for ourselves, but for all our fellow-men, women and children. Before
concluding, I shall give you a number of facts and figures to show how I
have worked it all out; and to let you see that the scheme is not at all
utopian; but that, with your present means, it will enable you to amass,
step by step, all the wealth and advantages that I have described to
you, and a great deal more than I could tell you in a single lecture.”
Harry then went on to lay his facts and figures before them, showing
them every possible and likely transaction that the pioneers could
engage in, and showing them, week by week, and month by month, how their
little share capital would be spent and what returns it would give. He
vouched for the accuracy of the figures, which everyone could test for
themselves. He had consulted the various technical and industrial works
in the Melbourne Public Library, besides gleaming valuable information
from the current newspapers and many practical men both in business and
private capacities; and therefore he could speak with authority on the
matter.
When Harry had ceased speaking, he was greeted with round upon round of
applause, nearly everyone present taking part in it, although the
audience was a very mixed one, and there were many present, tempted
thither by curiosity, who felt anything but comfortable at the cutting
thrusts they received every now and then from Harry's remarks,
especially when he trod too severely on their corns of conscience and
charged them with being thieves. But somehow they seemed to recognize
that his censures, though severe, were well deserved; that his
objections were against a system and not against the individuals who
were born into that system and had hitherto been unable to change it;
and they could not help admiring his candor, his consistency, and his
evident earnestness to better the condition of every man, no matter what
his present position in society might be.
Then the chairman got up. He said he felt that the Brotherhood had not
been disappointed when they expected something really good from the
lecturer; but for himself, he found it so new a departure, so wide in
its possibilities, and so daringly radical, that he scarcely felt
himself competent to give it the minute criticism that it undoubtedly
deserved; and he thought most of the others would be likely to receive
it in the same way (hear, hear). It was now too late to ask any
criticisms upon the subject from anyone present; but if they desired it,
controversy could be carried on at the next meeting. He would now, as
promised, invite any present to assist Holdfast in his laudable
endeavor, and should formally declare the meeting closed, any who
desired to co-operate being invited to remain behind.
Harry thanked the chairman and the rest of the society for their
kindness, and immediately stepped into the body of the hall where most
of the audience continued to loiter, and he was soon in the midst of an
earnest group of men, some congratulating him, others arguing with him,
and a few execrating him and telling him it was a pity the authorities
ever released him.
“I do not blame you,” said Harry, smilingly, to the latter; “you abuse
me now because you are the creatures of the existing conditions of
society which will not let you do otherwise. Soon I will create new
conditions when you will regret what you are now saying and will do all
you can to help me.”
“Well, Harry, how are you getting on with your social salvation scheme?”
asked Wilberforce one day as the two were weighing out some corn for an
order that had just come in.
“Very well! all things considered,” replied Harry, “I don't expect to
accomplish things all at once. I only got two members, as you know, out
of that enthusiastic meeting of the Brotherhood that I addressed four
weeks ago, but have now got ten members besides yourself, and I am quite
satisfied the others will follow.”
“Yes, Harry, but if they come at that rate it'll take another eight
hundred years before you get the ten thousand members you anticipate. I
think you'll be rather too old by that time; and as for me and the other
members, we'll all be dead. I'm afraid you are too sanguine.”
“Not at all, Fred, I look at the past, and see how ideas developed, and
learn how they will develop in the future. When that great social
reformer Charles Fourier, brought out his new theories of social
reconstruction, his books were thought little of and scarcely ever read,
and he waited five years before he got a single convert! And even that
convert was one he wasn't at all proud of. And yet, forty years after,
hundreds of the leading minds of America were enthusiastic converts to
his ideas, thousands of dollars were gladly clubbed together to give
those ideas a practical test, and experiment after experiment was
conducted to carry out Fourier's ideas as best they could; and now
Fourier's writings have influenced all sociological thought, and their
author has become one of the great classic writers of Socialism. Surely
if Fourier had reason for hope when he had only one convert in five
years, I have every good reason to be sanguine when I have ten times
that many converts in one month!”
“You certainly deserve to succeed, Harry.”
“And I mean to, if it is only in my dying breath.”
“That’s the same old Harry.”
Both speakers looked up to see who had interjected the last remark.
“Hypatia!” exclaimed Harry after a moment's hesitation.
“I wonder you recognise me, Harry. Don’t you think I have changed—for
the better of course?”
“You have changed, certainly; and at first I could scarcely believe it
was you. You look so very ill. Whatever is the matter with you?”
“Oh nothing serious. Pardon me, Mr. Wilberforce, for my discourtesy in
not noticing you before. I am so much interested in my fellow sufferer
here that I almost forgot anyone else was present. I know with your
large heartedness you will make full allowances for circumstances; but
really I feel I am doing a gross injustice in even temporarily
forgetting the presence of one who, in spite of my past coldness, has
magnanimously acted as my greatest benefactor in the hour of need.”
“It’s all right, Hypatia, no self-respecting person omits to assist a
suffering friend when he can do so without injury to himself. It is the
least I can do. But who is that young woman I see waiting outside? Isn't
she waiting for you?”
“Yes, that is my fellow traveller, Rose Wilson, who was working at the
same place as I was in Sydney. She is waiting till I go out, when I have
promised to go with her to a friend's place where she intends stopping.”
“Why not invite her in? There is no need for her to wait out there.”
Hypatia instantly did as requested; and after the usual introductions
the whole party adjourned into the adjoining drawing room.
“Well,” said Fred, when they were seated, “I think Miss Stephens ought
to tell us where she has been all this time, as there has been more than
one anxious to hear after her welfare, and now that she's here we want
our curiosity satisfied.”
“I have not much to tell you, Mr. Wilberforce, unless I wish to weary
you with the dry details of a housekeeper's life. If you have no
objection, I would like to speak privately with Mr. Holdfast for a few
minutes in the next room. Perhaps Miss Wilson will give you the
information you seek and Harry can learn it some other time.”
“Certainly,” said Fred, “don't let me, or empty ceremony, stand in the
way of your conversation. If Miss Wilson can enlighten me I shall be as
pleased to hear it from her as anyone else.”
The, young lady cheerfully proceeded to impart to Fred the desired
information; and the re-united lovers withdrew.
It was a very cold wet day in June when Harry Holdfast sat in a little
office in Melbourne, busily writing and arranging an affair of unusual
importance. He was sitting at a simple deal table, with a host of
letters piled up in front of him and a few files of papers hanging up
here and there on the walls. Opposite him sat Hypatia. And at a table a
little further down the room were two elderly gentlemen and a lady in
busy conversation.
“There now, I think that is all,” said Harry, looking up at last, “it is
now six o'clock, and the men start at seven o'clock sharp. Have you
nearly finished?”
“Yes,” replied Hypatia, “I have just completed the amounts. After
deducting all the preliminary expenses, and reserving sufficient to pay
all the office rent, advertising expenses, and wages for the ensuing
three months, I find the balance left from the collective payments on
application and allotment leave a clear balance of over two thousand
pounds. The total cost of the three hundred and twenty acres of land,
and the total expense incurred in sending the hundred men with a full
supply of food utensils, implements, and their transit, all of which
have been paid, leaves a balance of £1040 in hand.”
“That is correct. I make it come the same. And now I think we had better
close up the office and go down to the station. Are you ready, Mr.
Martin?”
“Yes, we're all waiting.”
The whole party quickly took their departure for Spencer Street, and
Harry locked the door behind him.
When they reached Spencer Street Station, they found all the members of
the Social Pioneers who had been balloted for waiting to take their
departure. The day was not one to cheer the hearts of any enthusiasts
bent on seeking a happier life; for the elements seemed to be striving
to make them as uncomfortable as possible. It was now raining hard, and
the cold wind that was blowing made one feel miserable and loth almost
to quit the wicked city with all its sins, but with its habitations so
firmly secured against the gale. However, once in the train, our
pioneers seemed to partially forget the wars of man or the elements, for
most of them were busily occupied in speculating on their prospects, and
wondering whether the Lake Boga settlement was likely to be the success
they all hoped. Besides the private possessions that the pioneers were
taking with them, in the shape of clocks, clothing and many other little
domestic comforts, the directors of the Social Pioneers had sent up
fifty new tents, material to build houses, thousands of pounds of
provisions which would keep them well fed for a month, three good
colonial ovens, plenty of kitchen and other utensils, a good supply of
axes, spades and other implements, a careful assortment of garden seed
that could he planted as soon as the ground was prepared, ten
healthy-looking cows, and a few dogs. Such a collection was itself
enough to make the plucky band feel some confidence in the undertaking,
and the cheerful faces of the many earnest women and men who had come to
see them off was just the best thing to increase that confidence.
It was night by the time the party reached their destination; and if
their departure was cheerless, their arrival was still more so. But men
used to ‘roughing it’, do not get appalled at trifles; and they thought
little of the inconvenience of stopping at the station for the night,
where they managed to keep off the cold by the assistance of the tents
they had with them, for although the weather was bitterly sharp there
had been no rain there, and they did not find it so very uncomfortable
as they might have done. At daybreak, Mr. Martin conducted them to one
of the adjacent farms, where they found drays waiting in readiness for
them to take their luggage to their own farm.
The men were not long in reaching their destination; and as the morning
was a fine one they had a good opportunity to look around them and
inspect their future home. The place they had chosen was very nicely
situated only a short distance from the shore of the lake, and the
position was one admirably adapted for the object they had in view.
Certainly the place was not seen in its prettiest aspects; the recent
oppressive summer had made the place wear a very desolate look, and
there were not many evidences of vegetable life about. There were a few
farms here and there, looking a little brighter than the great waste
around them; but even they did not seem to receive the careful attention
they might have had bestowed upon them, for they were not particularly
well cultivated, but had evidently suffered their share of the parching
dryness of an Australian summer, and looked even then as if they could
advantageously do with a goodly supply of the clear water that lay at
such a little distance from them. There was not even a decent forest to
relieve the dead monotony of the scene, but only here and there a little
timber struggling to survive the destructive attacks of man and nature's
hot blasts. Now and then an aboriginal or two could be observed, the
last remnants of a dying race, fast hastening to obliteration together
with the crumbling civilization that had strangled it and was now
strangling itself. Hares and rabbits were there in abundance, as many a
farmer knew to his sorrow; and the wood ducks were so plentiful that the
settlers found them a constant source of destruction to their crops.
Wild fowl were there in immense numbers forming easy sport for the
settlers' rifles; and the black ducks, teals and wild geese sported
themselves over the quiet scene in crowds quite astounding to city eyes.
And every now and then the settlers would catch sight of some of the
bronze-winged pigeons which are so plentiful in the district. But it was
the soil itself, the sandy chocolate soil beneath their feet, that
appealed strongest to the new visitors. It was the first little spot of
land that they—the rescued, expropriated proletaire—had ever been able
to own. No, not to own; but to use. Ah, how that thought did delight
them! How these novices did talk over the merits of this wondrous soil,
as though they had been agricultural experts since their mothers weaned
them. How fondly their eyes looked at the good kind earth that was to
bring forth fruit for the starving wives and babies they had left behind
them; and all without paying perpetual tribute to another. Then they
would lift their eyes and turn them over towards the adjacent farms, and
think of the woes and troubles of the poor farmer yonder who had nothing
before him but the black prospect of striving against adversity to pay
his hard-earned rents for ever and ever, until kind death came to
relieve him of the cruel burden!
After enjoying a hearty meal from the simple but plentiful stores of
food that the directors had despatched along with them, the pioneers set
to work in real earnest to rig up the tents. Mr. Martin was an old hand
at this sort of thing, having in his young days been mixed in every
socialistic experiment that he ever could possibly wriggle into; and he
gave the little band some valuable suggestions concerning the best sites
to pitch their tents, and other details of information that were very
useful to them. They were not long in unanimously and spontaneously
recognizing him as their leader; for men who work together will all find
a leader, and those they select of their own accord and mutual
experience always give more satisfaction and better results than the
inexperienced busybodies that external authority imposes upon men when
it usurps the right to meddle over them. The society had wisely arranged
to leave the men to co-operate as suited them best, giving them only
clear particulars of the performances it expected from them in equitable
return for the assistance it gave them. After their canvas habitations
were completed they busied themselves storing away the different
commodities they had brought with them. All the food stuffs were
carefully placed together, so as to be easily guarded against the
attacks of the various quadrupeds and insects who would only have too
readily appropriated it had the opportunity occurred. Then each tent had
a share allotted of the little tin plates, pannikins, knives and forks,
cooking utensils, and other useful articles that had been sent up; the
colonial ovens were fitted up ready for the mid-day meal; and all the
tools and garden implements were carefully deposited in a secure and dry
place, except those they wanted for immediate use. One of the party was
deputed to watch after the cows which were permitted to graze where they
chose.
By the time night set in the little band were fairly tired out with the
excitement and toil of the day; and although some of them lit their
candles and tried to amuse themselves with reading and conversation, the
majority soon sought their slumbers.
Old Martin did not retire early with the others. He had too long been
accustomed to the foolish habit of tobacco smoking to wish to break it
off at his age, and so he stole into one of the tents where two or three
others were enjoying themselves conversing on the only topic, of course,
that was occupying all minds—that of the new village settlement scheme
upon which they had all embarked.
“Well, Thompson,” said he, addressing one of the men, “how do you like
your first day's experience?”
“Oh, it'll be time to talk about that when we have been here a little
longer. We haven't really started yet.”
“Very true; it is rather soon to ask you. But I suppose you already
begin to feel as if you are breathing a very different air and enjoying
far pleasanter associations than you can find in the hum and worry of
city life?”
“Yes, I think anything is preferable to city life, even city death is
better that it. But talking about the city, do you know how our comrades
we have just left behind have been getting on lately?”
“We were just talking about Holdfast raising the necessary funds. Is it
true that Sir Felix Slymer has expressed an interest in the undertaking,
and thus caused the public to support it?”
“Yes, it is well known that Slymer did speak approvingly before the
Bankers' Institute; and although his statements were not reported in the
papers it got out somehow, and that seems to have given it a bit of a
lift. For a long while Holdfast got very little encouragement, but when
he had got several hundreds to join it, it got to be looked upon with
more favour by the public; and although the papers tried to boycott it
as much as possible, just as they are doing now, he wasn't long getting
the whole of the five thousand shares taken up. Several other
influential persons besides Slymer, are believed to be interested in the
matter, although they are all keeping very quiet.”
“Waiting to see which way the cat jumps, I suppose,” remarked one.
“No,” replied Martin, “I don't think it is exactly that in all cases.
Holdfast thinks that Slymer is quietly encouraging it to keep the
discontented a bit quiet and to make it appear to the working classes
that he sympathizes with their efforts; and I think he is not far out. I
believe many others give it an occasional word of half-hearted praise
for a similar reason. Of course, there are certain to be many standing
out from a thing until they see it has become a success.”
“Has Holdfast had any definite communication from Slymer?”
“Don't ask me too much. You will hear something to surprise you shortly;
but it would be a breach of confidence for me to tell you everything. I
suppose you know that Holdfast wrote to a number of influential
functionaries when he first tried to float his scheme, but got little
encouragement from them. One noble Supreme Court judge, to whom he
wrote, replied respectfully that he could not have anything to do with
it, because he couldn't see how it could be successful as it didn't
award dividends to the shareholders, and if a man wanted to get any good
out of it he would have to work in it; another brilliant genius, with an
‘M.A.’ after his name, said it couldn't succeed unless the whole capital
were subscribed by one or more wealthy philanthropists and bestowed on
the society in the form of a charity; then another gentleman, a
clergyman, was so busy thinking of going to England that he hadn't time
to consider it, but would simply say he approved of it if it was a good
thing; several others wrote in somewhat similar strains. But there was
one reply, however, that Harry treasured above all the others, and it
came from a clergyman who was well known as a hard worker in many
philanthropic schemes. As you might like to hear it, I will read it to
you from the copy I have with me:—
Mr, Harry Holdfast,
Dear Sir,—I have received your interesting prospectus, and beg to thank
you for it, and for the honor which you do me in asking me to become a
promoter. I feel, however, that I cannot accede to your request. The
calls on my time and strength are about as many as I can answer, and an
important scheme such as that which you are launching, should have, at
its initiation, men who have the time and the ability to go into it
thoroughly and watch over it day and night.
Wishing you every success in your effort to pioneer us out of chaos,
Yours faithfully,
Charles Oakes.
That was the only favorable reply that Harry received, out of a
community that pretended it wanted to assist in getting out of the
existing injustices. But fortunately he wasn't disheartened, with the
good result that we are here to-night as witnesses of the first success
of his determined endeavors.”
“I hope we will help him to achieve that success. We might as well die
at once as go back to Melbourne.”
“Oh, don't talk about going back already,” said another, we are hardly
here yet.”
The party were now pretty well enveloped in the clouds of tobacco smoke,
and commenced to wander into dream-land, having little to say after
this. It is one of the peculiar privileges of this habit to dull a man's
mental activity. Your smoker will often sit for hours in a state of
silence that would drive a non-smoker almost mad with impatient mental
agony. It was not until their pipes had exhausted their supply of
tobacco that Martin and the others lay down to sleep.
Early the next morning, some of the Pioneers went down to the lake for a
bathe, while others took down the lines they had brought with them and
tried to catch some fish for their breakfast. In this they were not
unsuccessful. The Lake Boga is an overflow from the Murray, and the
party had their labors well rewarded by capturing some splendid Murray
cod, besides a few bream and cat-fish and several other fresh water
fishes. These they took home with them and shared them amongst the other
members who desired them. After breakfast the whole party turned to
their day’s labors. They had managed to erect all the tents the day
before, but they had yet to erect the houses for their permanent
dwellings as the lady folks would be coming up in four weeks, and there
was no time to lose; besides that, the wintry weather was just upon
them, and if they did not hasten on with their work the rains might
seriously hinder their operations.
It was soon evident that the society had made a good selection in the
first 100 Pioneers they had sent up, they being well adapted for their
particular work. Although they had been selected by ballot from all
members of the society who had chosen to submit their names for the
purpose, the sound advice of the directors for only practical men to
apply at this stage was so well respected that the names submitted were
those of men in nearly every case thoroughly fitted for the task. They
were not long setting about building the houses after completing all the
necessary preparations. These cottages were constructed of Egyptian
bricks, made of sun-dried clay; the roofs were of corrugated iron which
they had brought with them in the train along with the windows, the
doors, and the floorings. These habitations were excellent ones for the
settlers to live in and cost scarcely anything for construction. If
properly constructed they could stand for twenty years and then be as
good as ever. And yet their whole cost in hard cash was no more than it
would cost to rent a small cottage in the city for only six months; for
the material of each only cost them fifteen pounds; and as they had
nearly all their time to devote to the purpose they could give all the
necessary labor to their construction without making any sacrifice.
The other members of the party devoted their time to sundry other
occupations, such as apportioning parts of the ground for different
industries, digging the ground and preparing it for the garden seed they
had with them, preparing the victuals, doing a little fencing here and
there, collecting fuel, and many other little jobs that came to their
hand.
Day after day the men proceeded with their work with a will that did
them credit, and they soon had the pleasure of seeing the results of
their toil in the altered appearance of the place. The ground already
began to look more cheerful than when they had first seen it; and the
cottages were fast approaching completion. It was well they had hastened
on with their building, for they had not been at it more than a week
before the weather began to get showery and frequently hindered their
work, and towards the close of the month it became very stormy, and it
was with great difficulty that the work was carried on. However by the
beginning of July they had finished forty of these humble structures,
and were ready to receive their families into their new made homes.
Exactly a month after their arrival at the Lake Boga railway station the
settlers were back again at the same spot, not waiting this time to
penetrate a strange land but to welcome visitors to that now familiar
land. They were at the station long before the needful hour—anxious
people generally manage to get too early in their efforts to appease
their anxiety—and they had a full two hours to wait. The two hours
seemed like ten hours; and when the train at last sped into the station
one would almost think it was the first sight of civilization they had
had for years, so eager were they to greet its occupants. The the train
stopped, and there was the usual meeting that need not be described. It
is hardly necessary to say that there was no bowing and scraping, stiff
introductions, and affected smiles that makes one feel as if he is in an
ice-bath. The manners of the ‘upper crust’ have fortunately not been
adopted by the more solid human pie beneath; and working men and women
are more human and emotional than the starched and painted consumptive
marionettes that society sticks up in high places for common people to
laugh at.
When the women had all got fairly out of the station, they lost no time
in assisting to pack their different treasures into the six drays which
had been sent up with them, while the men harnessed the horses, and put
all the crockery and utensils that they could into the drays. There were
about thirty children, all of whom they managed to carefully stow away
on the drays along with a few of the women, most of whom preferred,
however, to walk along in conversation with their male relatives and
friends, as the distance they had to traverse was not very great. Forty
more cows had been sent up with them, and they helped form part of the
procession.
On arriving at the houses, all the men who could be spared instantly set
to work to put the different things into them. They had managed to bring
a few bedsteads and bedding with them from the station, and these were
soon made ready, and the children, who were worn out with fatigue after
so long travelling, were very soon soundly sleeping in them. As soon as
the drays were emptied, they returned to the station to bring up the
remainder of the beds, which were soon got in readiness for the women
who were all sleeping soundly in them before the night was much
advanced, every separate family occupying one house, while the single
women slept together in groups of six to each house, and the unmarried
men occupied the remaining houses and the tents.
Next day the men went down to the station and brought up the household
furniture, the forty colonial ovens, a single-furrow plough, two
harrows, two scarifiers, a steam plough, and the balance of the live
stock consisting of five hundred fowls, and forty hives of bees. The
steam plough had been purchased by the society at a cost of £700 to save
labor on the part of the pioneers, a deposit having been paid on it,
with the understanding that it became their's if the balance with
current interest were paid within two years.
There were now two hundred men and women, besides the children, on the
land, and already the place commenced to wear a busy aspect. They were
not long setting to work. The men started sowing sixty acres with wheat;
another sixty acres they planted with vines, peaches, apricots, figs,
and other fruits, besides planting various kinds of vegetables in
between the fruit trees so as to utilize the ground while waiting for
the fruit to arrive at maturity; they also planted twenty acres with
tomatoes. The women attended to the household duties, besides
cultivating flower gardens around the cottages, attending the poultry
and the cattle and looking after the bees, the men giving them
occasional assistance. Although the weather continued to be very
boisterous and heavy rains were falling most of the time, they managed
to get on very well with their work. Next month the directors sent them
up a first-class incubator, capable of hatching 200 eggs, and
twenty-five superior bee-hives; besides another month's provisions,
which were regularly forwarded to them so that they should not need to
depend on the product of their own land for some considerable time to
come. They, in their turn, managed to send a number of eggs to
Melbourne, where the directors disposed of them through their own
office, getting a fair price for them and yet selling them considerably
under current rates, as there were no middlemen to come between them and
the public, and thus increase the prices to the consumers. A number of
the remaining eggs, beyond what they required for their own consumption,
they reserved for setting or incubation. By the beginning of October the
society had a good sum of money still in hand. The directors then sent
up an excellent cream separator and a large churn capable of being
worked by steam; they also sent up a number of pigs and material to
build twenty more houses similar to the ones they had already
constructed. The settlers were now enabled to send their butter to
market as well as their usual supply of eggs and the sixty acres of
vegetable crop. The society then bought another 320 acres of land,
adjoining the previous allotment, it having been arranged with the
vendors on purchasing the first allotment that any time within the next
five years they could purchase any part of the adjoining 10,000 acres at
the price already paid for the first lot, namely £3 per acre. The men
immediately set about shifting their tents into the new tract of land,
and erecting the twenty houses upon it for the accommodation of the next
batch of settlers. As soon as they were ready, the directors sent up a
hundred men and women, fully provided as the others had been; and they
also sent up a harvester with them, as the grain was now ripe for
preparing for market. The weather was now delightful, and the Pioneers
worked with a will, some gathering in the harvest, others cutting
channels for the irrigation of their lands, a large area of which they
intended to devote to intense culture, and others attending to the area
they had reserved for grazing. Then the much detested rate collector
called round, demanding the shire rates and water rates, but that didn't
trouble them much. City slaves can't pay their rates without great
difficulty; but to free workers on a fruitful soil it becomes a matter
of little concern. The society paid the rates, which amounted to some
nine or ten pounds, out of the capital, and debited it to all of the
members, but as that averaged less than a half-penny each for the six
months nobody minded it.
With the New Year, the directors bought another 320 acres of land and
sent a hundred more persons, for whom cottages had already been
constructed, and who took up the usual supply of provisions, &c. By
March the channels had been completed, and the directors sent up a
pumping plant for the irrigation works at a cost of £500. They also
constructed a large reservoir in one of the main irrigation channels;
this was used as a public bath as the waters of the lake were used for
drinking purposes and could not be polluted. In the meantime the
productivity from the various seeds and live stocks had enormously
increased. The young chickens that had first come to bless the attentive
care of the settlers were now full grown fowls, and were sent to market
in large numbers, realizing a handsome sum; and the Pioneers could
reserve as many as ever they wanted for their own use without the
directors requiring to purchase any more for future batches of settlers.
In the same way the bees and other live stock, the grain, and even the
flowers, vied with each other in accumulating their numbers for the
settlers' benefit, as though they were intent on disproving the old
capitalistic Malthusian fiction that man's offspring tended to increase
faster than man's food; and they proved, to the satisfaction of the
pioneers, that man's food tended to outstrip man in reproducing its
species, and not only tended to do so, but actually did so.
On the first day of June, exactly twelve months since the first 100 men
had set foot on Lake Boga, there was great glee at the settlement. They
had just completed their public hall, which had cost them £500 for
building material alone. It was a large roomy structure, built partly of
wood and partly of the sun-dried bricks like those employed in
constructing the cottages. The main entrance was into a wide-passage, on
the walls of which were hung a number of choice oleographs and some
pictures the settlers had brought with them in the shape of water and
oil color paintings. This passage was known as the picture gallery. The
first door on the right led into a large room fitted up with shelves all
round the walls and on the two uprights in the centre of the room. There
were a few large tables here and there and a number of chairs. On the
shelves were a variety of cheap books on all subjects, mostly however
those of an industrial or economic nature; these, too, were partly lent
by the settlers, but the majority were supplied by the society.
Immediately behind the public library, as this room was called, there
was a room set apart for a printing office, where it was intended to
erect an extensive printing plant and to issue a newspaper for the
benefit of the settlers, as well as to educate the outside public in the
methods and progress of the society. On the opposite side of the
passage, the first door led into a convenient office, which was known as
the mutual bank. It was here that the members were to receive their
labor notes in exchange for their commodities, when the members became
independent of the society's assistance and were able to produce
entirely for themselves; and it was here that all the financial affairs
of the society were regulated and the money stored, because several of
them had a little money with them which was now of no use, but they
wished to save it as it might be of service to them at some future time
in their dealings with the unfortunate outside world. Behind the bank
was a very large room, which was specially fitted up for use as a
general store, and was known as the co-operative store; it was here that
members could deposit their product for the society to forward to
Melbourne or elsewhere for disposal. At the very extreme end of the
passage was a large double door, which led into the lecture hall. This
lecture hall was the largest room in the whole building, extending the
whole length from side to side and being fairly wide in proportion;
there were doors at each end and side to afford facility for egress in
case of fire; and it was well fitted up with forms, and a stage at one
end where theatricals could if necessary be carried on. This room was
intended chiefly as a meeting place where the members of the community
could meet together to discuss and arrange their affairs; on Sundays it
was set apart for those who desired to hold religious services; on
Wednesdays, for socialistic or free thought lectures and debates; and on
other days it was open to any members who desired to hold meetings on
any subject of interest to the community. The inaugural ceremony was a
very simple one and soon performed. It was decided to name the little
settlement, which up to the present had done without one, by a word
which all treasured perhaps above any other—‘Freedom’; and the hall was
named The Hall of Freedom.
There were now six hundred persons on the sixteen hundred acres of land,
with two hundred and twenty cottages and animal and vegetable life in
abundance, all of which had been fully paid for except the steam plough
upon which the balance of their payment was not yet due. Even many of
their foes admitted that was good work to be accomplished in one year by
people who had started together comparatively penniless. But their
brightest days were yet in store.
Another year had passed over the settlers heads. During that time their
little community had enormously increased. Two thousand of them were
already settled on the land, of which they had over 4,000 acres, which
was more than two acres to each individual, being more than double the
area that the people of Japan possess, where 34 million people are
supported in comparative comfort on 33 million acres; the directors
considered that over two acres per individual would be ample, as every
acre was being used, and none held in idleness for speculative purposes.
They had erected 500 cottages; their live stock amounted to 500 head of
cattle, 60 draught horses, a number of saddle horses that some of the
selectors had brought up on their private account, 30,000 fowls, a
quantity of turkeys, besides a few dogs, goats, and other domestic
animals, and a large number of bees. Their productivity was already
becoming somewhat important. They were exporting monthly £600 worth of
eggs, £350 worth of butter, and vegetable products of all kinds to the
extent of over £2,000. And now the directors purchased 640 acres on the
banks of the Murray River, about nine miles from the former site. This
they settled in the same way as they had done at the Freedom community.
The new settlement, which was called Equity, was opened with a batch of
two hundred settlers, for whom fifty cottages had been built, and who
took with them the usual stock of implements, utensils, seed, live
stock, and provisions. This month they paid the balance of £690 due on
the steam plough and erected a large steam factory at Freedom, at a cost
of £1,000. In this factory was a large churn capable of making 410lbs.
of butter in about five minutes, the various requirements for canning
and preserving fruits, besides different machinery that supplied power
for many industries of the settlers and saved their labor.
The directors continued to extend and develop both of the settlements by
constantly purchasing fresh land, and sending more members upon it,
until at last the number of Pioneers remaining in Melbourne was very
small indeed, and the day was fast approaching when that unfortunate
city would see them no more. It was now thirty-five months since the
first pioneers had arrived at Lake Boga, leaving 4,900 comrades behind
them. The directors had started the month with £2,000 in hand, and the
settlers had sent down their usual monthly supply of 250,000 fowls,
30,000lbs. of butter, 1,000 tons of vegetables and fruits, besides a
large supply of preserves and sundry products from the two settlements.
These, after deducting all expenses, had realized £13,000; and the
monthly call from the 500 Pioneers had amounted to a modest £62, making
a grand total of £15,062 in the hands of the directors. With this they
sent up the remaining members, on the first day of the following month
of June at a total cost of £12,000. Thus the Social Pioneers had, in
exactly three years, settled the whole of their 5,000 members on 10,600
acres of land, upon which they had erected 1,250 cottages besides their
public hall and factories; they had cultivated and irrigated those lands
by means of the best labor saving machinery; and, besides their 1,200
head of cattle, they had their pretty little colonies literally packed
with live stock and vegetation capable of sustaining in comfort every
one of them and thousands more besides. And yet the total capital paid
up by all the members was only £17,746!
Now that all the members were settled, the society held a general
meeting of its members at the Hall of Freedom, when the whole wealth of
the community was calculated and the members were formally freed of
their dependance upon its direction, and their accumulated wealth
individualized. This was very simple. The 10,600 acres of land, which
under the property system of other towns, would have been estimated at
about £4,000,000 was utterly valueless in a mercantile sense, owing to
the society's Constitution making it not a saleable commodity; so it was
left entirely out of account in their calculations. All the cottages,
factories, machinery, irrigating works, agricultural implements, live
stock, fruit trees, vegetable products, besides the steam plough, public
hall, &c., were carefully valued—everything movable, in fact, except the
personal belongings that the settlers had brought with them, with the
result that the aggregate wealth was estimated at £500,000. This
equalled £100 to each individual; and the society accordingly issued
labor notes to the full amount, giving each individual £100 worth of
them, with which he could then, or at any other time, purchase from the
directors the equivalent from any of the wealth in the possession of the
society.
These notes were very simply arranged so as to fit in with the
prevailing outside system, and be easy of adoption by the Pioneers. The
£1 labor note was made the standard so as to fit in with the £1 in
outside sterling currency which it equalled in purchasing power,
although it was not professedly redeemable in coin, but could readily he
exchanged for it when anyone desired it. On the basis of this £1 the
decimal system was adopted. The lowest denomination was a cent (equal to
about 1/4d), 10 cents made a mark (equal to about 21/2d.), 10 marks made
an hour (which was the average hourly value of labor or product in the
communities, and which equalled 2s.), and ten hours made a pound. Each
one selected what he desired to purchase with his money, some retaining
the balance in their own possession and a number depositing it in the
mutual bank.
The subsequent proceedings were very brief. Most of the pioneers formed
themselves into a co-operative body, appointing several of the original
directors to some of the principle offices in it. Others formed
themselves into a communist group or two and “pooled” their little
possessions into one common fund. And a few chose to “paddle their own
canoe” alone, settling down to a private life without enduring the
worries and cares of any organization whatever.
“And now,” said old Martin, when these matters were all definitely
arranged, “I want to keep my faith with you, and tell you something
about Felix Slymer. He promised our friend Holdfast before these
communities were started, or the society fully formed, that when he got
the whole five thousand members settled on the land he would give them a
free grant of 10,000 acres of his magnificent estate at Healesville.”
This announcement was received with uproarious applause.
“That is what I promised to tell you,” continued Martin, “but now I have
something better still to reveal. It is a letter that Sir Felix has just
sent to our veteran, and of which he has sent a copy for me to read to
you at this meeting:—
Dear Holdfast,
I have long been a critic of your actions, and I am sorry to say an
opponent to them. But, although I hesitate to confess it, I now proclaim
myself one of your earnest disciples. I cannot help feeling ashamed of
myself when I think how I have injured you and yours; but I know you are
so large-hearted you will forgive me, especially as I shall try to make
amends. When I offered you the 10,000 acres of land at Healesville, I
did not anticipate giving it, because I did not think it possible for
you to succeed in carrying out your enterprise. Since then, I have seen
you do so; and I have now lived as a resident member for over twelve
months at your pretty village of Freedom, which I would not leave, with
its smiling farms and cheerful inhabitants, for all the wealth in the
world. I intend to stop here. You have made a changed man of me, and I
hasten to confess that change in a practical manner. I therefore enclose
deeds of all my valuable estates throughout the colony, transferring
them gratuitously to the Social Pioneers, to use for the benefit of
humanity in accordance with their system that has worked here with such
admirable results. And I only reserve to myself £100,000 in cash, with
which I shall erect a comfortable house at Freedom and try to live in
comfort for the remainder of my days. I shall give you the balance of my
possessions, except my title, which I shall retain to please my ambition
and also on the grounds of expediency, and sign myself,
Your earnest well wisher,
Sir Felix Slymer.
When Martin had finished reading the letter, the whole meeting gave Sir
Felix Slymer three hearty cheers, and after a little pleasant
speechifying, the liberal donor, who was present in person, suitably
responded, and the happy people then returned to their homes.
The director's, on receiving Slymer's donation, instantly started to
operate with it. They erected factories of all kinds on the various
allotments, sent immense herds of sheep to some of the new settlements,
dispatched to the settlements all the people they could induce to join,
and soon made the colony of Victoria a real hive of industry.
The effect of the new system on the settlers was beginning to be
observed in their healthy color, erect forms, and genial natures. Their
sympathy for each other was equally remarkable: when one of the Pioneers
had his little home burned down, hundreds of the neighbors instantly
assisted to gratuitously erect and furnish a new one for him and his
family. They scarcely ever drank spirits; and one enterprising genius,
who joined the society and opened a hotel in Equity, was glad to turn it
into a temperance boarding house to make it pay. Their profusion of
fruit, grain, nuts, and vegetables, so weaned them from the eating of
meat, that their health got better and better; and a large number of
them became strict vegetarians, and soon enjoyed the superiority in body
and mind which that simple diet always bestows upon the fortunate
individuals who intelligently embrace it.
The Social Pioneers now increased their share capital indefinitely, and
hundreds of thousands joined them to enjoy their many advantages.
Mortgaged estates were bought up everywhere, thus benefiting both the
mortgagor and the Society. They bought tracts of land in all parts of
the colony—in country, suburb, and city—and immediately employed their
members upon it. Branches were opened in the adjoining colonies, and the
lands there treated in a similar manner. The movement soon spread to
England, Europe, America, Africa, and even Asia; and the workers of all
countries soon began to forget they had ever been divided into nations,
for they were all becoming Social Pioneers, and realized they were all
common brothers in humanity. In Melbourne and Sydney, the Chinese, and
other unfortunate “sweated” foreigners, found it necessary to join the
new organization, against whose cheap production they were unable to
compete; and the Kanakas in Queensland gladly joined hands with their
white brethren, whom the cruel capitalists had imported them to injure.
The effect on the outside community was now marvellous. The unemployed
disappeared from the city, as they became absorbed in the new
enterprize. Wages rose everywhere, because labor was everyday becoming
scarcer, and employers had increased difficulty in getting men to work
for them. Those who did get work demanded better pay than hitherto, and
it was readily granted; they worked with renewed vigor, and pleased both
the employers and themselves. The increasing demand for labor saving
machinery, by the different groups of Social Pioneers, became so
enormous, that the prices went down considerably owing to the increased
sales, and the purchasing power of the workers' larger earnings were
thus considerably increased. The universal desire to remove the
restrictive tariffs on imports was met by a ready response, and such
excellent labor saving machinery was imported so cheaply that the
Victorian people soon began to almost monopolize the leading markets of
the world by the cheapening of their commodities, for which, too, the
highest wages on earth were paid. Employer after employer joined the new
organization as he realized the advantages afforded him in abolished
rents, decreased cost of production, an exit from financial
embarrassments, and a steady market for his goods. Rents fell wherever
the Social Pioneers bought up lands, because everywhere the adjoining
tenants joined the Society and shifted on to the freed land alongside,
and the vacated dwellings could find no new tenants. Empty houses became
so common, and so few people wanted to buy them that the Society got
them for a trifling sum, even in the heart of the city. Rents were
getting equalized in city and country, and were fast tending towards
zero. The increasing reduction of rents and cheapening of commodities so
increased the purchasing power of the laborers' wages that they
commenced beautifying their homes and enjoying the best of luxuries;
while hotel-keeper after hotel keeper had to close up his business,
because the people were no longer miserable and poverty-stricken enough
to drown their sorrows in beastly intoxicants; and even the tobacconists
found a deal of their income now seeking other channels. Everywhere the
free competition of the equitably dealing Social Pioneers was fast
driving out the plundering system of capitalism; and all classes of the
community were hastening to participate in the new movement.
Harry Holdfast had intended to go to Freedom along with the last batch
of the first five thousand settlers, but his health had not permitted
him. The terrible strain, which the carrying out of his scheme had been
upon his strength, was more than he could endure; and at last he broke
down. During his fifteen year's confinement in prison he had contracted
a serious malady, which was now assuming such alarming symptoms that his
best friends were losing hopes of his recovery. His affectionate lover
was always by his side, cheering him with her kind and intellectual
remarks; but she, too, was losing all hopes of seeing him restored to
health and friends.
“I am afraid my last day is nigh,” said he one day, as he moaned in
agony on his bed and only brought out each word with difficulty and
considerable pain and exhaustion.
At his bedside were Wilberforce, Miss Wilson, and Hypatia, with
sorrowful looks that too well betrayed their fears for the sufferer.
“I hope not,” Harry, said Hypatia; “it seems sad that you should be lost
to the world just when you have accomplished your grand work, and have
not even seen with your own eyes the mighty results of your endeavors.
But I am afraid, Harry, you are right. I would not deceive you by giving
you false hopes.”
“I know you would not, Hypatia. Honest men and women never deceive each
other.”
The doctors who had been in attendance on the poor fellow had told
Hypatia that they did not think he could live many more hours, as he had
allowed the disease to get such a firm hold of him that it had got
totally beyond their power to cure. They had telegraphed for a young
Baunscheidtist healer, who was an intimate friend of Harry's, but he had
not arrived.
Presently the patient opened his wearied eyes and attempted to speak
again.
“Dear friends,” said he, speaking with the greatest difficulty, and
pausing every now and then to regain his breath, “if I die, take a last
message from me to the poor emancipated proletaire of Freedom and
Equity. Tell them I hoped to see them and shake hands with them. Aye,
tell them if I could only see those happy lands of their's, I would
willingly meet my death afterwards. But, oh I would like to see them
first! Tell them, my pleasure at their happiness is more than my weak
brain can stand. The cruel tortures of my persecutors did not affect me;
but the thought of these poor starving men and women being made happy
fills me with emotions that nearly choke me. I am afraid——.” Here the
poor fellow completely broke down, sobbing like a child.
After a little time, he regained his composure.
“Tell them all,” he continued, “that if I die, I die with the conviction
that my life has not been useless; and that its end was all happiness.
Tell those who have maligned and injured me, that I forgive them and
love them; for I know they were poor fellow mortals like myself and
could not help what they did. Tell Slymer I thank him for his kind
donation, and I rejoice to see that one of his intelligence has been
rescued from the ferocious system that had made him traitor to his
fellow-men; and tell him I am proud to think that through my small
efforts he is now helping the Pioneers in their glorious crusade against
injustice. And, Hypatia, come nearer a minute. Hypatia are you there?”
“Yes, Fred, I am here,” she answered softly, “what do you want to tell
me?”
The lips of the sick man were moving, as though he wanted to speak; but
he made no sound. They both strained their ears and leaned over him to
catch the last words of love to his devoted girl. But still they heard
nothing. Presently his lips ceased to move, and a happy smile stole over
his face.
Harry Holdfast was dead.
A train reached Lake Boga station carrying a body of mourners and a
coffin. In that coffin was the corpse of Harry Holdfast, whose friends
had brought him to Freedom that the remains of the veteran emancipator
might be humbly interred in the spot he had consecrated by his noble
efforts. Amongst the mourners was Hypatia Stephens. She got out with the
others, and entered one of the vehicles in the sad procession. But she
did not seem to see anything. When she reached Freedom, she was like a
simple child, and her friends had to lead her from the conveyance. She
seemed suddenly to have lost her reason. Then she asked if she could
retire into private communion with herself for a few moments. The
request of the afflicted woman was readily complied with; and the
funeral proceedings were suspended while she was escorted into one of
the cottages near by and her re-appearance waited for. Half-an-hour
elapsed, but still she did not appear. At last, two of the women went
into the room to see if any harm had befallen her. She was not there;
but a newly written letter was upon the table beside the inkstand. They
took it up and read it. It was addressed to “Miss Wilson, care of F.
Wilberforce, Melbourne,” and ran as follows:—
Dear Alice,
I have no one to console with, no one to confide in. You are not here.
My best friend, Harry, is gone. I find myself in a strange land amongst
strange people. I cannot bear it any longer. I know they are good people
and would love me and be kind to me, but the one I want is not amongst
them. Poor sister, how often I have thought of you, and recalled the
troubles you had when we worked together in Sydney trying to earn a
crust of bread. And how often I have thought of your struggle trying to
earn that crust, and the misery and suffering it caused you. I know
society maligned you. I know how, when it had degraded you and nearly
maddened you, it turned round and spat upon you and called you its
prostitute. But, Alice, I think you no prostitute. I think you a martyr.
Oh, how I wish every woman were as noble and independent as you, poor
girl! I often wonder how it is that I did not sell my pleasures to
lascivious hypocrites as you have had to do, my poor sister. Was it
because I had not the courage? Or was it that I loved Harry too well to
let the pangs of hunger banish my virtuous regard for him? Perhaps it
was both causes combined. However, he is dead now. My life's hope is no
more. The cruel world is black and cheerless. It has at last broken my
poor weak heart; and I feel the time has come when I must bid you all
good-bye. Remember me to your good friend and future husband, Fred
Wilberforce, and tell him I once again thank him for his many kindnesses
to Harry and me. Give my love to every Social Pioneer and all who are
working for the truer humanity. And tell them my last hopes are with
them and with their glorious cause. And take the last farewell wishes
from
Your loving sister in misfortune,
Hypatia.
When the women had read the letter, they hastened into the next room.
There they saw the poor broken-hearted girl lying on the rough couch.
They leaned over her, and felt her to make sure she still lived. But
they felt the cold clay,
Hypatia was dead!
Just as the gardener plucks the choicest flowers and leaves the others
to bloom without them, so Nature takes from us Her choicest flowers and
leaves us to mourn their loss. Our brightest hopes leave us just as
success seems sure. Our friends forsake us just as we learn to love
them. Our martyrs sacrifice their lives unto us; and then, when it is
too late, we regret them, and build our prosperity on their misery.
Harry Holdfast and his friends had sacrificed themselves for humanity.
They had consecrated their lives to the martyr's cause of Freedom.
The Workers were at last emancipated!