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Title: Revolutionary Melbourne Author: Freedom Press, Anonymous Date: June, 1889 Language: en Topics: Freedom Press, Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Socialism Source: Freedom: A Journal of Anarchist Socialism, Vol. 3, No. 31, online source http://www.revoltlib.com/?id=3118, retrieved on May 1, 2020. Notes: Freedom Press, London
The Australian Continent is fifty-eight times the size of England, but
population is only one-eighth*of ours. In other words if Australia its
was as densely peopled as England it would contain a population as great
as that of the entire world at the present time. And we have it on the
authority of many scientific men, among whom may be mentioned Alfred
Russell Wallace. that England could supply all the wants not only of its
present number of inhabitants but of very many more. So that' it is
perfectly safe to assume that Australia is a country of almost boundless
resources, and any one would imagine that if prosperity existed anywhere
it -would be there. But when the emigrant from old Europe gets over
there what does he find? Poverty, misery, the unemployed One or two big
cities, a number of wealthy men, and a multitude of wage slaves!
Capitalism, Landlordism and Government flourish out there just as here
at home and the worker is in precisely the same plight. "I was glad to
be able to get back," a workman said to the writer a short time ago; and
he added, "thousands more would be if they had the money to pay their
passage." About a third of the entire people of Australia inhabit the
single colony of Victoria, and one half of the Victorians live ill the
city of Melbourne. A peculiar and a unique position is that occupied by
the chief city of the Southern seas. Nowhere else can a country be found
in which half of its people live in the capital. Melbourne is in fact a.
Whitechapel, a Bermondsey and it Belgravia, thrown together oil the
other side of the planet so as to form a center of civilization. it
contains some spacious thoroughfares and some narrow streets, mansions
and hovels, alleys, courts and boulevards. It is a triumph of capitalism
and a revolutionary center.
A correspondent of our Paris contemporary La Revolte, liar, just
recently sent some interesting details about revolutionary Melbourne,
and we reproduce them for the benefit of English Socialists and
Anarchists, and especially for those comrades who have friends to warn
against submitting themselves to it bitter experience. Every two or
three years since I S77-78 the unemployed question has been brought
forward by thousands of workers without employment, money or credit.
Generally this has taken place in the winter, 1) but recently it has
occurred at other times. The worst period,, of distress were 1878, 1880,
and 1886. Everybody in Melbourne is of opinion that this year the
distress will be more severe than in 1886 and as bad as in 1877-78. In
1890 it will probably be worse, and in 1892 it is by no means unlikely
that a revolution will take place in which the 14 "ultra-radical" party
will try to establish a kind of State Socialism. Riots of the unemployed
are very likely this year. But the people are still much too ignorant to
effect a revolution such as we desire. The women appreciate the
situation more than the men. They recognize that the workers are slaves
and that the middle-class and especially those who monopolize the land
are their irreconcilable enemies. There is, however, a lack of
thorough-going revolutionists to show them the way to effect their
emancipation. Yet everybody feels that things cannot continue as they
are much longer, and Melbourne will it is thought not be the last to
march towards Anarchist Communism.
Every day events work actively for the change. The rents are probably
the highest ill the. world. A little wooden house in a back street in
the suburbs costs 15s. a week. You may be told that the workers only
work eight hours a day. That is true only in the case of the Trade
Unionists, and even then the overtime practically destroys the
value of the concession. The non-unionists who are very numerous, work
9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 and 16 hours a day and get much lower wages. The
shop assistants work from 8 in the morning to 7, 8 or 9 at right and
until I I on Saturdays, for an average wage of L1 I a week for the men,
and IN. to 12s. for the women, and 5s. to 10s. for the children. The
higher prices of the necessaries of life of course make the purchasing
power of these sums less than it would be in England. During the past
year there has been much speculation in real estate. Land has been
bought at 1120 the square mile and sold at from L1 to L2 a foot frontage
with a depth of 46 yards. Land in the city has realized from L500 to
L9600 the foot frontage, and much higher prices are talked of. Several
bankruptcies have followed the "land boom," and many more are expected.
Generally the people are very religious: indeed it is mid that there are
more churches here than in England for an equal population. This
somewhat interferes with the study of the social question. Sunday is
divided into the Scotch Sunday in the morning, and what would be a
continental Sunday in the afternoon if the government did not close up
all the shops with the exception of a few restaurants and fruit chops.
After two o'clock everybody goes for a walk along the quays, in the
parks and gardens, etc. On the Queen's Wharf on Sundays all kinds of
propaganda are carried on. This wharf is on the right bank of the Yarra,
below the western part of the city proper. A little higher up is the
dead house which has become necessary in consequence of the enormous
number of suicides. As many as four bodies have been found in the Yarra
in a day, and upon them is generally found either a pawn-ticket or a
letter referring to the poverty of the self-murderer. The men may forget
these things, but the women do not and it is perhaps from the women that
we have most to hope. "This comes from misery," they say, "and misery
comes from private property." The government has several times been
forced to find work for the unemployed for fear of revolt.
There are in Melbourne counterparts of all the advanced English schools
of opinion The National Party consists chiefly of Republicans who desire
to establish the lower middle class in the place of the higher middle
class, which is called the aristocracy. They desire also the abolition
of the second chamber, the reduction 'of the hours of labor and the
nationalization of the land. The Secularists wish for the
nationalization of the land, the establishment of national workshops and
a republic. The party of "Liberty and Property" want political anarchy
without socialism. There are also the State Socialists of the Bismarck
school; the Social Democrats; the Individual Anarchists, of whom some
are almost Communists and others do not believe in private property in
land, but do believe in private property in things; the Christian
Socialists and the Anarchist Communists. But beside all these schools of
thought there is the enormous body of discontented workers, tired of
poverty and hunger and feeling the near approach of a great change of
which they know little except that it will improve their position and is
likely to come through wars and tumults.
There are two Anarchist papers published in Victoria, the Australian
Radical of Hamilton, which is practically an organ of
Anarchist-Communism, and Honesty, which is Individualist-Anarchist. In
the February number of the latter is an interesting article which gives
details of the police persecution of some of our comrades for speaking
on Queen's Wharf; the unemployed agitation at Melbourne and the
accompanying persecution; and also an account of an anniversary meeting
held on the 11th of November in commemoration of the death of our
Chicago comrades. At this meeting there were several speakers who met
with a good reception from a large crowd. It was well and fairly
reported in the daily press and concluded by the people shouting 11
Hurrah for Anarchy!" and singing the Marseillaise.