The strike-fever still lasts in Australia. The workmen there are
better off than any in the world, but they are possessed with the idea that they owe their prosperity to the Unions. Because, therefore, the shipowners are fighting the Sea- men's Association, all labourers are in a ferment, docks are deserted, railways stopped, and even the pastoral interest attacked, the shearers and wool-sorters being, it is said, "called out" in a body. There is even an idea that all labour may stop, the only effect of which would be that all labourers would suffer. The employers are very firm, the agriculturists are protesting against the strikers' policy, and the Govern- ment steadily puts down intimidation. It is most significant of the feeling of the community that the term for non- Unionists is not, as in London, "blacklegs," but "freemen." The Australians recognise that Unions, like almost all other corporations associated for profit, tend to become at once unscrupulous and tyrannical. Fraternity with them sometimes means only the brotherhood of all who share the profits of a monopoly. Outsiders are at most second-cousins, or, like the monkeys, distant and dirty relatives.
Previous page
