of beer, is to-day in a state of subsiding intoxication or incipient sobriety, a state of dejection which follows upon yesterday's excitement; consequently, he is he is mentally oppressed as well as depressed, and this feeling is but intensified by smoking. A man who drinks and smokes mod. erately but regularly every day, requires in order to restore his brain to its normal condition at least one week, probably more than a week, of total abstinence from spirits and tobacco. Now, no smoker or Now, no smoker or bibbler ever voluntarily abstains for such a long time.

It follows, therefore, that by far the greatest part of all that is done in this world of ours, both by those whose profession it is to guide and teach others and by those who are thus guided and taught, is done in a state of ebriety.*

And I trust this will not be taken either as a joke or an exaggeration the extravagant disorder, and especially the senselessness and folly, of our life springs mainly from the state of continuous inebriation in which the majority of people deliberately place themselves.

Is it conceivable

that people not drunk should calmly set about doing all the extraordinary things

But how are we to explain the undeniable fact that people who neither drink nor smoke are frequently on an incomparably lower intellectual and moral level than inveterate topers and smokers? And how is it that people

who drink and smoke often give proof of the highest intellectual and moral qualities?

To this objection the answer is, in the first place, that we are ignorant of the degree of excellence which these persons would have attained if they never drank nor smoke. In the second place, from the circumstance that spiritually vigorous people, while subjecting them selves to the debasing action of brain-poisoning stimulants, yet manage to perform mar. vellous and sublime deeds, we can only draw the conclusion that they would have accomplished still greater things had they not clouded and clogged their faculties. It is highly probable that, as an acquaintance of mine once remarked, Kant's books would not have been written in such strange, clumsy language

had their author not been such an inveterate smoker. Lastly, it should not be forgotten that the lower a man's position in the moral and intellectual sphere, the less acutely he feels the jarring discord between conscious. ness and life, and, consequently, the less pronounced is the need of stupefying himself; it

is for a like reason that the most sensitive natures, those who are painfully, nay, morbidly conscious of this discord between life and conscience, become addicted to narcotics, which work their ultimate ruin.

even

that are being accomplished in our world, from the Eiffel Tower to obligatory military service? It is utterly inconceivable. Without the slightest need, or semblance of need, a company is formed, a large capital subscribed; people go to work to make estimates and draw plans ; millions of working days and millions of poods* of iron are spent in the construction of a tower; and, when finished, millions of persons consider it their duty to repair to the summit of this tower, stay a short time, and then crawl down again, and the only effect produced on the minds of men by this tower, and the frequency with which ascents are made in it, is the desire and the resolve to go and erect still loftier towers in other places. Now, is it conceivable that these things should be done by sober people? Or, take another case; all European States are, and have for scores of years been, busily engaged in inventing and perfecting effectual weapons to kill people; and they carefully teach the science of organized murder to all young men who have reached manhood's estate. All are well aware that incursions of barbarians are no longer possible, and that these preparations for murder are intended by Christian, civilized nations to be employed against each other; all feel that this is unseemly, painful, nefarious, ruinous, immoral, impious, and senseless; and yet all persist in carrying out their preparations for mutual destruction; some by arranging political combinations, making alliances, and settling who is to slaughter whom; others by directing the work of those who are engaged in getting things ready for the slaughter; and others, again, by submitting against their own will, against their conscience, against their reason, to these preparations for murder. Now, could sober men act in this way None but drunken men, men who never have a lucid interval of sobriety, could do these things, could live on in spite of this perpetual, irreconcilable, terrible conflict between life and conscience, in which not only in this matter, but in all other respects, the people of our world live and have their being.

?

At no other period of the world's history, I feel convinced, did mankind lead an existence in which the dictates of con

* A Russian pood is about thirty-six Eng. lish pounds.

science and their deliberate actions were in such evident conflict as at present.

It seems as if the human race in our days had got fastened to something that is holding it back, impeding its progress. There would seem to be some external cause which hinders it from attaining the position that belongs to it of right, in virtue of consciousness. The cause in question-or, if there be several, the main cause is the physical state of stupefaction to which the overwhelming majority of human beings reduce themselves by means of alcohol and tobacco.

The deliverance of humanity from this terrible evil will mark an epoch in the life of the race, and, apparently, this epoch will arrive in the near future. The evil is already recognized. A change in the consciousness of men in reference to the use

of brain-poisoning stimulants and narcotics has already taken place people are beginning to realize the terrible mischief they produce, and they are manifesting this feeling in acts; and this imperceptible change in their consciousness must inevitably bring in its train the emancipation of humanity from the influence of all such brain poisons. This emancipation of mankind from the thraldom of 'brain poisons will open their eyes to the demands of their consciousness, and they will forthwith begin to put their life in harmony with its dictates.

This process seems to have already begun. And, as is usual in such cases, it is beginning in the higher social classes, after all the lower orders have become infected with the evil.-Contemporary Review.

THESE Colonies have now (the 15th day of November) been for exactly three months the scene of the greatest" struggle between capital and labor" that our generation has witnessed, and Victoria has been its cock-pit. The strike deserves a place among the decisive battles of the world, on account both of the size of the aimies engaged and of the magnitude of the issues involved and, as I believe, settled. I will try to put before English readers a clear account of its causes, its incidents, and its results, with as much fairness as one of the combatants may. It was a curious chance that one who moved the resolution which ended the London Dock Strike of 1889 should land at the port of Melbourne three days before the declaration of hostilities in this greater conflict. I may think myself fortunate in having been present at Labor's Austerlitz as well as at its Moscow.

Imagine a society in which there is hardly a man whose father did not work for his living with his hands; where there is practically no leisured class, and the comparative absence of poverty does away with the need for a Poor Law; where there is universal suffrage and payment of members, and every politician trembles at the labor vote; where, in the towns, economic NEW SERIES.-VOL LIII., No. 3.

66

conditions have established, and powerful trade-union organizations maintained, eight hours as the nominal working day, and, from eight to ten shillings as a customary daily wage; where the agricultural and pastoral districts clamor for laborers in vain, though they offer three meat meals a day and a wage which will allow any single man who does not drink to excess to save 201. a year; and where, if the whole of the resources of civilization" were unreservedly at the disposal of property, they amount only to 600 police (mostly Irish) in a city of half a million inhabitants, and a standing army of 400 artillerymen in a colony bigger than Great Britain. Then suppose that the leaders of the trade unions deliberately enter on a conflict with employers; have their orders unquestioningly and loyally obeyed by the whole of the federated organizations of a continent; are permitted to levy, without publish. ing acknowledgments, pecuniary tribute on the richest working-class population in the world, in addition to obtaining 15,000. from Great Britain; and are able to put enough pressure on half-a-dozen politicians to make them change sides and wreck a ministry. Conceive that, after three months' fighting, these leaders are unmistakably and avowedly beaten on every

26

point at issue. Then you will have a fair idea of the remarkable defeat which has just befallen in Australia "an army of lions led by asses," and of which the effects, good and bad, will inevitably be impressed upon the labor movement wherever the workman looks upon trade-unionism as the means of his deliverance from the land of bondage.

66

As not infrequently happens, the real causes of this strike have been little noticed either by the combatants or by their critics, more attention being paid to the trifling points which evoked a declaration of hostilities than to the serious matters which created the situation. I have no hesitation in saying that the casus belli was the intention of the federated unions, declared months ago, to establish the non-union wool boycott''-that is, to compel shearers who were unwilling to join the Shearers' Union to do so under pressure from their employers by getting the maritime unions to refuse to load or carry any bales of wool that had not the stamp of a sheep station known to be worked under Union rules. It was this proposal of the shearers' and seamen's unions to play into each other's hands which drove the pastoralists and shipowners to combine; and as the shipowners happen also to represent the majority of the coalowners of Australia, had at once the three largest and richest interests of the country compelled by the instinct of self-preservation to put their backs against the wall and fight for life. Minor interests, which had suffered a great deal of unnecessary harassing from the unions whose balance of judgment had been entirely upset by a long series of unquestioned successes, joined the combination of the larger capitalists. In other words, the workmen, having brought enormous pressure to bear through the fedcration of their unions upon single employers, forced the latter to comprehend that combined action is a game two can play at. It is important that this be borne in mind, for it is sought to show that the first aggressive action was taken by the employers' side-namely when the Shipowners' Association refused to consider the grievances of the marine officers so long as these

you

indeed the first act of open warfare, but it could never have taken place had not the larger question looming in the background shown that issue must be joined in a few days on the "wool boycott."

To well understand the folly of the decree which therefore is really responsible for the crushing blow trade-unionism has received, one must understand the position of the shearers throughout Australia. The gathering-in of the season's wool-clip is far and away the most important single industrial operation in Australia. It is shorn from the millions of sheep in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia, which pick up their living from the scanty herbage of "runs" that sometimes contain 4000 square miles in one holding. The ordinary staff on such stations is very small, but, at the approach of the shearing season, the owners summon ten, twenty, or fifty shearers, according to the capacity of their woolshed, and these men get through from eighty to one hundred and twenty sheep a day for three or four weeks at one station. The work is hard, entailing considerable physical exhaustion, but it is well paid. The wages vary from 20s. per 100 sheep with lodgings provided, to 13s. 6d. per 100 with board and lodging. The men are mostly drawn from the selectors" and the sons of small farmers, who are glad to pick up from 127. to 307. by a few weeks' work and thus obtain the means of purchasing, stocking, and improving their own swall holdings. A small proportion of the men devote themselves almost entirely to shearing, and, commencing at Queensland in the north, travel down the continent for six or eight months of the year, riding from station to station. They mostly own a couple of fair horses. It will be seen that such men, accustomed to the free, independent life of the bush, possessing the means of locomotion, having often a holding from which they can obtain a sufficient, if hard, living without seeking employment, and obtaining, when they do shearing, wages which in six weeks exceed the yearly income of the agricultural laborer in Dorset or Essex, and which, if used with moderate care, will in a short time make them wealthy men, can hardly be regarded as the most suffering victims of capitalist oppression. Such men could never have been persuaded to form a union without some just cause. It was given

about three years ago by the short-sighted greed of a very few pastoralists who threatened to reduce the rate of shearing at a time when the wool market was rising, and who, where they supplied the men with food, charged them exorbitant prices for bad stuff, making thereby an illicit and utterly dishonest profit of as much as 100 per cent.

The dissatisfaction that followed was, in a period of revival of trade-unionism, seized by a Mr. W. G. Spence, who had shown marked ability as an organizer in consolidating the Amalgamated Miners' Association. It is one of the most extraordinary achievements within my knowledge that this man should, inside of three years, have organized the majority of these pastoral nomads over a territory larger than Russia in Europe into the Amalgamated Shearers' Association. But in doing so he made, or let me say allowed to be made by his agents, one fatal mistake. The extent to which the capitalist in Australia has been at the mercy of the workman is almost inconceivable to the English mind, and has no parallel in Ireland. The other day there was a dispute, happily settled by conference, at the Broken Hill Silver Mines. The 7,000 men were "out" and in a sullen mood, and for the protection of millions of property there were just fourteen policemen.

So with the pastoralists: the bad seasons up to 1888 had left them involved with banks and loan companies, so that failure or even delay in getting their woolclip, worth tens of thousands of pounds, meant irretrievable ruin. Thus they were not likely to raise difficulties, even had they not as a body shared, as they do, in the general Australian belief that tradeunionism is a good thing for all classes. But the agents of the Shearers' Union were not all wise men. Though in nineteen cases out of twenty they could have had their way by using reasonable civility, they resorted to bullying. Now, the pastoralists are not at all like the rois fainéants of British industry. As a rule they are men who have fought a good fight with nature, and those who have not gone under are pretty certain to have a full share of the pluck and determination which has made the name of Britain trebly great," and of which the possessors are apt to resent bullying in an awkward manIn many cases where the pastoralist

ner.

resisted their bullying, the shearers camped out on the roads in sparsely-populated districts, waylaid non-union men who were going to do the work, and compelled them to join the union. This sort of thing may be very successful for a time, and it was. But the union forgot that just as one volunteer is worth two pressed men, a trade society that turns itself into a press-gang by its very success gets to resemble more and more closely a regiment recruited from potential deserters, and it is not good to order such regiments to lead forlorn hopes. By such means the proportion of woolsheds shearing under "the union agreement" became very large. Then the culminating act of folly was perpetrated when it was decided to compel the non-union men to come in by appealing to the car. riers, wharf laborers, and seamen, to boo" every bale of wool that did not bear the mark of a union shed. This suicidal proposal originated, I understand, in Queensland. Its parent, if he can now be found to own his brilliant idea, should be pensioned by the capitalists of the world in order that he should devote all his time to incubating similar schemes calculated to wreck the hopes of labor.

ta

How came it that this proposal was accepted by the trade councils of all the colonies? Among them are men of experience in such inatters, and some who have been driven to emigrate by the failure of strikes based on similar miscalculations in the old country. Why was no warning voice raised?

If

There one touches the inherent weakness of democracy. There are always in the crowd men who bid for power on the principle of the company-promoters who buy properties on the chance of floating them. If they float, they can pay. not, they can go bankrupt with a light heart, for they have nothing to lose, not even reputation, and a dozen insolvencies may not prevent success on the thirteenth attempt. There are always in the crowd scores of enthusiasts, generally quite sincere, and invariably cursed with "the flow of words and constipation of the intellect" which mark the man of warm heart and ill-balanced judgment. These men, who in other walks of life would buy shares in companies for extracting sunbeams from cucumbers, try a system" at Monte Carlo, or send wedding presents to Mr. H. M. Stanley, are hardly less a curse to the

66

labor movement than the designing demagogue, for they give him his power. There is authority for the assertion that the world has suffered much from the union of high abilities and low desire in the few, but it might be argued that there is even more danger when the many have high desires and no ability to distinguish between means of their gratification.

The argument would be interesting, but does not concern the present narrative; for nothing can be more certain than that the leaders of the strike in Australia have exhibited the lowest order of both desire and ability. One of them in Queensland, named Morrisson, was accused of having applied for the post of public executioner by a member of the Legislative Assembly, who called for a return of the applicants in order to prove his point. Rather than face that inquiry Morrisson resigned his position in the trade-unions. When abilities that are insufficient to gratify their owner's desire to become common hangman are devoted, for a consideration, to furthering the brotherhood of man, and suffice to raise their possessor to the front rank among labor leaders, the brotherhood of man seems a long way off.

Yet we should not to be too hard on the enthusiasts. They are the salt of the earth. If they did not prove by exhaustive experiment that nineteen out of twenty of the supposed paths of social progress led to destruction, it is to be feared that practical men would never have the courage to try the twentieth. Nevertheless, enthusiasm is a luxury which must be sparingly indulged in even by wealthy counIt has cost the Australian workmen close on a couple of millions in wages in these three months.

tries.

The leaders and their followers warmly welcomed the suggestion that non-union wool should be boycotted. No one pointed out the insuperable difficulties in the way of this bold scheme. If any one had had the temerity to do so, the enthusiasts would undoubtedly have solemnly adjudged him to be either knave or fool, and he might never have got into Parliament. So the preparations went gayly ahead. The maritime unions at all the ports gleefully assented to handle no wool tainted by the touch of non-union shears, and the trade councils of the different colonies promised their support to the scheme, which a series of undisputed successes in

minor quarrels presumably led the unions to think quite feasible. On the 5th of July last it was stated by the officials of the Shearers' Union, that the union comprised less than half the shearers in Victoria, but that its membership was steadily increasing. These two statements, which I have no reason to disbelieve, prove, first, that the "wool boycott" was an attempt by a minority of the shearers to coerce a majority; and, secondly, that if their officials had had the sense to leave well alone, the vast majority of shearers would, in a short time, have joined the union.

This action led the pastoralists to combine for their own defence. The strength of their combination may be judged from its finances. They now propose that each member of it should pay a yearly subscription of 17. per 1000 sheep, and agree to pay, if need arises, 57. per 1000 sheep into a Defence Fund. No steps have yet been taken to press pastoralists to join, but they have spontaneously sent in their names in such numbers that, on the above basis, the income of the union will be 80,000 a year, and its Defence Fund 400,000%. Ålmost the first act of this powerful combination was to send for Mr. Spence in order to arrange a peace. His terms were that the boycott would be countermanded if the members of the pastoralists' nnion were pledged to employ none but union men-that is, either to dismiss nonunionists or compel them to join the Shearers' Union. The pastoralists refused these terms, and every one was fairly warned that the arrival of the first bale of non-union wool at a port would be the signal for the commencement of a pitched battle. The employers made their preparations : the labor leaders made none, other than speeches of the à Berlin pattern.

Meanwhile the storm in the shipping trade was brewing. So long ago as the 3d of June, at a dinner of the Employers' Union (at which Mr. John Hancock, the then President of the Trades Hall Council, was present as a guest), the chairman of the Shipowners' Association, Mr. E. E. Smith, made a speech which showed unmistakably that the patience of the shipping companies was exhausted. But the warning was unheeded. Owing to suicidal competition and the scarcity of labor, the Seamen's Union had been enabled to obtain many concessions-so much so that