A WHITE WORKERS’ CONTINENT
The workers’ continent--and for white men only!
That is how these people speak of Australia. They have tried to make
it the paradise of the labourer, and are determined to keep out all
members of the coloured races--black, brown, or yellow--who might wish
to share it with them. All sorts of schemes have been devised for the
benefit of the wage-workers, most of them intended, as far as I can
see, to help them sell the least work for the most money.
Australia is the land of the labour union. No other country is so
thoroughly unionized, and nowhere else does organized labour go so
far toward running both the government and business. There are unions
of sheep shearers and factory workers; unions of rabbit trappers
and harness makers; there are unions for occupations I hardly knew
existed. Six hundred thousand people, or one out of every nine of the
population, belong to labour unions of one kind or another.
This continent is also the home of the eight-hour day. It was
established in Australia and New Zealand long before workers in other
countries even began to demand it. Australians are so proud of this
fact that they have put up a monument to remind posterity how its work
day was shortened. I have seen most of the great monuments of the
world; I have lived in the shadow of our own huge shaft in honour of
George Washington, climbed the Pyramid of Cheops in Egypt, and beheld
the splendour of the Taj Mahal in India. But never before have I seen
anything like this monument in Melbourne, commemorating a victory for
labour in its centuries of struggle with capital. It would never be
noticed for its size or beauty, for it is merely a simple shaft of
stone. Its significance comes from the three huge figure “8’s” at its
top. These represent the slogan of Australian workmen of more than a
generation ago--“eight hours’ work, eight hours’ play, and eight hours’
rest.” The “Three Eights” monument, as it is called, gives the key to
the story of the hours of labour in Australia to-day, and the spirit
which still seems to rule the people.
The agitation for the shorter working day began in Australia nearly
seventy years ago, shortly after the gold fever first struck the
country. Many of those who had come out to make their fortunes in
nuggets found only disappointment, and had to look for other work. Most
of these men drifted to Melbourne and Sydney, where they soon organized
trade unions like those to which they had belonged in England. The
workers in the building trades in New South Wales were the first to get
their eight-hour day. In a comparatively short time it was generally
adopted in all the states, and now forty-eight hours is the recognized
maximum for a week’s work throughout Australia, although in some trades
forty-four, forty-two, and even thirty-six hours are considered full
time.
Recently there was a move in the Federal Parliament to legislate a
forty-four-hour week throughout the Commonwealth, but the members of
the Labour Party were not quite strong enough to carry the measure.
The forty-four-hour week now generally prevails in Queensland, where
the Labour Party is firmly in the saddle and rides all kinds of
socialistic hobbies. The rallying cry is: “Cheap bread, cheap beef, and
high wages.” In the attempt to realize the first two of these ideals
the state runs twenty-two cattle ranches and fifty butcher shops. It
catches fish and sells them at retail, operates a meat-packing plant,
and has a big produce business selling direct to the consumer without
the intervention of the middleman. It even runs a hotel of its own.
Wages and hours are regulated by the government, which also owns and
operates the railroads, the saw-mills, and the mines. There is a
government savings bank with deposits of seventy millions of dollars
from a population of seven hundred thousand: The state competes with
private insurance companies and has lowered rates by twenty-five per
cent.
When the labour unions began their campaign for shorter hours, workers
in the goldfields were making such big pay that the general wage level
was high, and the men were then satisfied with their earnings. Later
the original slogan was enlarged until the “four sacred eights” of
Australian labour were: “eight hours of work, eight hours of play,
eight hours of rest, and eight bob a day.” But after a while, eight
shillings, or two dollars, did not look so fair to the workers as the
“living wage,” and so they began to go after that. How well they have
succeeded may be gathered from the definition of a living wage as laid
down by the New South Wales Court of Industrial Arbitration. It reads:
The living wage is standardized as the wage which still does neither
more nor less than enable a worker of the class to which the lowest
wage would be awarded to maintain himself, his wife, and two
children--the average dependent family--in a house of three rooms
and a kitchen, with food, plain and inexpensive, but quite sufficient
in quantity and quality to maintain health and efficiency, and with
allowance for the following other expenses: Fuel, clothes, boots,
furniture, utensils, taxes, life insurance, savings, accident or
benefit society, loss of employment, union contributions, books and
newspapers, train and tram fares, sewing machine, mangle, school
requisites, amusements and holiday, intoxicating liquors, tobacco,
sickness and death, domestic help, unusual contingencies, religion or
charity.
It is such a standard of living that the Australian labour unions are
determined to maintain for the workers. So far they have been able not
only to enforce most of their demands, but to have many of them written
into the laws. Factories, shops, and stores are subject to all sorts of
restrictions, and seem to be run quite as much in the interests of the
workers in them as for their owners.
Each union has rigid rules and regulations governing the employment of
its members, and generally they are upheld by the state courts for the
arbitration of industrial disputes. In New South Wales, for example,
the law gives preference to union men in employment. In one instance,
an employer wanted a workman. Two men applied, one a unionist. But the
employer chose the non-union man, believing him more competent for the
job. For this the Arbitration Court fined him ten dollars, and he had
to pay costs of as much more. The judge informed him that the court,
and not the employer, must decide as to the competency of employees.
In another case some dock workers had made demands which a steamship
company would not meet. The men did not strike, but, just when their
work was most urgently needed, went on a picnic. To avoid such
interruptions the company proposed to pay men to work by the week
instead of by the day and offered a fair weekly wage. The unionists
refused to accept these terms, whereupon the company employed non-union
men, and the case went to the Arbitration Court. The judges ruled that
the union members must be reinstated, and the company had to discharge
the men it had hired to take their places.
At Sydney the union of dock workers is so strong that no steamship
company dares employ a non-union man. But once the wharfingers, as
they are called, went a step too far. In order to create a shortage
of workers and force up wages they stopped taking in new members. The
ship owners had the union brought before the Arbitration Court, which
decided that, although the dock men might keep non-union men off the
Sydney wharves, they must keep their books open to receive new members.
One more case: An oil company employed six lads under twenty-one to
tighten up the hoops on some casks. The coopers’ union took the matter
to the Arbitration Court, which upheld the men and declared this simple
hammering was cooperage. The company was fined and had to discharge the
youths and employ coopers at fifteen dollars a week to do boys’ work.
I am told that decisions of this sort, and the laws behind them, have
bred bad feeling between wage earners and the men for whom they work.
A man of means is distrusted by the working classes, not because they
may envy him his wealth, but because he is an employer. The capitalist
class has little sympathy for the workers, while the employed have
a strong antagonism for the employer, and so the Australians are a
divided people.
But there is one subject on which all Australia is agreed, and that is
that the continent shall be kept exclusively a white man’s country.
The workers and their unions are to a large degree responsible for
this policy of a white Australia, but no party opposes it. The men in
power say that Australia has learned her lesson in time, and that she
will never let in cheap labour from China, Japan, and the surrounding
islands which would lower wages and the standard of living. North and
west of the continent are seven hundred millions of Orientals who would
be glad to get out of their crowded countries into this thinly settled
land of promise. Besides, all the Australians are proud of their
British blood. They wish to keep it without a “taint of colour,” and
seem to be willing to pay the price in a smaller population and slower
development.
Still, there are some Australians who doubt the advisability of Asiatic
exclusion. Is it possible, they ask, for a population of five and a
half millions to hold this vast area until it is filled up with white
people? Australia has less than two persons to the square mile as
compared with thirty-five in the United States and three hundred and
fifty-one in the United Kingdom. The Commonwealth is less thickly
populated than Siberia, South Africa, or even Arabia. Moreover, most
of her people are concentrated along the east, south, and southwest
coasts, which contain about eighty per cent. of the population, and
there is a strong tendency toward concentration in the cities. Nearly
one fifth of the white inhabitants live in Sydney and forty-two
per cent. are in the six capitals. Yet Australia is a land of raw
materials. Her fields, farms, and mines need development, and this
development calls for many people.
There are hardly any white men in the tropics of Queensland and the
Northern Territory, where rich crops of cotton, sugar cane, tobacco,
and fruits might be produced. Some of the capitalists say that because
of the climate these regions will never be developed until coloured
labour is admitted to work them.
But most Australians feel it is better to delay indefinitely making
money out of the tropical lands than to allow Northern Australia to be
opened to swarms of Asiatics. They point to the Negro problem in our
own South as an example of what would happen if the bars were let down,
and predict that conditions would eventually become much worse than any
we have in the United States. They prefer to depend on selected white
immigration, chiefly from Great Britain, and also on their favourable
birth rate. The births now average 24.6 per thousand of population,
while the death rate is only 10.8, so that Australia enjoys a natural
rate of increase of 13.2 per thousand. Some of the labour bodies go so
far as to oppose even white immigration, clinging obstinately to the
theory that there is only so much work to be done in Australia, and
that if more people are admitted there will not be enough jobs to go
round.
Exclusion of the coloured races is accomplished quite simply.
Immigration officers are given the authority to compel each would-be
immigrant to write fifty words in any language the officials choose.
Like our own Chinese immigration laws, this provision is intended to
exclude labourers and artisans; it is not meant to keep out travellers,
students, or merchants.
The Australian leaders emphatically deny that their policy is founded
on race prejudice or persecution. They declare it is merely “a
defensive measure to prevent an intolerable lowering of the standard of
living.”
[Illustration: If some Australian labour leaders had their way, even
white immigrants would be barred on the theory that this would lessen
the competition for jobs and keep wages up.]
[Illustration: Regular courses in all the domestic arts, including
laundering, are important for the girls of Australia, where servants
are luxuries of the few and women are thrown on their own resources.]
I had a talk with one of the parliamentary leaders in Victoria about
working conditions and the Australian standard of living. He said to me:
“I know it is commonly believed that we have an eight-hour law down
here in Australia. The fact is that an absolute eight-hour law would
not suit us so well as our forty-eight-hour-per-week law. Many of our
trades have such conditions that they cannot be restricted to a fixed
time, and some days a man must work more than eight hours and sometimes
less. Take the bakers. They set their sponge, and if the dough rises
they can get through their work in less than eight hours; but if not,
it takes them nine, or perhaps longer. What we have is a fixed time
per week and an extra rate for all overtime. In New South Wales the
forty-four-hour week prevails in many important industries. In certain
unhealthful trades such as rock chopping, sewer mining, stone masonry,
and underground mining of metals, the hours may be even shorter.”
“Is there not a large force in the government employ?” I asked.
“Yes,” was the answer. “In New South Wales the railroads, the street
cars, and the wharves are under the state government. The state has
also its employees for education, police, health, justice, state
lands, public works, and other such activities. Besides, it operates
timber yards, dockyards, brick and pipe works, stone quarries, and
hydro-electric plants. Moreover, the Commonwealth government has its
employees in the postal, telegraph, telephone, and other national
services.”
“How many state and federal employees have you here in New South
Wales?” I asked.
I was surprised at the answer, which was: “More than ninety-nine
thousand.”
“And what is your population?”
“A little more than two million.”
“Well,” said I, “let us figure it. Divide your two million by
ninety-nine thousand and you will find that practically one in every
twenty persons works for the state. If we had a proportionate number
of government employees in the United States, with our population of
one hundred and ten millions, there would be five million government
officials, which at the low average of a thousand dollars per annum
would cost us at least five billion dollars every year. Our Congress
would never stand for such a condition.”
As far as I can see the workingmen live very well. Few of them have
hollows in their cheeks or wrinkles in their stomachs. A few years ago
some statistician calculated the value of the food consumed by workers
in different countries, and according to his figures, an Australian has
better food and more of it than the average American wage earner. The
people are great meat eaters. The meat is good, too. I have never found
better mutton anywhere, and the beef is as fat and as juicy as the best
cuts from Chicago.
Like the British, these Australians drink an astonishing quantity of
tea. Every man, woman, and child has a cup every afternoon, and, likely
as not, another cup or so later in the evening. Tea is provided without
extra charge at hotels, and at railroad stations it is served at the
same tables as beer and whisky. The tea is always drunk with milk and
sugar, and every person takes four lumps.