The sun-rays were slowly irradiating 'the level waste, the rounded grey'
which accurately described the landscape, in the lower Riverina, which
our travellers had reached after a fortnight's travel, and where the
large and pastorally famous sheep station of Tandāra had been
constructed. Far as the eye could range was an unbroken expanse of
sea-like plain, covered at this spring time of year with profuse
vegetation—the monotony being occasionally relieved by clumps of the
peculiar timber growing only amid the vast levels watered by the
Darling. The wilga, the boree, and the mogil copses were in shape,
outline, and area so curiously alike, that the lost wanderer
proverbially found difficulty in fixing upon any particular clump as a
landmark. Once strayed from the faint irregular track, often the only
road between stations thirty or forty miles apart—once confused as to
the compass bearings, and how little hope was there for the wayfarer,
especially if weary, thirsty, and on foot! The clump of mogil or wilga
trees, which he had toiled so many a mile in the burning afternoon to
reach, was the facsimile of the one left, was it that morning or the one
before? More than once had he, by walking in a circle, and making for
apparently 'creek timber' at variance with his original course, found
himself at the _same clump_, verified by his own tracks, and the ashes
of his small fire, as the one which he had left forty-eight hours ago.
Reckless and desperate, he takes the course again, feeling weaker by two
days' hard walking—footsore, hungry—above all, _thirsty_, to the verge
of delirium. Let us hope that he falls in with a belated boundary rider
who shows him an endless-seeming wire fence, which he commands him to
follow, till he meets the jackaroo sent with a water-bag to meet him. If
this good angel (not otherwise angelic-seeming) 'drops across' him, well
and good; if not so, or he does not 'cut the tracks' of a station team,
or the lonely mailman going a back road, God help him! Soon will the
crows gathering expectant round a pair of eagles, telegraph to the
sharp-eyed scouts of the wilderness that they may ride over and see the
dried-up, wasted similitude of what _was_ once a man.
No such tragedy was likely to be enacted in the case of our two
shearers. They were fairly mounted. They had food and water to spare.
Bill was an experienced bushman, and both men had been along this track
before. So they followed the winding trail traced faintly on the broad
green sheet of spring herbage, sometimes almost invisible—or wholly so,
where an old sheep camp had erased the hoof-or wheel-marks—turning to
the right or the left with confident accuracy, until they 'picked up'
the course again. Wading girth-deep through the subsidiary
watercourses—billabongs, cowalls, and such—bank high in this year of
unusual rain and plenty (they are synonymous in riverine Australia,
'arida nutrix'), and scaring the water-fowl, which floated or flew in
countless flocks.
That gigantic crane, the brolgan (or native companion), danced his
quadrille in front of them, 'advance, retire, flap wing, and set to
partner,' before he sailed away to a region unfrequented by the
peaceful-seeming but dangerous intruder. Crimson-winged, French grey
galah parrots fluttered around them in companies, never very far out of
shot; the small speckled doves, loveliest of the columba tribes, rose
whirring in bevies, while the
swift-footed 'emu' over the waste
Speeds like a horseman that travels in haste.
To the inexperienced European traveller beholding this region for the
first time, all-ignorant of the reverse side of the shield, what a
pastoral paradise it would have seemed! Concealed from his vision the
dread spectres of Famine, Death, Ruin, and Despair, which the
shutting-up of the windows of Heaven for a season, has power to summon
thereon.
This was a good year, however, in pastoral parlance. Thousands of lambs
born in the autumnal months of April and May were now skipping, fat and
frolicsome, by the sides of the ewes, in the immense untended flocks.
They had been but recently marked and numbered, the latter arithmetical
conclusion being obtained by the accurate if primitive method of
counting the heaps of severed tails, which modern sheep-farming exacts
from the bleeding innocents. The percentage ranged from ninety to nearly
a hundred, an almost abnormally favourable result.
How different from the famine years of a past decade, still fresh in
men's minds, when every lamb was killed as soon as born 'to save its
mother's life,' and in many stations one-half of the ewes died also,
from sheer starvation; when immense migratory flocks, like those of the
'mesta' of their Spanish ancestors, swept over the land, destroying,
locust-like, every green thing (and dry, too, for that matter), steering
towards the mountain plateaux, which boast green grass and
rill-melodies, the long relentless summer through—that summer which, on
lower levels, had slain even the wild creatures of the forest and plain,
inured from countless ages to the deadly droughts of their Austral home.
When the kangaroos by the thousand die,
It's rough on the travelling sheep,
as 'Banjo' sings.
This station, when reached, presented a different appearance from North
Yalla-doora. The prairie-like plain, far as the eye could reach, was
bisected by a wide and turbid stream, flowing between banks, now low and
partly submerged, now lofty and precipitous; occasionally overhanging as
if cut away by the angry waters, in one of the foaming floods which,
from time to time, alternated with seasons when the shallow stream
trickled feebly over the rock-bars in the river-bed.
The buildings were large, but less complete in appearance than those of
Yalla-doora. An air of feverish energy pervaded the whole establishment,
which seemed to denote that time was more valued than finish, for the
pressing work in hand. The windings of the river could be distinctly
marked by the size of the great eucalypts which fringed the banks,
refusing to grow away from its waters. How often had they been hailed
with joy by the weary wayfarer, athirst even unto death, who knows that
his trials are over, when from afar he sights the 'river timber.' And
now, the signs of the campaign were visible. Men rode in at speed from
distant parts of the immense area known as Tandara 'run.' From the far
horizon came nearer and yet nearer the lines of unladen waggons, with
long teams of lagging horses or even bullocks, from twelve to twenty in
number.
Far from fat and well-liking were these necessary beasts of draught, but
sure to leave the station frolicsome and obese after a few weeks'
depasturing upon the giant herbage which for a hundred leagues in every
direction waved in vast meads like ripening corn. An assemblage of tents
and hastily constructed shelters on a 'point' of the river proclaims the
'camp' or temporary abode of the expectant shearers and rouseabouts,
wool-pressers, ordinary hands, and general utility men, upon every large
run at shearing time, but more especially on so exceptionally important
a property as that of Tandara.
'By George! there's a big roll up on Steamer Point this time,' said
Bill. 'I've shorn here twice, and never seen as many afore. There won't
be stands for half of 'em when the roll's called.'
'No more there will,' said Stoate, as he looked in the direction of the
populous camp, where much talk and argument seemed to be going on. 'And
them that wrote and got their names put down months back won't have a
rosy time of it neither.'
'Why not?' queried Bill. 'Ain't they done right to come and shear when
they promised last year, and got the cove to keep places for them?'
'Oh, I didn't mean that, though I don't hold, mind you, with taking
places such a dashed long time before shearin's on. It's hard on a chap,
when he comes to a shed after travellin' three or four 'underd mile, to
be told that all the stands is took up. But there'll be a big row all
the same.'
'How's that?'
'Why, Drench the delegate told me, the last place we stopped at, that
orders had come up that if the boss wouldn't give in to the Shearers'
Union agreement the men were to be called off the board.'
'Hunter won't stand it,' said Bill. 'You take my word. He's always been
a good employer; no man can deny that. Good wages, good rations, and
pays cash on the nail when the men want it. Don't even give cheques, and
that blocks the publican, because a chap can pay as he goes, and needn't
hand his cheque over the bar counter. But I know what he'll say to the
delegate, or any other man that tells him he's not to be boss in his own
shed.'
'What'll that be?' asked Stoate, with a sidelong look, half of
curiosity, half of concealed malice.
'He'll tell 'em to go to hell and mind their own business, and leave him
to look after his; that he'll see the Union and every one connected with
it d—d first before he'll give up the right to manage his own property
in his own way.'
'We'll show him different—that is, the Union will,' said Stoate,
correcting himself hastily. '_His_ property! Who made it? who dug the
tanks and put up the fences, and shepherded the sheep afore they was
paddocked? and built the blooming shed, as is an emblem of tyranny, to
my thinking—when every man ought to have his five 'underd or a thousand
ewes of his own, and a neat little place to shear 'em in? _His
property!_ I say it's _our_ property. _We_ made it—with the labour of
our 'ands—and we ought to have the biggest say in the managin' of it.'
'What about buyin' the sheep and cattle, and the horses, and the payin'
of wages this year?' said Bill. 'Suppose they come o' theirselves,
"kinder growed," as the nigger gal says in that book about slavery in
America, as Jenny read out to me last winter.'
'Wages be hanged!' retorted the disciple of Henry George and Bellamy.
'Our labour makes the fund out of which they pays their bloomin'
_wages_, as they call 'em—infernal skinflints, as they are. It's dashed
easy for them as gets the profits of our hard earnin's to dribble a
trifle back, hardly enough to keep us in workin' order, like them team
'orses as is just turned out—a bite of chaff, and that's about all.'
'Well, only for the chaff, they'd be deaders the first dry season—down
from weakness for a week or two, with their eyes picked out by the
crows, and the ants eatin' 'em alive. I've seen the wild "brumbies" like
that. I expect _they_ ought to go on strike for stable keep, and three
feeds of oats a day?'
'Men and 'orses is different—you can't compare 'em, in the way of their
rights.'
'No; I know you can't,' answered Bill. 'The horses are a dashed sight
the straightest crowd of the two. Howsomever, we shan't agree on them
points, if we talk till Christmas. You take your way, and I'll take
mine. But look here, Stoate, if there's goin' to be any of this burnin'
and smashin' racket, as I've heard tell of, I'm _not on_. Mind
that—don't you make any mistake! I've a bit of property of my own, as
I've worked hard for, and I'm not goin' to hurt another man's savin's,
Union or no Union, for all the Labour delegates in Australia, and so I
tell you.'
Stoate did not speak for a few moments, then his eyes once more assumed
the covert look of malice which they had worn before, as he said slowly—
'That means that you're not game to stand up for the rights of your
horder, and you'll act the spy on the men as does.'
Bill's grey eyes blazed out with so sudden a light, as he made a half
movement to jump off his horse, that Stoate involuntarily tightened his
rein, and touched his leg-weary steed with the one spur of which he made
constant use. But Bill resumed his saddle seat, and putting strong
constraint on himself, replied: 'I'm that game as I'll give you a crack
on the "point," as 'll stop your blowin' for a bit, if you'll get down
and put your hands up. You're a light weight, and not very fit, or I'd
knock some of the gas out'n yer now if you'd stand up to me. Not as you
would—you're a deal better at talkin' than fightin', let alone workin'.
But you and me's mates no more, mind that. You clear out with your moke,
and make your own camp, and don't you come anigh me never again, or I'll
give you what for, in a style you'll remember till the shearin' after
next.' And so saying, Bill touched up his horse, and went off at a hand
gallop, with his pack-horse—which by this time had learned to follow his
companion steed—after him. Mr. Stoate regarded this action on the part
of his whilom companion with baleful eye and resentful feeling, which at
length found vent in these memorable words—
'You're very flash, Bill Hardwick, with your fresh 'oss and yer packer.
S'pose you think you've left me in a hole, all for a few words on these
blarsted, hungry, grinding squatters; but I've seen better coves'n you
straightened afore to-day. And by——! I'll be even with yer before the
year's out, as sure as my name's Janus Stoate!'
After which pious resolve, Mr. Stoate jogged sullenly onward to the head
station, where his sense of the dignity of labour did not prevent him
from joining a crowd of men, who were in turn receiving the ordinary
bush dole—viz. a pound or two of fresh beef or mutton, in addition to a
pint pannikin of flour. As there were at least forty or fifty men who
received these components of two substantial meals—supper and
breakfast—it may be guessed what a daily contribution the squatter was
required to make toward the support of the nomadic labourer of the
period.
With respect to that universally recognised Australian institution, the
'travellers' hut,' to which Mr. Stoate betook himself, on receiving his
free supper and breakfast materials, an explanation may not be out of
place. In the good old times, 'before the war,' in the pre-union days,
and when owing to the smaller size of pastoral properties the hands
required were necessarily fewer, the chance labourer was made free of
the 'men's hut.' In those Arcadian days the men's cook prepared his
meals, and he sat at meat with the permanent employés.
This was all very well, when one or two casual guests at the outside
were wont to arrive in an evening. But when, in consequence of the
growth of population, and the increase of stock, the units were turned
into scores, with a possibility of hundreds, the free hospitality had to
be restricted.
Complaints were made by the permanent hands that the pilgrim was in the
habit of picking up unconsidered trifles, when the men had gone to work
after breakfast, and absconding with the same. The cook, too,
expostulated, inasmuch as the 'traveller,' after availing himself
copiously of the meals set before him, generally took the precaution of
loading himself with 'cooked food' sufficient for the next day or two,
whereby he, the cook, was kept baking and boiling all day and half the
night, in addition to his ordinary work.
For some or all of these reasons, the 'travellers' hut' was decided
upon. A roomy and substantial structure, placed near the creek or dam,
as the case might be, at a certain distance from the other buildings, to
which all future travellers not being gentlefolk, coming with
introductions to the overseer's quarters, or 'the big house,' were
relegated. 'Bunks' or sleeping-places, a table, and stools were mostly
provided; also a load of firewood, an axe, a frying-pan, bucket, and
iron pot.
Wayfarers henceforth came under the obligation to cook for themselves.
The frying of chops, the boiling of beef and the baking of
cakes—operations, with which every bushman is familiar, not being
considered to be hardships worth speaking of. The stock of firewood was
kept up, it being found that, in default, the uninvited guests felt no
delicacy in burning the interior fittings, or even the doors and window
frames. To this sanctuary, Mr. Stoate, in place of his former
comfortable camp with Hardwick, was fain to betake himself. It was half
a mile 'down the creek,' and he cursed freely at being told by the
overseer that he must turn out his horse in the 'strangers' paddock,'
another half-mile farther, and on no account to put him into the
homestead horse-paddock.
'I'm not going to have all the feed ate up that I've saved for the
station horses,' said that functionary, in decided tones, 'and so I tell
you. You shearers and rouseabouts think it's nothing, I suppose, to find
grass for a hundred or two horses, and a mob of bullocks big enough to
stock a small run. But you'll have to pay for your grass one of these
fine days, if you don't mind your eye.'
'D'ye think a man's to walk all over the bloomin' bush, lookin' for work
and carrying oats and hay with him, if he's got a moke?' growled Stoate.
'The squatters have got all the blessed country, and they grudge a pore
man a mouthful of food, and every blade of grass his horse eats.'
'A poor man!' said the overseer. 'What sort of a poor man d'ye call
yourself, Stoate? Your cheque last year, what with fencing and shearing,
was over forty pounds for three months' work. You've neither wife, chick
nor child (not in this country, anyhow). What have you done with your
money? Spent it in town; now you come up here crawling and begging for
the bread you eat, and doing all the harm you can to the men you're
living on. Why don't you keep a pound or two for the road, like Bill
Hardwick and other chaps? Then you needn't be beholden to any one; and
if you like to talk rot to the men that are fools enough to trust you,
that's their look-out. But to come here and to every station along the
river begging for food and trying to harm the men you're living on is
mean, d—d mean, and treacherous to boot. If the boss was of my way of
thinking, he'd never let you inside a shed of his, or pay you another
pound for shearing, and now you know my mind,—take your grub.'
And then Mr. Macdonald, an athletic Australian Scot, who towered above
the short though wiry Londoner as does a mastiff above a lurcher, poured
the pannikin of flour into the 'tucker bag' which Stoate held out, and
cutting off a lump of fat mutton tossed it contemptuously at him.
Stoate caught the meat before it fell, and looked at the overseer with
evil passions writ plain in his sullen face and snaky eye, as he said:
'You might come to be sorry for this some day, boss, big as you are!'
'Yes, you sneaking hound, I know what that means. But I've got old Harry
Bower (who used to shepherd here long ago, before he turned bushranger)
as night-watchman at the shed, in case some of you dogs that disgrace
the Shearers' Union take a fancy to light it up. He was a _man_ when he
took to the bush. _You'd_ do it and fellows like you, only you haven't
the pluck. He's got a double-barrelled gun, and swears by his God he'll
use it if he catches any curs sneaking about the shed after dark. The
grass is too green to burn for a month or two, but if I come across you
near a bush fire, after shearing, I'll shoot you like a crow. So take
that with you—and do your worst.'
Mr. Macdonald, though a born Australian, had inherited, it will be seen,
the characteristic 'perfervidum ingenium.'
It seemed imprudent of him to speak so openly before the crowd of
shearers and '_bona-fide_ travellers,' so called. But a bold, declared
policy is sometimes more diplomatic than a halting, opportunist one. The
men knew that war was declared, given certain acts of aggression or
intimidation on their part. Severe sentences would unquestionably
follow—if convictions were secured before the courts. On the whole,
though they did not fear him, they respected him more for his openness
and decided action.
'He's a _man_ that hits out straight from the shoulder,' said one young
fellow. 'I like that sort. You know where you have 'em. I don't hold
with all this Union racket. It does more harm than good, to my mind. The
most of these delegates is reg'lar blatherskites, as I wouldn't trust to
carry a pound note across the street. Pretty coves to make laws for the
likes of us.'
'I'm dashed sorry I ever had any truck with this Union crowd,' said his
mate, as they walked away. 'I'd never no call to complain, as I know. If
I didn't like a man's ways in his shed, I didn't shear there. There's
plenty more. I don't fancy free men like us shearers bein' under one
man's thumb, and him lookin' out for himself all the time. It's too much
of the monkey for me, and I'm not goin' to stand it after this season,
no matter what comes of it.'
The minor troubles having been surmounted, the roll-call read over, the
rouseabouts settled and contented—each man in receipt of twenty-five
shillings per week, with everything found on a scale of liberality, not
to say profuseness, huts, cooks, wood and water, beef and mutton, tea
and sugar, vegetables—everything reasonable and unreasonable, in fact,
that the heart of bushman could desire.
The shearers, in number nearly a hundred, were apparently placated by
being allowed to shear for the first time at Tandara under 'Union
Rules,' a copy of which was posted up in a prominent part of the shed,
setting forth that on certain points of dispute, if such should arise,
the Delegate, that important, dignified personage, should have the power
of joint decision with the shed manager. Wool had gone down nearly
one-half in price, fat sheep as much or more; but holding to a modern
doctrine that wages were not to be regulated by profits, and that Labour
and not Capital provided the wage-fund, the same rate of payment per
hundred sheep as was paid in more prosperous times had been exacted by
the shearers' representatives. This was agreed to under protest, though
considered inequitable by the proprietors of North Yalla-doora and other
representative sheds as the lesser evil, compared with that of a delayed
shearing and perhaps ruined wool clip. A truly serious matter.
For the same reason the Union Rules had been accepted by several
proprietors, though much against the grain, and the woolshed ticketed
for the first time as a 'Union Shed.' This was done under the impression
that a feeling of loyalty to the principles which professed to guide the
Shearers' Union would ensure steady and continuous work.
It was a concession to expediency, unwillingly made by Mr. Hunter and
others at the last moment, in the hope of 'getting the shearing over
quickly'—a matter involving great gain or loss. The latter, in this
particular era of low prices of wool and stock of all kinds, cattle and
horses, as well as sheep, approaching the margin of ruin, ominously
close. 'If the fellows shear decently and behave themselves, I don't
care what they stick up in the shed, or what they call their confounded
Union. They shore well enough for me and Anderson last year, so I shall
go on with them as long as they treat me well. You might as well do so,
too.'
This had been the reasoning of Mr. M'Andrew, one of Mr. Hunter's
neighbours, a shrewd, somewhat self-seeking man of the world. And it had
a savour of argument about it. 'What did it matter,' he had said, 'how
other squatters looked at the question? All they had to think of was to
get their own work properly done, and let every man mind his own
business. He was not sure that the Pastoral Association did much good.
It only set the men and masters more at odds with each other. A great
deal of this ill-feeling and strike had been brought on by such
proprietors as old Jackson, M'Slaney, and Pigdon. Men notoriously hard
and grasping in their dealings with their employés—cutting down wages,
the price of shearing and contract bush work, in every way possible;
feeding, housing, and paying their people badly, while charging
exorbitant prices for necessaries—flour, meat, shears, tobacco—all
things, in fact, which they could not carry with them and were bound to
buy from the station store. These pastoralists were primarily
responsible for the dissatisfaction which had led to the strikes and
rioting. For his part, as he had always acted fairly and squarely with
his men, as everybody knew, it was not to be expected that he should be
compelled to pay up for a contest which he had no share in bringing on.'
This had seemed fair reasoning to that class of men who are glad of any
excuse to avoid paying cash out of pocket and to the avowal of a decided
policy. But there were other squatters equally averse to unnecessary
outlay, who, possessing more forecast and logical acumen, refused on
principle to make terms with the shearers' or any other Union. They had
stated their grounds of dissent from the policy of opportunism, and,
what was more important, acted upon them with courage and consistency.
'This station,' said Archibald Douglas Kinross, 'chiefly freehold land,
with the sheep depasturing thereon, is _my_ property, as the law stands
at present. And I claim the right of every Briton to manage his own
affairs in his own way. To employ persons to do my work—_my_ work, you
understand, not any one else's—as I shall choose, in my own way and
after my own taste. If any section of workmen does not wish to work for
me, they are at liberty not to do so. I leave them absolute freedom in
that respect; but if they accept my pay and my employment, they must do
my work _as I choose_—not as _they_ choose—all socialistic sophistry
notwithstanding.
'Australia still contains men willing to work for high wages and good
food, and to do what they are told by a fair employer, and if I am
threatened or my property injured by lawless ill-disposed persons, I
shall appeal to that statute under which law and order have hitherto, in
Australia, been vindicated. Moreover I, Archie Kinross, am _not_ going
to place myself under the heel of any body of men calling themselves by
one name or another. Once concede Trade Unions their right to coerce the
individual, and farewell to that freedom which has so long been the
Briton's boast.
'Every man who had the misfortune to acquire or inherit property would,
as the so-called Unions gained power by cowardly subservience or
mistaken reasoning, be at the mercy of an irresponsible, ignorant,
perhaps more or less unprincipled committee, anxious to blackmail those
more fortunately placed than themselves.
'They would be told how many servants they were to employ, and what they
were to pay them; feed, clothe, and otherwise provide for them. Not
improbably, other concessions would be gradually exacted. The whole
result being reached in a state of modified communism, certain to end in
bloodshed and revolution. A social upheaval, which all history tells us
is the invariable precursor of a military despotism.'
* * * * *
After ever so much trouble, worry and anxiety, arising from the
offensively independent and even obstructive attitude of the shearers at
all the sheds in the Lower Darling and elsewhere in New South Wales, a
start was made at Tandara.
Jack Macdonald, bitterly aggrieved that his employers should have given
in, was almost out of his mind with the irritating, puerile demands and
objections which he had to meet.
'In old days he would have knocked down the ringleader, and told the
sympathisers to "go to the devil"—that they need never show up at this
shed or station again. Never should they get a pound of mutton or a
pannikin of flour from the store, if they were dying of hunger; that
they were ungrateful dogs, and here—at Tandara of all places, known for
the most liberal station in the whole blooming district for pay and
rations, where useless old hands were pensioned and kept on at
make-believe work, when no one else would have had them on the place;
where more expensive improvements—huts, fencing, tanks, wells, and
stock-yards—had been made and put up, than on any station from the
Queensland border to the sea. And now, what had come of it all?
'Where was the gratitude of the working-man, who, with his fellows, had
been fed, lodged, and supported in good seasons and bad—when wool was
down and money was scarce, and half the squatters on the verge of ruin?
When the shed was down with influenza last year, didn't the wife and
daughters of the "boss," who happened to be staying over shearing that
year, make jelly, sago puddings and cakes, all sorts of blooming
luxuries for the men that were going to die (by their own account), and
couldn't hold their heads up?
'And now, because labour was scarce, owing to the Coolgardie goldfield
having broken out, and the season coming on early, with the burr and
grass seeds ripening every day, they must try and ruin their best
friends, the squatters—threatening to strike for this and that—faulting
the meat, the bread, the sugar, the tea, every mortal thing (far better
than ever they'd been used to), and all at the bidding of a fellow like
Stead, a man that had been educated at the expense of the State, people
putting their hands in their pockets to pay for his schooling. And this
is the first use he makes of it. It was enough to make a man feel
ashamed of the colony he was born in, ashamed of being an Australian
native, enough to make him clear out to South Africa, where the Boers
and blackfellows were said to be no great things, but couldn't be such
sneaks and dogs and thieves as his countrymen here.'
Jack Macdonald repeated this unreserved statement of opinion so often,
for the benefit of all whom it might concern, that he began to know it
by heart, and half thought of standing for the district, when the next
election came round. However, the men liked him, and didn't mind his
hard words, knowing that they held the key of the position, and that he
was powerless if he wanted his sheep shorn. He couldn't afford to kick
them out, however much he might wish so to do. All the sheds in the
district were short of men, and if the shearers left in a body, the
year's clip would suffer ruinous loss and injury. So they turned up
their noses at the beautiful, fat, well-cooked mutton,—said 'they wanted
more chops.' To which Macdonald sarcastically replied 'that he supposed
they must grow a new breed of sheep, _all chops_.' In spite of their
_five_ meals a day, early breakfast, tea and 'brownie' at eleven
o'clock, dinner at one, afternoon tea at four o'clock, and supper at
half-past six, they were not satisfied, and, indeed, would not have gone
without a second supper at 9 P.M. if the cook had not refused
point-blank, and being a fighting man of some eminence, invited the
deputation to 'step outside and put up their hands,' one after the
other.
However, as before mentioned, a start _was_ made, and though the quality
of shearing was no great things, and Mr. Stoate, duly elected Shearers'
Delegate, produced his appointment and walked up and down the shed, with
great dignity, carefully ignoring Macdonald, and ostentatiously writing
or telegraphing to W. Stead, Esq., President of the A.S.U., Wagga
Wagga,[1] N.S. Wales, some kind of progress was made, and the super's
face began to lose its saturnine expression. The weather, which in the
early days of spring had been showery and unfavourable, changed for the
better, and the heaviest of the flocks having been shorn, 'big
tallies'—a hundred and thirty, and even one hundred and fifty or
sixty—began to be made.
Footnote 1:
Pronounced 'Waūgăh Waūgăh.'
The discontented shearers even, whose minds had been unsettled by
specious, communistic talk, prophesying a general distribution of
property among the wage-earners, according to the gospel of Bellamy,
commenced to be more or less satisfied. Visions of the big cheque, to
which each man was adding now (prospectively) at the rate of from a
pound to thirty-five shillings _a day_, commenced to float in the air.
All was comparative peace and joy. Macdonald, it is true, had a trifling
altercation with Mr. Janus Stoate one Friday afternoon, during which the
last-named gentleman received a telegram, which he put into his pocket,
after reading it, with a sneering smile. 'You'll know directly who's
master on this floor—you, the hired servant of a capitalist, as is
livin' on the blood of these pore ignorant chaps; or me, that's been
elected by the workers of the land to see as they gets justice from
their grindin' employers.'
Macdonald made one step towards the insolent underling, as might the
second mate of a north sea whale-ship, if cook or fo'c's'le hand dared
withstand him, while the wrathful glitter in his eye caused the offender
to alter his tone. But the thought of the shearing, now three-parts
through, being delayed on his account, was even a stronger controlling
force.
Halting, with an effort, he glared for a few seconds at the contemptible
creature, that yet had such power of annoyance, as if he could crush him
with his heel. Then with studiously calm and measured tones, he said:
'You'd do great things if you were able, Mr. Delegate Stoate. If I had
my way, I'd have you shot and nailed up on a barn door, as they do your
namesakes in the old country. That's the only way to treat varmint, and
it's a pity it isn't done here.'
The man received this little compliment with an attempt at cynical
self-possession, which his shifty, malignant gaze belied, as the small
eyes gleamed with reptilian malice. 'I'll learn yer,' he hissed out, 'to
talk to the people's chyce as if he was the dirt under yer feet.' 'Men
of the Australian Shearers' Union,' he said, raising his voice to a
shrill cry, 'listen to me, and drop them shears—every man Jack of yer.
D'ye know what's in this bloomin' tallagram? A strike's ordered. D'ye
hear?—a _strike_! Here's the wire from the Head Centre at Wagga.
'"By order of the President and Council of the Australian Shearers'
Union. Every shed in the Darling district, Union or non-Union, is hereby
commanded to come out and stop working _instantly_ on receiving this
notice from the Delegate of the Branch, under penalty of being reported
to the Council of the Union at Headquarters.
Signed by me, W. STEAD,
At Wagga Wagga, this 30th September 189-."'