you're too set up to be reasonable.'
'Good-bye, Bill, and don't be going and running risks at another man's bidding; and if you bring that man here again, as sure as my name's Jane Hardwick, I'll set the dogs on him.' And here Jenny went into the cottage, and shut the door with a bang, while Bill rode down the track to join his companion, feeling distinctly uncomfortable; the more so, as he reflected that he and Jenny had never parted in this way before.
'You've been a long time saying good-bye,' said that gentleman, with a sneering accent in his voice; 'that's the worst of bein' married, you never can follow your own opinions without a lot of barneyin' and opposition. It's a curious thing that women never seem to be on the side of progress—they're that narrow-minded, as they don't look ahead of the day's work.'
'My old woman's more given to look ahead than I am,' said Bill seriously. 'But, of course, we all know that we must stick together, if we expect to get anything out of the employers.'
'Yes, yes—by George, you're quite right,' said Stoate, as if Bill had enunciated an original and brilliant idea. 'What I and the workers want is to bring the capitalists on their knees—the labour element has never had its proper share of profits in the past. But we're going to have things different in the future. How was all the big estates put together, and them fine houses built, except by our labour? And what do we get after all, now the work's done? We've never had our fair share. Don't you see that?' Here he looked at Bill, who could find nothing to say but—
'I suppose not.'
'Suppose not? We've as much right to be ridin' in our buggies as the man as just passed us with that slashin' pair. Our labour made the land valuable—built the houses and put up the fences. Where do we come in, I ask you?'
'Well, I suppose the men that worked got their wages, didn't they?' answered Bill. 'There's been a deal of employment the last few years. I did pretty well out of a fencing contract, I know, and my mate started a big selection from his share.'
'Yes, yes, I daresay, that's where you fellers make the mistake. If you get a few pounds slung to you by these capitalists, you don't think of the other poor chaps walkin' about half starved, begging a meal here and a night's lodging there. What we ought to go in for is a co-operative national movement. That's the easiest of all. One man to find the money.'
'Is it?' Bill could not help saying, interrupting the flood of Stoate's eloquence. 'I've always found it dashed hard to find a few pounds.'
'I don't mean fellers like us; we work hard—a dashed sight too hard for all we get. I mean the regular professional capitalist, in a manner of speakin', that's got his money by buying land, when the Government oughtn't never to have sold it, if they'd had any savey, or had it left him by his father, as had robbed the people some other way. Well, he finds the money, you and I the muscle—and mark you, they can't do nothin' without that—and others, smartish chaps as comes from the people mostly, finds the brains.'
'And what after that?'
'That's what I'm a-coming to,' answered Stoate pompously. 'When the sheep's shorn, the fat ones sold, the wheat reaped, and the money put in the bank, we all divide fair, according to our shares. So much for interest on capital, so much for labouring work, so much for head work, so much for light, easy things like clerking, as most any fool can do.'
'That sounds pretty fair,' replied Bill, scratching his head, as he endeavoured to grasp the complex conditions of the scheme. 'But who's to boss the whole thing? There must be a boss?'
'Oh, of course, there'll be a council—elected by the people—that is of course the shareholders in each industrial, co-operative establishment; they all have votes, you know. The council will do all the bossing.'
'Oh, I see, and all share alike. One man's as good as another, I suppose.'
'Certainly, all have equal rights; every man willing to work has a right to have work found for him by the State.'
'But suppose he won't work when it is found for him? You and I have known plenty of coves like that.'
'Well, of course, there is a difference in men—some haven't the natural gift, as you may say—don't care for "hard graft," but you must remember no one'll have to work hard when labour's federated.'
'How'll the work be done, then?'
'Why, you see, every one will have to do four or six hours a day, rich and poor, young and old, from sixteen to sixty. Before that their eddication [Mr. Stoate's early environment—his father was a radical cobbler—had fixed his pronunciation of that important word inexorably], this eddication, I say (which is the great thing for a worker, and enables him to hold his own against the employers, who've always had a monopoly of it), has to be attended to. After sixty, they've to be pensioned off, not wanted to do no more work. And as Bellamy says in his Looking Backward (a great book, as all our chaps ought to read)—"If every one in the State worked their four hours a day, the whole work of the world could be easy done, and no one the worse for it."'
'That sounds well enough,' said Bill thoughtfully, 'but I'm afraid it wouldn't wash. A lot of chaps would be trying for the easy parts, and those that were cast for the rough and tumble wouldn't do it with a will, or only half and half. And who's to draft 'em off? The fellers elected to do it would have all the say, and if they had a down on a chap—perhaps a deal better man than themselves—they could drop him in for the lowest billets going.'
'That could all be set right in the usual way,' replied Stoate, pompously mouthing his words as if addressing an imaginary audience. 'Every member of the Association would have the right of appeal to the Grand Council.'
'And suppose they didn't side with the workin' feller—these talking chaps, as like as not, would hang together—he'd have to grin and bear it. He'd be no better than a slave. Worse than things are now. For a man can get a lawyer, and fight out his case before the P.M., and the other beaks. They're mostly fair and square—what I've seen of 'em. They've no interest one way or the other.'
'No more would the Grand Labour Council.'
'Don't know so much about that, working coves are middlin' jealous of one another. If one chap's been elected to the Council, as you call it, and another feller opposed him and got beat, there's sure to be bad blood between them, and the man that's up like enough'll want to rub it into the man that's down—and there'd be no one to see fair play like the beaks.'
'Why, you're getting to be a regular "master's man." That's not the way to talk, if you're goin' to be a Unionist.'
'Oh, I'll follow the Union,' replied Bill, 'if things are going to be fair and square, not any other way, and so I tell you. But if it's such a jolly good thing to put your money in a station and share and share alike with all the other chaps, why don't some of you Union chaps put your money together?—lots of you could raise a hundred or more if you didn't drink it. Then you could shear your own sheep, sell your own wool, and raise your own bread, meat, vegetables—everything. You could divide the profits at the end of the year, and if running a squatting station's such a thundering good thing, why you'd all make fortunes in no time. What do you say to that now?'
'Well, of course, it sounds right enough,' answered Stoate, with less than his usual readiness. 'There's a lot of things to be considered about afore you put your money into a big thing like that. You've got to get the proper sort of partners—men as you know something about, and that can be depended on for to work steady, and do what they're told.'
'Do what they're told?
