MAKING SOME PROGRESS.

*THE WORKER*

Brisbane, December 22, 1894.

Bystanders' Notebook.

HE LORD SAVE US FROM CANT.

Some fifteen years ago one of the largest employers in New South Wales observed to the writer of a Brisbane Courier editorial, - “I have no patience with the cant about mutuality of interest between employer and employed, and the duty of the man to implicitly trust the master. My long experience in the coal-mining industry teaches me that the justifiable and proper attitude of the man towards the master – at least where great armies of workers are employed – is not an attitude of confidence but of habitual distrust. There is mutuality of interest in a broad sense of course, but in this age of excessive competition there is also essential conflict of interest. Between the consumer who tries to buy in the cheapest market and the producer whose grand object it is to reduce the cost of production, the working man has undoubted cause to dread being ground as between upper and nether millstones. The competing coal-mining companies are almost at any time prepared to destroy capital and rob the working man in their insane efforts to crush each other. I repeat, then, that in industrial differences the doctrine of mutuality of interest as preached by employed is the merest cant.

AN OLD PLATITUDE.

What a pity the writer did not, years ago, make public the candid admission of the large employer! How many weary searches after the right path to a manly independence might have been avoided! For have not the workers in these colonies been repeatedly warned that the interests of capital and labour are identical, and that anything like an organised attempt to increase the cost of production by demanding higher wages or shorter hours would lead to the withdrawal of capital from the country, and consequent total loss of employment at even a low rate of wages; and have not the workers rushed hither and thither following this politician and that politician in the vain hope that casting their votes for either of the old political parties meant prosperous times and regular employment at high wages. Even labour agitators, trade union officials, have been so convinced of the truth of the old platitude “The interests of capital and labour are identical” that they re-echoed it from platform to platform as the enunciation of a natural and therefore unalterable law. Even so late as this week a labour convention in America has rejected the Socialistic plank in the Federation programme purely out of deference, no doubt, to this miserable old mummy, “the interests of capital and labour are identical.”

MAKING SOME PROGRESS.

Still, we are making some headway when a daily press editor can be found honest enough to repeat a conversation containing so fundamental a political and economic truth as that in these days of excessive competition there is an essential conflict of interest between the employer and employe'. Time was when such a thing would have been impossible, for the proprietor of a daily newspaper a few years ago had made use of the fiction so often that he really believed it himself, and his occasional attempts to make his employe' somewhat more comfortable so convinced him of the “mutuality of interests” that not a line to the contrary would have been permitted to appear in his paper. I recollect one employer – a good-natured, upright, hard-working old gentleman – who made a fortune out of his employe's, and who prided himself on paying a higher rate of wages than any other employer – who would have looked upon a statement that the interests of the servant master were not identical as the rankest heresy. Yet, although the old man behaved better to his time, his interests were not those of his employe's, excepting in the broad sense motioned by the candid employer referred to at the commencement of this article.

NOT A BENEVOLENT INSTITUTION.

That old man is dead, and left a fortune of some hundreds of thousands of pounds. Some of the employe's who assisted him to build up his fortune are also dead, and died penniless; others are still alive and still penniless, for the wages they receive are barely sufficient to keep them and their families not to think of saving money; the balance of the wealth that should have been theirs under a co-operative commonwealth having gone to swell the fortune of the old man, or fill the coffers of his successors. So you see that the interests of employer and employed are not identical. This fact is becoming more than ever apparent to the remnant who work for the old man's successors. At one time it was the pride of the old gentleman that every employe' who became too aged to earn as much as in his young days, received £1 per week as a pension, besides what he could earn. The successors have abolished all that. The old sentimental ideas of at least caring for one's old employe' as much as for one's dog has been exploded, and in the words of a business man, the firm is now carried on not as a benevolent institution, but on strict business lines. No doubt in order to keep pace with the excessive competition of the age, it is necessary for the employer to do away with all sentiment, pay no pensions, give no picnics, &c. and treat human beings merely as cattle which are entitled hands instead of heads (as somebody puts it); but let the employe' understand his true position. Let him distinctly know that in this competitive age the employe' who treats his men liberally is likely to go to the wall unless other employers are compelled to treat their employe's liberally also. And let him understand that when the employers combine together to lower the rate of wages or prevent their increase the interests of the two parties are so more identical than are the interests of pick pocket and client, and not so nearly identical as the interests of slave and slave-owner, the latter at least having for his own sake to keep his slave alive, while an employe' may die and his place is immediately filled without the premium paid for the bonds man.

LET HIM KNOW THE TRUTH.

Let him know that if his place can be filled for 5s. Per week less, ability being equal, his employer will fill his place or reduce his wages, and that if an employer can obtain a machine to do his work, “to save labour,” the machine will be acquired even though the employe' may, after a life -time spent in learning a trade, have to turn his hand to another with small prospect of even moderate success. Half the labour agitator's work would be done if employe's could be made to understand their true position in regard to their employers. It is this wretched superstition that interests are identical which makes men afraid to stand up manfully for their rights. It is this plausible fallacy which induces men to accept the rate of wages, thinking that a refusal will cause capital to flee from the country (as if there were any place on earth that capital could flee to and not meet with labour troubles). It is this seeming truism which misleads many men into accepting their weary round of low paid labour, instead of battling with their own right hand – at the ballot box for an alteration of that condition of things which results in the working classes receiving only about a third of the total wealth produced.

SPEED THE DAY !

Speed the day when education shall teach all men that there is really no mutuality of interest between the modern employer and his servant; when each worker shall be seized of the truth that no employer will employ him unless he is sure of making a profit out of his labour! Then the prospect of speedy reform will be brighter, for men will see that the only hope for a mutuality of interests is in co-operation of both the voluntary and the State brand. Then workers of every kind will throw aside personal animosities and jealousies, and present a united front to the combination of employers which would lower the cost of production by reducing the wages of those who produce.

W.