*THE
WORKER*
Brisbane, January 5, 1895.
The
Editorial Mill.
Our
Motto: “Socialism in our time.”
A
Happy New Year to you, reader! And at the same time that we repeat
the good wish that is on everybody's lips we would ask you: Are
Queenslanders as happy as they might be? Is it any easier to earn a
living now in Queensland than in former year? It ought to be. The
wonderful progress in all departments of industry has increased the
production of wealth enormously. In this colony the production of
cattle, sheep, and other commodities has been out of all proportion
to the increase in population. It should be in the power of every man
to say: “ I am sure of the means to bring up my family well so long
as I am prepared to work,” but it isn't. Parents are at their wits'
end to know what to do with their sons and daughters, what trade to
teach them with a fair prospect of employment after completing their
indentures. Would they make their boys farmers, they find the
agriculturist merely a land slave. Would they make them carpenters,
they find carpenters working for a few shillings a day and glad to
get that. The building trades are all over stocked. The clerking and
shop assistant trades are overrun with men desiring employment. Would
they make their girls dressmakers, that business is overdone.
Tailoresses? They are poorly paid and overworked. The boot trade?
Girls working for a wretched pittance. In despair they decided to
send them to service, and then discover the rate of wages is
sometimes as low as half-a-crown a week. Business every where is bad.
The depression covers everything and everybody with its fearful
blight. This is a state of affairs which should not be, and the
WORKER trusts that one of the first of the new good resolutions that
its readers will make will be a determination to endeavour to alter
the laws which are responsible for the depression.
*
* *
The
New South Wales Government has resolved to establish a new department
of Labour and Industry with Mr. Jacob Garrard as the Ministerial
head. Thus by slow degrees the various governments find themselves
compelled by the new public opinion to take notice of the unemployed
question, the question of all questions in these days of rapid
descharge through labour-saving inventions and commercial crises.
Some day Queensland will have its department of labour and industry –
not during the reign of the present Government, but as soon as
Queenslanders follow the example of New South wales and cast from
office the men who burke the unemployed question, through fear that
there will come a time in the colony's history when every man will
have employmeny, wages will rise, and profits will have a tendency to
diminish. The settlement of the unemployed question cannot safely be
put off much longer in Australia, and the decision of the Newcastle
miners to mass the unemplyed in Sydney shows that the recognition of
the necessity of a labour department has not struck the New South
Wales Government a moment too soon. The Coolgardies and the Wyalongs
do not increase and multiply, but the out-of-work does, and his
presence will soon become as grave a menace as the alien trouble. The
men who oppose the State right to employment must read very little of
the doings of statement in other countries, otherwise they would not
dread handling the matter so much as they do. It has been shown in
other places where labour colonies have been established there need
be no anxiety as to a large expenditure. To attempt to find work for
the unemployed need not cost the community anything like the expense
now incurred each year in the distribution of relief. The colony has
broad acres of unalienated land, a small portion of which is required
to established labour colonies where an unemployed man or woman may
apply for work as a right. Efficient managers could be appointed with
instructions to make the colonies as far as possible self-supporting.
St. Paul's splendid maxim “If a man will not work neither shall he
eat” might be put into operation. The country would be relieved of
a tribe of wanderers whose existence is a disgrace to the community,
and before long we should have labour settlements similar to that of
Frederiksoord, in Holland, which is a paradise in the middle of a
wilderness, “a land laden with roses and violets, a contented
industrious peasantry; a long succession of compact, fruitful farms,
good roads, shaded by trees, and excellent schools for the education
of the young – a veritable promised land,” as one writer puts it.
This would be a common-sense method of dealing with the unemployed
difficulty, and one which it is to be hoped will be followed by the
new department in New South Wales.
*
* *
A
contemporary declares that the WORKER is opposed to true liberty.
This is quite a mistake, as a brief glance at the Labour platform
will prove. It is true we hold aloft the ideal “Socialism in our
time.” Everybody has, or should have, an ideal, however unable to
act up to it. We can observe the immense possibilities ahead of
co-operation, and we advise the nation to try to put it into complete
practice. No person of sound mind would try to at once turn the
community into a nation sharing all things in common, and we have no
intention of undertaking such an impossible task. Our idea is to get
the nation through the Parliament to understake gradually and at the
same time as rapidly as practicable all that work which can be better
performed by the municipal council or government department than by
private enterprise. This would be only carrying out the objects of
“the State” - simply obeying the laws of progress. Few of the
opponents of Socialism or State co-operation have any idea of the
extent to which the State has already interfered with the liberty of
the individual. Health Acts, Factory Acts, Employers Liability Acts!
In many ways the State has seen fit to curtail the liberty of the
individual for the good of mankind. At one time in our history
everything was left to private enterprise. As one writer says; “Even
the administration of justice was a private matter. If a man were
wronged, he tried to secure justice for himself, not by appealing to
the community, but by using his own strength or that of his nearest
relatives. And one of the marks of civilisation is the degree in
which private enterprise has been superseded by public justice. So
with the maintenance of roads. In early days the State constructed a
few roads, but only for military purposes. It was left for private
enterprise to keep in order the mercantile thoroughfares, and a
wretched attempt they made at it.” Liberty has to this extent been
interfered with, but surely every person must admit that although
there has been a curtailment of individual liberty there has been an
extension of the truest liberty to the whole of the community.
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