Bystanders' Notebook June 15, 1895.

*THE WORKER*

BRISBANE, JUNE 15, 1895.

Bystanders' Notebook.

WHAT TO DO.

Men ever talk of reform, and say that we must teach masses to look for better days, and yet they never think of taking the bram out of their own eye. Hear a man pitch about the evils of drinking; five minutes after he has met a friend and says “Mine's a whiskey.” Another man is a red-hot unionist, lends a man a quid and tells everybody of his generosity, or has his name down in two sheds starting on the same date. What we want to do is not to talk of reforming others, but to start right away on bedrock and reform ourselves. We're all tarred with the same brush. I can tell others what to do, but you don't catch me doing it. Oh dear no, I'm a reformer. Why, if every man in the bush, or even every leading man, started to reform himself, we would gallop to the millenium quick and lively. Find your own weak points and endeavour to alter them. Keep on trying, even if you never succeed. Far better, he who fights all his life 'gainst some special failing, even if he never conquers it, and dies, bereft of friends and all, under a gum tree, than he, who never having anything to tempt him, lives pure and upright all his life and dies in a feather bed, with the odour of sanctity and respectability all around him.

TRUTHFUL DICK.

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GARBLED GOVERNMENT REPORTS.

The preposterous statements made by some of the Government picnic party re the alleged absence of unemployed at the towns they visited is simply astounding in its colossal impudence and would amuse people up this way were it not so cruelly sad heartlessly false. These Fat Men legislators were invited here and there and entertained by toadies and parvenus whose heads were turned at being privileged to hob-nob with Cabinet Ministers and bask in the reflected glory of their effulgent presence. Sycophant-like, they assured the Ministers that, owing to their heaven-born financing, work is now plentiful and all surplus labour is provided for. Ministers and their parasites shook hands with each other, assured themselves they were deuced clevah fellahs, and then gave forth their famous hee-haws, which other donkeys up and down the colony hastened to re-echo, thereby proclaiming themselves to be the most successful asses that ever brayed. How very applicable to this class of people are some of Swift's lines on an upstart -

Let purse-proud M----- next approach;

With what an air he mounts his coach.

A cart would best become the knave.

A dirty parasite and slave;

His heart in poison deeply dipt,

His tongue with oily accents tipt;

A smile still ready at command;

The pliant bow, the forehead bland,

Puffed up with pride and insolence

Without a grain of common sense.

See with what consequence he stalks -

With what pomposity he talks?

See how the gaping crowd admire

The stupid blockhead and the liar?

How long shall vice triumphant reign;

How long shall mortals bend to gain?

How long shall virtue hide her face,

And leave her votaries in disgrace?

I made a rough list yesterday and found that here, in Townsville, over thirty men whom I am personally acquainted with are at present unemployed and unregistered, and I know that these are only a small fraction of the scores of good steady men who are out of work. Anyone not wilfully blind can see them day after day walking our streets in their vain search for employment. When I read the twaddle of a lot of fat, callous, self-complacent money bags who have never known what it is to carry a swag looking for work or feel the pinch of poverty and hunger, I feel compelled to write these few lines to let Brisbane workers know the truth about labour in this district.

COSMOPOLITAN, TOWNSVILLE.

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THE AIM OF THE TRUE MODERN SOCIALIST.

The aim of the Socialist Party is not the subdivision of property, whether capital or land, but the control of it by the representatives of the community. The aim of the modern Socialist movement is not to enable this or that comparatively free person to lead an ideal life, but to loosen the fetters of the millions who toil in our factories and mines, and who cannot possibly be moved to Freeland or Utopia. For the last two generations we have had social prophets, who, seeing the impossibility of at once converting the whole country, founded here and there small companies of the faithful, who immediately endeavoured to put into practice whatever complete ideal they professed. The gradual adoption of this ideal by the whole people was expected from the steady expansion of these isolated communities. But in no single case has this expectation been fulfilled. Most of these isolated colonies outside the world have failed. Some few, under more favourable circumstances, have grown prosperous. But whether they become rich or remain poor, they are equally disastrous to the real progress of Socialism inside the world as we know it. Wise prophets nowadays do not found a partial community which adopts the whole faith; they cause rather the partial adoption of their faith by the whole community. Incomplete reform is effected in the world of ordinary citizens instead of complete reform outside of it. Genuine Socialism grows by vertical instead of horizontal expansion;

we must make ever more Socialistic the institutions amidst which we live, instead of expecting them to be suddenly surprised by any new set imported from elsewhere. By this method progress may be slow but failure is impossible. No nation having once nationalised or municipalised any industry has ever retraced its steps or reversed its action.

SIDNEY WEBB.