# Oliver Spence/Chapter 2

CHAPTER II.
THE CAUSES OF THE INSURECTION.
After the statesmen of Australia had succeeded in bringing about the federation of the Australian states, the natural result was the formation of a large standing army, which, as our readers are aware, the Federal Government, from its headquarters at Albury, made ample use of as a valuable auxiliary in their determined maintenance of "law and order," "freedom of contract," and the right of the syndicates to employ men at as low a wage and as long hours as the necessities of the laboring people might compel them to accept. Boycotting, or any attempts on the part of strikers to interfere, even in the most peaceful way, with "free" or non-union laborers, were treated as overt acts of rebellion, and the strikers were promptly dragooned into submission. The result was that the various unions had been gradually broken up, and were succeeded by branches of a vast secret organisation known as "The Brotherhood of the Poor." The ramifications of this association included all sections of workers, and even criminals and social outcasts were admitted to membership, it being a maxim of the Brotherhood that, the outcast being himself a victim of unjust and corrupt institutions and laws, his aid would, on occasion, be of greater value than that of those who had not been strengthened and sharpened by the Ishmael-like life of the outcast.
This formidable body, which scorned any definite reconstructive platform, and appeared to aim only at the destruction of what they considered a corrupt and festering civilisation, was very skilfully and powerfully organised, and had become so strong and far-reaching in its membership, and had been in existence for so long, that the ruling class despaired of suppressing it, and had at last decided to affect to ignore its existence. The career of the Brotherhood had been distinguished by acts of heroism, fortitude, audacity and fidelity which far surpassed anything recorded of previous secret bands of conspirators. Monopolists who had rendered themselves particularly odious to the populace by the ostentatious display of their possessions, or by open and cynical disregard of the feelings of those who were forced by necessity to minister to their desires, we frequently killed in their own houses by men or women who, prior to making their escape stamped upon the bodies of their victims the seal of the Brotherhood. It was only by the exercise of the utmost caution and the expenditure of large sums of money in the payment of faithful bodyguards, that the leading members of the syndicates and corporations which controlled the government and industries of the country saved themselves from assassination. The members of the Brotherhood were also possessed of an amount of knowledge ​of military tactics, and the use of explosives, which was very surprising when one considers the small amount of leisure left them by the nature of their daily avocations; and eventually this remarkable conspiracy became still more potent and terrible by the fact that Bourdin, a French chemist who was one of the members of the Brotherhood's Directing Council, had discovered a very powerful destructive agent. It was called Panmort, and was in the form of a gas, which, when liberated from the strong glass envelope in which it was inclosed, completely and terrifically destroyed everything with which it came in contact. Panmort balls, which were a little larger than ordinary revolver bullets, were used as ammunition for small ingeniously constructed air-guns, which would throw the balls to a considerable distance, where they would spread death and destruction all around.
Among the most deep-seated causes of the outbreak, although not its actual occasion, was the annihilation of the small-property-owning middle class by the operations of the Sydney financial rings. The middle class had been a decided safeguard against revolution, and a powerful conservative force. To members of that class, "everything that was, was right," so long as it did not interfere with their possession, or possible possession, of small 'properties'. They had served as a sort of buffer between the hungry proletarian poor and the surfeited, sybaritical rich. But the financiers, finding their opportunities for the greater acquisition of wealth and consequent power immensely increased by the additional facilities secured to them by their creatures, the members of the Federal parliament, hastened to extend their operations and ramifications throughout the length and breath of Australia, until so irresistible became their unfair competition, so gigantic their operations, and so immense their monopolies, that there scarcely remained a squatter, farmer, manufacturer, "small business man," or "thrifty" workman, who was not hopelessly and helplessly in the hands of the usurers.
Such was the condition of things, when a great and terrible drought, which, being unlooked for, had also been unprepared for, played huge havoc with the securities of the banks and other financial institutions. The most terrible financial crisis ever experienced in Australia immediately followed. Millions of sovereigns were rapidly withdrawn from the banks by "those in the know" and lodged for safety in the Sydney Money Stronghold, and the immediate and complete collapse of all the banks was only prevented by the action of the Federal Government in legislatively compelling the acceptance of the Banks' notes as a "legal tender." For a time the Government's action succeeded in "restoring confidence," but when it became quite apparent that the banks were unable to liquidate their liabilities in anything but their own discredited paper "promises to pay," the notes rapidly depreciated, and finally were treated as mere waste paper. A fierce cry then went up from the note holders, depositors, and shareholders who, it now became clear, had been remorselessly swindled and utterly ruined ​by the secret rings who formed he "inner circle" of bank directors and shareholders, while the great number of cruel and brutal evictions of those who were in the clutches of the banks, and whose homes were sold up to pay the banks debts, excited the indignation of the people to the pitch of frenzy. This indignation became greater still when it was seen that the rings (whose gold in the Money Stronghold was protected from their creditors by legal chicanery) were "rigging" the market, and were thus enabled through their agents to invariably obtain possession of the sold-up properties at phenomenally low figures. Then it was that the ruined middle class became formidable revolutionists, and in their deeds of desperate daring and even heroic revolutionary enterprise, surpassed anything that had been done by the habitually half-starved poor.
But at last the Federal Government took a step in an individualistic direction which had for its members and the class to which they belonged the most disastrous consequences. The various branches of the public service, though very corrupt, and used as a means of rewarding political and personal friends, or finding positions for the friends or relatives of women who secretly prostituted themselves to men in power, were yet regarded with hope by reformers, as stepping stones which they thought would lead to democratic State ownership of all means of production and exchange. But shortly after the financial crash which has just been referred to, the Government decided to dispose of the Australian Railways to the highest bidders. The financial "Inner Circle" at once formed a syndicate and purchased the railways. They then discharged large numbers of railway employés, and proceeded to work the railways on what they termed "commercial principle." The discharged men who previously had considered themselves a sort of "aristocracy of labor," and were noted for their comparative conservatism and contempt for those shut out of the sphere of government employment, now became furious in their denunciation of the ruling classes, and one of them one day observing the chief of the railway syndicate driving along the "block," seated between his two mistresses (seduced workmen's wives) shot him dead. The assassin was publicly executed but received an ovation from the assembled populace, and only the presence of a very strong military guard and the restraining influence of the Brotherhood chiefs, prevented his rescue. The whole of the ex-railway employés became energetic members of the Brotherhood.
The people, were now thoroughly ripe for insurrection, but awaited a leader. Such a person was found in Oliver Spence, a powerfully built and determined man who had been of what was termed "good family," was well read and a keen observer of men and things. The ruthless competition of the great syndicates had ruined his father, a small capitalist, and forced Oliver to turn his abnormal physical strength to account by earning his living as a navvy. This man's self-acquired military knowledge and inborn military genius at once marked him out to his comrades; and he speedily became the Commander-in-Chief of the Revolutionary Brotherhood of the Poor.
​On a certain day of the year in which our story opens, a mass meeting of the unemployed was announced to be held in the Sydney Domain. In this meeting the Brotherhood determined to take part. The Government, suspecting nothing, had taken no precautions against a possible outbreak, and the revolutionists consequently had everything their own way. Violent speeches were made, and ultimately the crowd, forming themselves with the aid of the drilled members of the Brotherhood into marching order, marched to the sack of the wealthy portion of the city. It was this crowd whose operations have been described in the first chapter.
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