New-York tribune., 1918-06-24
Australia Has No
Downtrodden People

Manual workers are said to be get
ting larger wages and doing less in
return than ever before, but think
this charge is unfair. It is usually
made by the mouthpeces of the bour-
geoisie. These people, like those whom
they oppose. are not always temperate
in their remarks. Both factions often
make sweeping statements which they
later regret. This was particularly
evident during the great railway and
tram strike which began last August
and which threatened to tie UP the
whole country. The workers struck,
asserting they would not permit the
railway officials to introduce q western
"back-breaking speed-up system" with
out their consent. The strike lasted
nearly three months, and was finally
', broken up, the workers being beaten.
The business people were pleased.
When the business interests and
middlemen accuse the laborites of be-
ing opportunists, and even disloyalists,
the labor people are not slow to hurl
back the epithets, with some additional
remarks. There arc the same mis-
understandings that have existed else
where during the entire period of the
industrial regime. But conditions are
almost the opposite of those which pre-
vailed in Russia before the revolution.
There is no cankerous system of aris-
tocratic and bourgeois graft in Aus
tralasia. The proletariat, instead of
being helpless under the heel of the
upper classes" is a militant factor
in government. There is no hunger. no
grinding poverty, no shuddering sense
of terrible injustice to the weak. There
can be no muzzling of private opinion
In these great democracics. There they
wash their linen in public, SO often
that they keep it quite clean.
An overseas observer who has tried
to school himself to sit, fguratively,
neither on the extreme right nor on
the left Of the chair, but somewhere
about the centre, may be pardoned if
he expresses intense admiration Of
the highly developed democratic gov
ernments in the Antipodes, and the OBJ
vious good faith and stalwart loyalty
of those whQ are on both sides Of the
political and social controversies
which now must be worked out care
fully and with as little friction as pos
sible. Customs and politics are ex-
actly opposite to those of Germany.
German writers prior to the war were
inclined to make fun of the Antipodean
democracy and idealism, but it is safe.
l think, to say that these same Ger
man writer's may now be wondering
whether, after all, Kultur and Welt
politik are not sort of Napoleonic
chimera.
While profiteering has been charged
on both sides in Australasia, it is hard
to judge the consensus of opinion
among the younger men who are over
seas. They have been too busily en-
gagged in France and elsewhere to form
very definite opinions about home poll
tics. The great majority of these men
are. of course, from the ranks of fac
tory. farm and shop workers. Far
from being profiteers, they are ac-
tually profit losers. Through the
favorable laws, the government aid,
the comparatively low cost of living and
the high profits and wages, industrious
men often become landowners and
home-owners when quite young. Some
have sacrificed their holdings. Prac-
tical older men have told me that land
purchases were among the best spec
ulations under existing conditions.
Land profiteering" is among the
charges one hears.