the burden of the complaint of the marine officers had been mainly, not that they were being paid too little, but that the seamen under them were often getting a higher wage than the second and third officers. Yet the Seamen's Union contemplated a demand for yet another rise in wages which was to be formally made on the 25th of August.

Early in July, Captain Sharpe, of the s.s Corinna, belonging to the Tasmanian Steam Navigation Company, dismissed a man named P. Magan, who was the delegate of the union on that vessel. Captain Sharpe said that he dismissed Magan "in the interests of his employers," not knowing or caring whether he was the union delegate or not. It is said that the quarrel was literally "a storm in a teacup," and that Magan complained of the quality of the tea supplied. It is certain that in the first instance the Seamen's Union accused the chief steward of obtaining Magan's discharge, and that when the Stewards' Union successfully defended their man, the Seamen's Union sought to make Captain Sharpe the victim. This they did in a letter which is worth reproduction in full as an excellent example of "the way not to do it :".

FEDERATED SEAMEN'S UNION OF AUSTRALASIA. Sydney 8th July, 1890. DEAR SIR,-I am instructed by the members of the above Society to state that we intend to have our delegate, P. Magan, reinstated on board the Corinna. If he is not reinstated by the return of the ship to Sydney the crew will be given their twenty-four hours' notice. We intend to protect our members from being victimized by chief stewards and others, and intend, at all hazards, to have P. Magan reinstated. Yours truly,

WILLIAM MUSTO, President and Acting Secretary. Captain Sharpe, s.s. Corinna.

ap

These are brave words, but, like all plications of the sit pro ratione voluntas demand, ill-advised when there is not sufficient power to act up to them. The agents of the company replied that Magan had been discharged "because a change was considered advisable in the company's interests; but there is no objection to his joining one of the other vessels of the company. This reply will, in the mind of any reasonable man, clear the owners of any suspicion of desire to victimize Magan. But the Seamen's Union called out the crew of the Corinna and forbade its members to ship in any vesscl under Captain Sharpe.

It was while the steamship owners were smarting under this arbitrary treatment that the Marine Officers' Association demands for higher pay came before them. On the 24th of May the marine officers had affiliated with the Trades Hall Council. This affiliation meant, if it meant any. thing, that the officers would support the seamen and the seamen the officers in any quarrel that either had with the owners. When they discovered that this affiliation had taken place, the Steamship Owners' Association refused to consider the claims of the marine officers until they withdrew from their alliance with the men under their command. On this being made known, Mr. Hancock (who, as President of the Strike Committee, must be held mainly responsible for its blunders) said "he looked upon the letter from the Steamship Owners' Association as an insult to the Council." This was on the 25th of July, and on the same night the Secretary of the Trades Hall Council reported that he had received from twenty trade-unions intimation that on an average over 10 per cent. of their members were unemployed-a fact full of significance to all who know the causes of failure in strikes. Some days were spent in fruitless negotiations, but the shipowners, while admitting the case of these officers deserved consideration inasmuch as their salaries were low in comparison with those of the seamen, though high in comparison with those demanded by plenty of officers who applied to thein for employment, declared that the officers must decide once for all whether they were going to be the servants of the steamship companies or of the Trades Hall Council. "Under which king, Bezonian, speak or die."

*

On the 15th of August the Marine Officers' Association, having received assurance that if they held by the Trades Hall

* I have been enabled, by the kindness of Messrs. Huddart, Parker & Co., Limited, to examine their pay-books and extract the actual amount paid on recent voyages to a dozen men chosen at random. I find that, for a

period of thirty days, the lowest wage paid to any of these twelve men was 71. 12s. 21d, and the highest 9l. 13s. 104d., the average being 81. 8s. Fresh provisions are supplied, and the following is the crew's bill of fare. Breakfast: Porridge and molasses, one hot dish and Dinner: One hot potatoes: coffee or tea. dish and potatoes (plum pudding, soup and vegetables twice weekly); tea. Supper: Cold meat or one made dish and potatoes; tea.

Council all the unions affiliated thereto would stand by them, gave the Shipowners' Association notice that, unless the demands were at once conceded, its members would leave the ships at the expiration of twenty-four hours' notice required by their agreements, and the strike began. On that evening at the Trades Hall, a committee of finance and control of the strike was appointed, with full power to make all arrangements. Mr. Hancock, who was appointed its president, said he "would have the shipowners taught a lesson as to what labor could do when it was firmly banded together"—a threat which he has carried out in a sense he did not then expect. The marine officers came out of their ships they were at once replaced. Then the seamen refused to sail with nonunion officers, and where seamen were obtained the wharf laborers refused to load or unload. Similar actions took place in the capitals of the other colonies, which are all seaports. So far the strike fairly paralyzed the shipping trade, but was confined to it.

I must now be pardoned if I speak a good deal of myself; but since the strike leaders have, for want of a better means of diverting attention from their own blunders, accused me of being the cause of their failure, it is clear that I must have been a factor in the result, and I have no desire to evade any responsibility for what I did.

I arrived in Melbourne on the 12th of August, and was, of course, in absolute ignorance of the dispute. On the 22d I was invited to attend a meeting of the Trades Hall Council, and was warmly received. On the 26th, by which time I had learned a little about the origin of the quarrel, there was a large meeting called by the Employers' Union to lay their case before the public. I attended, and was immensely struck by the (to English ears) extraordinary moderation of the speakers and the alarming enthusiasm of the audiThere was no sign of bluster, vacillation, or anger. The demeanor of the spokesmen was that of one who has his back against a wall. I went away with the conviction that my friends at the Trades Hall who had applauded Mr. John Hancock when, in the first report of the Strike Committee, he said that a few days would suffice to bring a handful of pigheaded employers to their senses" had caught a

ence.

66

Tartar," and that it was the South Metropolitan gas-stokers' strike of 1889 over again.

I procured a file of the Age newspaper, and determined to read the lengthy reports of strikes, labor disputes and trade-union meetings from 1886 up to date, in order to be fully advised of all the facts of the situation. This task was as great as would be the reading up of the Irish question for a similar period in a great London daily. I had not half completed it when I was called upon to address a mass meeting of some 50,000, convened in Flinders Park by the Strike Committee, on Sunday, the 31st of August; but I had seen enough to impel me to warn my audience, with all the emphasis I could command, that while they were perfectly justified in refusing to work with non-unionists or to handle non-union goods, they would not be justified in physical interference with non-union workmen.

During the next few days, I had finished my reading and made up my mind that if the working-class in Australia were to be saved from a crushing defeat that would surely have disastrous effects in Great Britain, some one must speak out very plainly. I therefore published, on the 6th of September, my view of the case, some kind of summary of which was telegraphed to England. The statement, though very long, was reprinted in full in the leading journals in all the colonies, and fully discussed both in the press and on platforms. Though I had only been just three weeks in Australia when it was written, not one of its facts has been disputed nor one of its conclusions upset. But it advised a surrender of some of the impossible claims of the Strike Committee, and its acceptance would have been an admission that I knew more about their own business than they did.

The four most prominent members of the committee and the secretary of the Trades Hall informed me they could find no fault with the settlement I proposed, but preferred to fight it out on the chance of getting better terms. So they did fight it out for another two months, with the result that my forecast was fulfilled to the letter-that they have had to surrender unconditionally, have caused loss, principally to the working-class, have wasted all the money sent from England, have lost their prestige, have welded the

enormous

employers into a solid and irresistible force, and have destroyed the possibility of even intercolonial federation of labor for ten years. The reader may find some difficulty in understanding why I should be blamed for having caused the failure of the strike. Those who have experience of workingmen may enlighten him.

This

The strikers might have got out of their difficulty without my assistance had they been careful, but they advanced from folly to folly. One of the most glaring blunders committed was with regard to the gassupply. Some coal from the ships in harbor was unloaded by non-unionists, and on its arrival at the gasworks the stokers debated whether they should strike. They were all union men, and for the space of three hours discussed the question, finally resolving to place themselves in the hands of the Strike Committee to do exactly what was thought best with them. misplaced confidence apparently awoke no sense of responsibility in their leaders, who ordered them to strike work. For two days there was a little difficulty about the lighting of the streets, and men going to work were assaulted in the neighborhood of the gas works. But this step had set public opinion dead against the Strike Committee, for it showed that these gentlemen were willing to cause their fellowcitizens any amount of inconvenience without cause. It was, in fact, an act of war directed against those who had previously been non-combatants, and who, not unnaturally, accepted the challenge. Consequently, when case after case of intimidation and assault was proved, and the streets round the office where the gas company was receiving applicants for work be came blocked by an unruly mob, the public warmly applauded the Government for issuing a proclamation against riotous assembly, and showing that it meant business by calling out the mounted rifles (a sort of militia), by summoning to the city the small permanent force and serving out ball cartridge to them, and by enrolling special constables. These steps had a magical effect, and Victoria was the only colony in which no serious breach of the peace occurred. Plenty of non-union labor was immediately available for the gasworks, and the supply was never seriously interfered with. The Strike Committee vented their wrath in abuse of the Government for taking steps to prevent the

disorder which the strikers themselves pretended to deprecate, and the comic element was supplied at the Trades Hall by the more enthusiastic and thoroughgoing advocates of the boycott scheme, who tried in vain to persuade the strike leaders that they should show their consistency by deliberating in darkness rather than use the gas made by non-union labor.

Every link in the chain of labor having thus broken when the slightest strain was put upon it, it was decided to try and stop the coal-supply and thus stop not only the gas but all industries dependent on steam, including the railways belonging to the people themselves. Australia is supplied with coal from New South Wales, mainly from the neighborhood of Newcastle. Hitherto there has been no working atrangement, and not even regular communication, between the labor parties in the different colonies. It was decided to hold an inter-colonial labor conference, and as the Employers' Unions were to meet, in order to decide on common action, in Sydney, that city was chosen as the scene for the conference of labor. This conference succeeded in getting the coal-miners to stop work, to which move the employers replied by telegraphing to Japan and England for supplies of fuel. It sat for twenty-one days and played its last card by issuing an appeal to the shearers all over Australia to come out on strike so as to destroy the wool-clip (valued at twenty millions). The fatuity of this step will be seen when it is remembered that less than half the shearers were in the union, and that many of these had been coerced into joining it. The appeal was therefore entirely unavailing against pastoralists who had discountenanced the union, while it caused grave inconvenience to the pastoralists who had employed union labor. Thus at one stroke this edict turned those who had been the best friends of the Shearers' Union into its bitterest foes, demonstrated the numerical weakness of the union, and cut off the main source of supply of strike funds. It was allowed to remain in force long enough to prove that there was very little force in it, and then withdrawn amid a tempest of ridicule, during which the labor conference disbanded.

It was after this disbandment that a man named Edwards, in Sydney, without any consultation with or authority from the other colonies, telegraphed to England

for a loan of 20,000 on the grounds that this would insure success. Ten times the amount would not in any way have influenced the result, and the loan could at most only have postponed for a couple of weeks the inevitable day when the strike leaders must be called upon by a hungry mob to account for their stewardship. I conceived it to be my duty to inform the recipients of Mr. Edwards' appeal that the loan could by no possibility repair the effects of the wanton mismanagement of the strike, especially as I foresaw that the money would be required for better pur poses at home very shortly. I knew, further, that the workmen who would subscribe the money, should it ever be raised, would do so under the false impression that the large sums sent to the dockers last year were contributed by the Australian trade-unions. Now, the balance-sheet issued on the 20th of November, 1889, signed by Messrs. Hancock and Bennett, the president and secretary of the Trades Hall, shows that of 20,8877. remitted up to that date by them to the London dockers but 5,8177. came from the trade societies, and the remainder from the general public, which, in the present instance, was as strongly opposed to the Trades Hall as it is in favor of high wages and any kind of trade-unionism which will bear the test of argument.

When I first proposed to myself to take up the labor question seriously, a wise man, whose advice I did not take, recommended me at least to lay to heart a passage from DeFoe which I think I can yet remember word for word: "If I might give a short time to an impartial writer, it would be to warn him of his fate. If he will venture on the dangerous precipice of telling unbiassed truth, let him make war upon mankind, neither to give nor to take quarter. If he speaks of the vices of rich men, they fall upon him with the iron hands of the law. If he tell of their virtues, when they have any, the mob at tacks him with slander. Let him expect martyrdom on both sides, and then he inay go on fearless.'

When the Labor Conference at Sydney disbanded, "the game was up. Various acts of violence took place, especially in the mining districts, but the miners, who had never been quite clear what all the trouble was about, sent their president,

Mr. Thompson, from Newcastle to Sydney to make inquiries. He was informed that it was thought desirable that the miners should continue to refuse to hew coal indefinitely in order to spare the strike leaders the humiliation of an avowal that they had made a iness of the whole business. On his return to Newcastle the miners, curiously enough, took the view that their own stomachs were of more importance to them than the fine susceptibilities of men whom they were rude enough to accuse of selling them, and elected to return to work under an agreement never to strike again to support a boycott.' There was a good deal of distress in Sydney, and the president of the late Labor Conference, Mr. Brennan, who accepted an invitation to the farewell banquet to Lord Carrington, was, on his next public appearance, assaulted by the men he had led up a blind alley. The sauve qui peut was sounded. The Marine Officers' Association severed its connection with the Melbourne Trades Hall by a letter drafted for them by Mr. Hancock, who immediately abused them publicly as traitors" and " renegades" for having formally sent in his own letter to the Strike Committee. Finally, on the 13th of November, Mr. Hancock informed a large meeting of the trades in Melbourne: "The strike is at an end, and they could make the best arrangement that they possibly could with their late employers. (A Voice: Thank you for nothing.)" So reports the Evening Standard of that date.

66

I have said that this strike has settled certain questions which are being discussed pretty eagerly in Great Britain. It has conclusively shown that the most gigantic federation of labor, unless it is handled with a greater strategic ability than is at present available in Australia, will break like an egg against an ironclad when faced by the resolute opposition of employers who are also federated. It has shown that, difficult as it is for employers to sink their rival interests against a common enemy they will do so, and receive public support in the most democratic countries, so soon as labor makes a demand which the public holds to be arbitrary or unfair. It has shown that a community composed of men of British descent draws the line very firmly at demands based on the idea that any power outside Parliament should coerce

a man into striking, and has no sympathy with methods forbidden by law. The bitter experience of Australia will indeed have

been wasted unless the obvious deductions from this failure are drawn in other countries. -Nineteenth Century.

THE eighteenth century will ever form one of the most remarkable epochs in the literature of France, and the most extraordinary character to be met with in the annals of that age, as poet, philosopher, dramatist, or historian, is unquestionably Voltaire. The contemporary idea of him which pos sessed the English mind was very much formed from the attacks which he directed against religion, and was in all probability represented fairly enough by the saying of Dr. Johnson, that he would sooner sign a sentence for Rousseau's transportation than that of any felon who had gone from the Old Bailey for many years, and that the difference between him and Voltaire was so slight that it "would be difficult to settle the proportion of iniquity between them." Then it came to pass that his memory became the reflection of a 'fleering shallow scoffer," some sort of human monkey grimacing at all things virtuous and good, whom our forefathers learned to detest. But when the right sense of historic proportion is developed in men's minds, says Mr. Morley, the name of Voltaire will stand forth with the names of other great decisive movements of European progress, such, for instance, as the Reformation, the great revival of Northern Europe, or the Renaissance the earlier revival of the South. Voltairism, whatever opinions are held respecting it, may be said to have owed its birth to the flight of its founder from Paris to London, an event which was the turning-point of his life, serving as it did to extend his views, complete his education, and make a man of him. He left France, as it has been expressed, a poet, he returned to it as a sage. It was about the middle of May 1726, when he was in the thirtythird year of his age, that Voltaire first set foot on English soil, and even then he could look back upon a troubled past and years filled with " strife, contention, impatience, and restless production." The retrospect need not be a lengthy one.

When Prussia was yet a dukedom, while William and Mary reigned in England

and Louis XIV. had still twenty-one years of life before him, as Newton was about to become Master of the Mint, and Dryden was translating Virgil, François Marie Arouet was born, November 1694, the second son of M. François Arouet, a notary of some repute. As with Homer and the great Duke of Wellington, his birthplace is unknown or in dispute, as though his life had been beset by the spirit of scepticism from its very commencement. Like Fontenelle, he came into the world a puny infant, with but a flickering breath of life in him, and like him also, not only enjoyed unusual length of days but retained extraordinary_faculties unimpaired to the very last. In the autumn of 1704, a few weeks after the battle of Blenheim, young Arouet, aged ten, was sent to the Eton of eighteenthcentury France-the Jesuit college of Louis-le-Grand rue S. Jacques-in the very heart of old Paris, at the time attended by two thousand boys of the most distinguished families of the kingdom. Here he remained as a boarder seven years, and learned, as he says, Latin and nonsense. Yet even before he had been a year at school he gave proof of the unsurpassed faculty for facile verse-making which always distinguished him, and some of his compositions written about the age of twelve were notable enough to be referred to in the salon of Ninon de l'Enclos, a friend of his mother, then a lively old lady turned of eighty. Young Arouet's godfather was the Abbé de Château neuf (Ninon's last lover), whose clerical repute lay chiefly in the line of gallantry, and he it was who brought the little poet to make his bow to the venerable fair one whose perennial charms had been worshipped by so many generations of lovers. The veteran Aspasia was delighted with the boy, his ready answers, sprightly talk, and manners of the prettiest, and Ninon's famous legacy of eighty guineas with which to purchase books, was the fruit of the visit. But to the poetry of school-day quickly succeeds the prose of life, and it