The Workingman's Paradise Part 4

CHAPTER III.

SHORN LIKE SHEEP.

"How many hours do you work?" asked Nellie of the waitress.

"About thirteen," answered the girl, glancing round to see if the manager was watching her talking. "But it's not the hours so much. It's the standing."

"You're not doing any good standing now," put in Ned. "Why don't you sit down and have a rest?"

"They don't let us," answered the waitress, cautiously.

"What do they pay?" asked Nellie, sipping her tea and joining in the waitress' look-out for the manager.

"Fifteen! But they're taking girls on at twelve. Of course there's meals.

But you've got to room yourself, and then there's washing, clean ap.r.o.ns and caps and cuffs and collars. You've got to dress, too. There's nothing left. We ought to get a pound."

"What----"

"S-s-s!" warned the waitress, straightening herself up as the manager appeared.

They were in a fashionable Sydney restaurant, on George-street, a large, painted, gilded, veneered, electro-plated place, full of mirrors and gas-fittings and white-clothed tables. It was not busy, the hour being somewhat late and the day Sat.u.r.day, and so against the walls, on either side the long halls, were ranged sentinel rows of white-ap.r.o.ned, white-capped, black-dressed waitresses.

They were dawdling over their tea--Ned and Nellie were, not the waitresses--having dined exceedingly well on soup and fish and flesh and pudding. For Ned, crushed by more sight-seeing and revived by a stroll to the Domain and a rest by a fountain under shady trees, further revived by a thunderstorm that suddenly rolled up and burst upon them almost before they could reach the shelter of an awning, had insisted on treating Nellie to "a good dinner," telling her that afterwards she could take him anywhere she liked but that meanwhile they would have something to cheer them up. And Nellie agreed, nothing loth, for she too longed for the momentary jollity of a mild dissipation, not to mention that this would be a favorable opportunity to see if the restaurant girls could not be organised. So they had "a good dinner."

"This reminds me," said Nellie, as she ate her fish, "of a friend of mine, a young fellow who is always getting hard up and always raising a cheque, as he calls it. He was very hard up a while ago, and met a friend whom he told about it. Then he invited his friend to go and have some lunch. They came here and he ordered chicken and that, and a bottle of good wine. It took his last half-sovereign. When he got the ticket the other man looked at him. 'Well,' he said, 'if you live like this when you're hard up, how on earth do you live when you've got money?'"

"What did he say?" asked Ned, laughing, wondering at the same time how Nellie came to know people who drank wine and spent half-sovereigns on chicken lunches.

"Oh! He didn't say anything much, he told me. He couldn't manage to explain, he thought, that when he was at work and easy in his mind he didn't care what he had to eat but that when he didn't know what he'd do by the end of the week he felt like having a good meal if he never had another. He thought that made the half-sovereign go furthest. He's funny in some things."

"I should think he was, a little. How did you know him?"

"I met him where we're going tonight. He's working on some newspaper in Melbourne now. I haven't seen him or heard of for months."

She chatted on, rather feverishly.

"Did you ever read 'David Copperfield?'"

Ned nodded, his mouth being full.

"Do you recollect how he used to stand outside the cookshops? It's quite natural. I used to. It's pretty bad to be hungry and it's just about as bad not to have enough. I know a woman who has a couple of children, a boy and a girl. They were starving once. She said she'd sooner starve than beg or ask anybody to help them, and the little girl said she would too. But the boy said he wasn't going to starve for anybody, and he wasn't going to beg either; he'd steal. And sure enough he slipped out and came back with two loaves that he'd taken from a shop. They lived on that for nearly a week." Nellie laughed forcedly.

"What did they do then?" asked Ned seriously.

"Oh! She had been doing work but couldn't get paid. She got paid."

"Where was her husband?"

"Don't husbands die like other people?" she answered, pointedly. "Not that all husbands are much good when they can't get work or will always work when they can get it," she added.

"Are many people as hard up as that in Sydney, Nellie?" enquired Ned, putting down his knife and fork.

"Some," she answered. "You don't suppose a lot of the people we saw this morning get over well fed, do you? Oh, you can go on eating, Ned! it's not being sentimental that will help them. They want fair play and a chance to work, and your going hungry won't get that for them. There's lots for them and for us if they only knew enough to stop people like that getting too much."

By lifting her eyebrows she drew his attention to a stout coa.r.s.e loudly jewelled man, wearing a tall silk hat and white waistcoat, who had stopped near them on his way to the door. He was speaking in a loud dictatorial wheezy voice. His hands were thrust into his trouser pockets, wherein he jingled coins by taking them up and letting them fall again.

The c.h.i.n.k of sovereigns seemed sweet music to him. He stared contemptuously at Ned's clothes as that young man looked round; then stared with insolent admiration at Nellie. Ned became crimson with suppressed rage, but said nothing until the man had pa.s.sed them.

"Who is that brute?" he asked then.

"That brute! Why, he's a famous man. He owns hundreds of houses, and has been mayor and goodness knows what. He'll be knighted and made a duke or something. He owns the block where Mrs. Somerville lives. You ought to speak respectfully of your betters, Ned. He's been my landlord, though he doesn't know it, I suppose. He gets four shillings a week from Mrs.

Somerville. The place isn't worth a shilling, only it's handy for her taking her work in, and she's got to pay him for it being handy. That's her money he's got in his pocket, only if you knocked him down and took it out for her you'd be a thief. At least, they'd say you were and send you to prison."

"Who's the other, I wonder?" said Ned. "He looks more like a man."

The other was a shrewd-looking, keen-faced, sparely-built man, with somewhat aquiline nose and straight narrow forehead, not at all bad-looking or evil-looking and with an air of strong determination; in short, what one calls a masterful man. He was dressed well but quietly. A gold-bound hair watch guard that crossed his high-b.u.t.toned waistcoat was his only adornment; his slender hands, unlike the fat man's podgy fingers, were bare of rings. He was sitting alone, and after the fat man left him returned again to the reading of an afternoon paper while he lunched.

"His name's Strong," said. Nellie, turning to Ned with a peculiar smile.

"That fat man has robbed me and this lean man has robbed you, I suppose.

As he looks more like a man it won't be as bad though, will it?"

"What are you getting at, Nellie?" asked Ned, not understanding but looking at the shrewd man intently, nevertheless.

"Don't you know the name? Of course you don't though. Well, he's managing director of the Great Southern Mortgage Agency, a big concern that owns hundreds and hundreds of stations. At least, the squatters own the stations and the Agency owns the squatters, and he as good as owns the Agency. You're pretty sure to have worked for him many a time without knowing it, Ned."

Ned's eyes flashed. Nellie had to kick his foot under the table for fear he would say or do something that would attract the attention of the unsuspecting lean man.

"Don't be foolish, Ned," urged Nellie, in a whisper. "What's the good of spluttering?"

"Why, it was one of their stations on the Wilkes Downs that started cutting wages two years ago. Whenever a manager is particularly mean he always puts it down to the Agency. The Victorian fellows say it was this same concern that first cut wages down their way. And the New Zealanders too. I'd just like to perform on him for about five minutes."

Ned uttered his wish so seriously that Nellie laughed out loud, at which Ned laughed too.

"So he's the man who does all the mischief, is he?" remarked Ned, again glaring at his industrial enemy. "Who'd think it to look at him? He doesn't look a bad sort, does he?"

"He looks a determined man, I think," said Nellie. "Mr. Stratton says he's the shrewdest capitalist in Australia and that he'll give the unions a big fight for it one of these days. He says he has a terrible hatred of unionism and thinks that there's no half-way between smashing them up and letting them smash the employers up. His company pays 25 per cent.

regularly every year on its shares and will pay 50 before he gets through with it."

"How?"

"How! Out of fellows like you, Ned, who think themselves so mighty independent and can't see that they're being shorn like sheep, in the same way, though not as much yet, as Mrs. Somerville is by old Church and the fat brute, as you call him. But then you rather like it I should think. Anyway, you told me you didn't want to do anything 'wild,' only to keep up wages. You'll have to do something 'wild' to keep up wages before he finishes."

"That's all right to talk, Nellie, but what can we do?" asked Ned, pulling his moustache. .