In Bad Company and other stories. Rolf Boldrewood
it being found that, in default, the uninvited guests felt no delicacy in burning the interior fittings, or even the doors and window frames. To this sanctuary, Mr. Stoate, in place of his former comfortable camp with Hardwick, was fain to betake himself. It was half a mile 'down the creek,' and he cursed freely at being told by the overseer that he must turn out his horse in the 'strangers' paddock,' another half-mile farther, and on no account to put him into the homestead horse-paddock.
'I'm not going to have all the feed ate up that I've saved for the station horses,' said that functionary, in decided tones, 'and so I tell you. You shearers and rouseabouts think it's nothing, I suppose, to find grass for a hundred or two horses, and a mob of bullocks big enough to stock a small run. But you'll have to pay for your grass one of these fine days, if you don't mind your eye.'
'D'ye think a man's to walk all over the bloomin' bush, lookin' for work and carrying oats and hay with him, if he's got a moke?' growled Stoate. 'The squatters have got all the blessed country, and they grudge a pore man a mouthful of food, and every blade of grass his horse eats.'
'A poor man!' said the overseer. 'What sort of a poor man d'ye call yourself, Stoate? Your cheque last year, what with fencing and shearing, was over forty pounds for three months' work. You've neither wife, chick nor child (not in this country, anyhow). What have you done with your money? Spent it in town; now you come up here crawling and begging for the bread you eat, and doing all the harm you can to the men you're living on. Why don't you keep a pound or two for the road, like Bill Hardwick and other chaps? Then you needn't be beholden to any one; and if you like to talk rot to the men that are fools enough to trust you, that's their look-out. But to come here and to every station along the river begging for food and trying to harm the men you're living on is mean, d – d mean, and treacherous to boot. If the boss was of my way of thinking, he'd never let you inside a shed of his, or pay you another pound for shearing, and now you know my mind, – take your grub.'
And then Mr. Macdonald, an athletic Australian Scot, who towered above the short though wiry Londoner as does a mastiff above a lurcher, poured the pannikin of flour into the 'tucker bag' which Stoate held out, and cutting off a lump of fat mutton tossed it contemptuously at him.
Stoate caught the meat before it fell, and looked at the overseer with evil passions writ plain in his sullen face and snaky eye, as he said: 'You might come to be sorry for this some day, boss, big as you are!'
'Yes, you sneaking hound, I know what that means. But I've got old Harry Bower (who used to shepherd here long ago, before he turned bushranger) as night-watchman at the shed, in case some of you dogs that disgrace the Shearers' Union take a fancy to light it up. He was a man when he took to the bush. You'd do it and fellows like you, only you haven't the pluck. He's got a double-barrelled gun, and swears by his God he'll use it if he catches any curs sneaking about the shed after dark. The grass is too green to burn for a month or two, but if I come across you near a bush fire, after shearing, I'll shoot you like a crow. So take that with you – and do your worst.'
Mr. Macdonald, though a born Australian, had inherited, it will be seen, the characteristic 'perfervidum ingenium.'
It seemed imprudent of him to speak so openly before the crowd of shearers and 'bona-fide travellers,' so called. But a bold, declared policy is sometimes more diplomatic than a halting, opportunist one. The men knew that war was declared, given certain acts of aggression or intimidation on their part. Severe sentences would unquestionably follow – if convictions were secured before the courts. On the whole, though they did not fear him, they respected him more for his openness and decided action.
'He's a man that hits out straight from the shoulder,' said one young fellow. 'I like that sort. You know where you have 'em. I don't hold with all this Union racket. It does more harm than good, to my mind. The most of these delegates is reg'lar blatherskites, as I wouldn't trust to carry a pound note across the street. Pretty coves to make laws for the likes of us.'
'I'm dashed sorry I ever had any truck with this Union crowd,' said his mate, as they walked away. 'I'd never no call to complain, as I know. If I didn't like a man's ways in his shed, I didn't shear there. There's plenty more. I don't fancy free men like us shearers bein' under one man's thumb, and him lookin' out for himself all the time. It's too much of the monkey for me, and I'm not goin' to stand it after this season, no matter what comes of it.'
The minor troubles having been surmounted, the roll-call read over, the rouseabouts settled and contented – each man in receipt of twenty-five shillings per week, with everything found on a scale of liberality, not to say profuseness, huts, cooks, wood and water, beef and mutton, tea and sugar, vegetables – everything reasonable and unreasonable, in fact, that the heart of bushman could desire.
The shearers, in number nearly a hundred, were apparently placated by being allowed to shear for the first time at Tandara under 'Union Rules,' a copy of which was posted up in a prominent part of the shed, setting forth that on certain points of dispute, if such should arise, the Delegate, that important, dignified personage, should have the power of joint decision with the shed manager. Wool had gone down nearly one-half in price, fat sheep as much or more; but holding to a modern doctrine that wages were not to be regulated by profits, and that Labour and not Capital provided the wage-fund, the same rate of payment per hundred sheep as was paid in more prosperous times had been exacted by the shearers' representatives. This was agreed to under protest, though considered inequitable by the proprietors of North Yalla-doora and other representative sheds as the lesser evil, compared with that of a delayed shearing and perhaps ruined wool clip. A truly serious matter.
For the same reason the Union Rules had been accepted by several proprietors, though much against the grain, and the woolshed ticketed for the first time as a 'Union Shed.' This was done under the impression that a feeling of loyalty to the principles which professed to guide the Shearers' Union would ensure steady and continuous work.
It was a concession to expediency, unwillingly made by Mr. Hunter and others at the last moment, in the hope of 'getting the shearing over quickly' – a matter involving great gain or loss. The latter, in this particular era of low prices of wool and stock of all kinds, cattle and horses, as well as sheep, approaching the margin of ruin, ominously close. 'If the fellows shear decently and behave themselves, I don't care what they stick up in the shed, or what they call their confounded Union. They shore well enough for me and Anderson last year, so I shall go on with them as long as they treat me well. You might as well do so, too.'
This had been the reasoning of Mr. M'Andrew, one of Mr. Hunter's neighbours, a shrewd, somewhat self-seeking man of the world. And it had a savour of argument about it. 'What did it matter,' he had said, 'how other squatters looked at the question? All they had to think of was to get their own work properly done, and let every man mind his own business. He was not sure that the Pastoral Association did much good. It only set the men and masters more at odds with each other. A great deal of this ill-feeling and strike had been brought on by such proprietors as old Jackson, M'Slaney, and Pigdon. Men notoriously hard and grasping in their dealings with their employés – cutting down wages, the price of shearing and contract bush work, in every way possible; feeding, housing, and paying their people badly, while charging exorbitant prices for necessaries – flour, meat, shears, tobacco – all things, in fact, which they could not carry with them and were bound to buy from the station store. These pastoralists were primarily responsible for the dissatisfaction which had led to the strikes and rioting. For his part, as he had always acted fairly and squarely with his men, as everybody knew, it was not to be expected that he should be compelled to pay up for a contest which he had no share in bringing on.'
This had seemed fair reasoning to that class of men who are glad of any excuse to avoid paying cash out of pocket and to the avowal of a decided policy. But there were other squatters equally averse to unnecessary outlay, who, possessing more forecast and logical acumen, refused on principle to make terms with the shearers' or any other Union. They had stated their grounds of dissent from the policy of opportunism, and, what was more important, acted upon them with courage and consistency.
'This station,' said Archibald Douglas Kinross, 'chiefly freehold land, with the sheep depasturing thereon, is my property, as the law stands at present. And I claim the right of every Briton to manage his own affairs in his own way. To employ persons