“Australian Labour has set out from the first on the principle that huge fortunes should not be made out of its efforts. We have had the obvious example of America before us, and we have been determined from the start that Australia should not fall into the hands of a small number of millionaires and a larger number of semi-millionaires. It has been our idea that a just proportion of all profits should circulate among the workers in the form of wages. Supposing the worker does get his pound a day. It is enormous, isn’t it! It is preposterous. Of course it is. But it isn’t preposterous for a small bunch of owners or shareholders to get their ten pounds a day, for doing nothing. Sundays included. That isn’t preposterous, is it?
“They raise the plea that their fathers and their forefathers accumulated the capital by their labours. Well, haven’t our fathers and forefathers laboured? Haven’t they? And what have they accumulated? The right to labour on, and be paid for it what the others like to give ’em.
“We don’t want to wreck industry. But, we say, wages shall go up so that profits shall go down. Why should there be any profits, after all? Forefathers! Why, we’ve all had forefathers, and I’m sure mine worked. Why should there be any profits at all, I should like to know. And if profits there must be, well then, the profit grabber isn’t going to get ten times as much as the wage-earner, just because he had a few screwing forefathers. We, who work for what we get, are going to see that the man who doesn’t work shall not receive a large income for not working. If he’s got to have an income for doing nothing, let him have no more than what we call wages. The labourer is worthy of his hire, and the hire is worthy of his labourer. But I can not see that any man is worthy of an unearned income. Let there be no unearned incomes. So much for the basic wage. We know it is not the basic wage that wrecks industry. It’s big profits. When the profits are not forthcoming the directors would rather close down. A criminal proceeding. Because, after all, any big works is run, first, to supply the community with goods, and second, to give a certain proportion of the community a satisfactory occupation. Whatever net profits are made are made by cheating the worker and the consumer, filching a bit from every one of them, no matter how small a bit. And we will not see wages reduced one ha’penny, to help to fill the pockets of shareholders—”
“What about your own shares in Nestles Milk, Willie?” asked a voice.
“I’ll throw them in the fire the minute they’re out of date,” said Willie, promptly, “they’re pretty well wastepaper already.”
He went on to answer the charges of corruption and “Tammany,” with which the Labour Party in Australia had been accused. This led to the point of class hatred.
“It is we who are supposed to foster class hatred,” he said. “Now I put it to you. Does the so-called upper class hate us, or do we hate them more? If you’ll let me answer, I tell you it’s they who do the hating. We don’t wear the flesh off our bones hating them. They aren’t worth it. They’re far beneath hatred.
“We do want one class only—not your various shades of upper and lower. We want The People—and The People means the worker. I don’t mind what a man works at. He can be a doctor or a lawyer even, if men are such fools they must have doctors and lawyers. But look here, mates, what do we all work for? For a living? Then why won’t a working-man’s living wage do for a lawyer? Why not? Perhaps a lawyer makes an ideal of his job. Perhaps he is inspired in his efforts to right the wrongs of his client. Very well: virtue is its own reward. If he wants to be paid for it, it isn’t virtue any more. It’s dirty trading in justice, or whatever law means.
“Look at your upper classes, mates. Look at your lawyer charging you two guineas for half an hour’s work. Look at your doctor scrambling for his guinea a visit. Look at your experts with their five thousand a year. Call these upper classes? Upper in what? In the make-and-grab faculties, that’s all.
“To hell with their ‘upper.’ If a working man thinks he’ll be in the running, and demand say half of what these gentry get, then he’s the assassin of his trade and country. It’s his business to grovel before these ‘upper’ gents, is it?