After all, even the good things the reformers have procured for the working-men are not good for all. Take as an instance the minimum wage. It is good for the middling worker, for the man who is neither weaker nor stronger, better nor worse, than his fellows. It is not good for the man who is above them, because the universal high rate of pay prevents the employer from being able to raise it in any particularly promising case; already they pay so much that they can do no more. Neither is it good for the old or the feeble, for the pottering odd-jobman who is not up to a regular hard day’s work, and yet who could keep himself—at a time when his family are probably out in the world and doing well—by his own small exertions; living on far less than the minimum wage allows, and still feeling he is taking his part independently in the battle of life.
As another instance of the two-sided way things work, take the Trade Boards. There are now fifty-nine special Boards in Melbourne, by which the rates of wages and prices for piece-work are fixed, the average wages since the establishment of these Boards having risen very materially—in the bakers’ from £1 12s. 6d. a week to £2 4s. 7d.; in the furniture trade from £1 9s. 1d. to £1 16s. 8d.; in the bootmaking trade from £1 3s. 2d. to £1 16s. 8d., to cite only a few examples. In the face of this it is evident that the workman need not feel disturbed by any fear of being underpaid; the Board connected with his special trade will see to that for him. But, on the other hand, the high rate of wages—which sends out of the country a great quantity of work which might just as well be done in it—makes it possible that, as the population increases, the Australian workmen may be faced by a serious lack of employment, besides raising the cost of some articles very considerably. To take one instance. In 1908 Victoria exported 1,680,294 pounds of frozen beef. I presume all the cattle so used possessed skins—indeed, it was proved by the export of raw hides—and yet the leather imported into the State that same year was valued at £275,291, and the Australian workman pays more for his boots—if they are of leather—than does the English workman.
Yet, after all, clothing, boots, and house rent are the only things for which the Australian workman has to pay dearly out of his ample wages. Food is quite wonderfully cheap. I remember a restaurant—it was not The Paris nor The Vienna, nor was it situated anywhere in the vicinity of Collins Street—that I used to go to in my drab days. There one could get soup, hot meat with two vegetables—I particularly recollect quite delicious little beefsteak puddings, one served to each customer—a sweet, often apple-tart, or milk-pudding made with egg, a cup of tea, and as much bread as you wanted—all for 6d.! More than that, they would send round to any office or workshop a tray with meat and vegetables—an ample allowance, too—a pot of tea, and a plate of tart or pudding, milk, sugar, and bread, for the same price. Once I breakfasted there on tea and toast—plenty of it, thick and hot, and lots of butter, too—for 3d., a more ample breakfast, with the addition of a plate of porridge and a chop, or bacon and egg, mounting to 6d.
I remember that breakfast well. It was the day before Christmas Day, and I had gone into town from a suburb, three miles distant, by the first train, at five o’clock, thinking that I might do an article for a local paper on the Christmas show at the Victorian Market. Not that I did any regular journalistic work at that time, but I was like a sparrow; pecking round in the dust for anything I could get hold of. And it was dusty that day, too, even so early in the morning, dense and yellow with dust, and with a scorching north wind blowing. However, I got to town, and then, to save another tram-fare, toiled up the long hill to the market, in the very face of the wind and dust, with clenched teeth and tortured eyes, arriving there only to meet one of the regular staff of the paper for which I intended my article actually coming away! She had stayed with a friend in town, gone to the theatre, sat up all night, talking and tea-drinking, and reached the market soon after three!
The Melbourne Market is a wonder and a delight at any time, but at Christmas it is glorious. It must be remembered that it is the time of fruit and flowers. There are piles of cherries, early apricots and peaches, bananas, and pineapples and tomatoes, glowing masses of colours; and carnations, and roses, and irises, and the clear blue of cornflowers. There are confectionery stalls heaped high with every sort of cake and pastry. The keeper of one stall, where most delicious gingerbread was sold, told me that she made everything herself and had been at the market three days a week for thirty years. There are stalls of china, hats, dress materials; poultry and fish, dairy produce, pork, bacon, books. There are Chinese gardeners smiling urbanely over their stacks of vegetables; big sun-browned fruit farmers; busy wives with butter and eggs (in large white aprons); and butchers, with their blue coats, selling meat—the best at only 2d. and 2½d. a pound, here in the market—and making a most prodigious noise over it, too. I remember once fancying some brains for breakfast, fried in an outer wrapping of bacon—I knew exactly what they would look and taste like—and the laughter that greeted me when I inquired of the butchers if they had “any brains,” and how I laughed, too. When once one is up and out in the fresh air it does not take much to make one laugh at five on a summer’s morning.
There is one dairy-stall at the market that is presided over by five sisters. It is all exquisitely clean, and the butter and eggs, and bacon and sausages, and jars of yellow honey are the very best procurable; while the sisters—as fresh as paint—look delightfully pretty in their large white aprons and over-sleeves. If I was a Victorian up-country farmer, it is to that stall I should go if I wanted a wife; not to “Holt’s,” which is quite close by.
“Holt’s” is an institution in Melbourne—a matrimonial agency, with a minister of some sect or other always at hand; witnesses, ring, and all, ready for any venturesome couple. In England one is occasionally amused by seeing a matrimonial advertisement in some daily paper, but there are nearly always from six to a dozen a day in the Melbourne papers, and intensely amusing they are. Often, in their way, intensely pathetic too, evidently written, as they are, by up-country settlers, men who need a mate and comrade, and have no possible chance of meeting any unmarried woman in their far-away shanties; and by women who see a hopeless desert of celibacy stretching out in front of them, with no possible prospect of meeting any men outside their own family circle. The odd thing is that it is so often people with money and settled incomes who advertise, apparently as far from meeting, in a natural manner, with anyone on whom to lavish their affections as are the little servant-girls, milliners, and clerks who otherwise patronize “Holt’s.” I never, as far as I can tell, knew anyone who was married at this popular marriage-shop, but I must have met people so united again and again, if the very large percentage of marriages I once heard cited as taking place there is correct.
The whole matrimonial business is run by Mrs. Holt, though perhaps her husband assists in the part of witness, best man, etc. At one time, however, Holt was a very well-known repoussé metalworker and engraver, and made presentation shields, and cups, and all sorts of imposing things. Once, being most keenly interested in metal-work, which I adopted as a sort of side-issue to my other trades, I ventured into the smug and secretive-looking place—with the very clean and inviting steps, and the magic name over the door—to interview Mr. Holt, and ask if he would give me some lessons. He replied that he had no leisure for teaching; and apparently he was right, for all the time I was talking he kept being repeatedly called out of the room. The door would open a crack, a voice would breathe his name, and with a murmured apology he would rise and slip out. There would be more whispering in the hall; then the sound of a closing door and silence for about ten minutes, during which time I pictured some awful and all too binding rite being practised in another apartment. Then there would be more whispering in the hall; the sound of the front-door furtively closing; and mine host would slip back to me and our dropped conversation, which was engrossing, save for these interruptions, for I found him an enthusiast over his art, and quite willing to give me such information as was possible. All the same, it was somehow uncanny, and I was not sorry to get away, still free and unfettered by any “dark gentleman with means” or “fair young man, of a loving disposition”—a description that many of the would-be bridegrooms indulge in. One breach-of-promise case I remember well—though whether it was the outcome of one of “Holt’s” advertisements I do not know—where the romantically minded, would-be suitor described himself as “a young man of military appearance in the millinery business.”
There was once a Melbourne man who—for fear, I suppose, of the torment of jealousy—advertised for the “ugliest woman in Australia” as his wife—got her, too, and has her still, for the gods love beauty.
I seem to have wandered far away from the Victorian Market, but, in truth, it is but a few steps. From two o’clock in the morning of each market-day the carts roll past the very door of the marriage bureau, with sleepy men lolling on the top of their piles of produce, bringing, along with the loud rumblings of heavy wheels, a waft of country scents through the city streets. Till five o’clock the carts arrive in a long procession, the flowers and more fragile sort of fruits last of all, while by then there are others ready to leave, and the retreating tide begins.