"Well, this way. The wealth production of thickly settled countries is proportionately greater than that of thinly settled countries. Of course, there would be a limit somewhere, but so far no country we know of has reached it."
"You don't mean that a man working in England or France earns more than a man working in Australia?" demanded Ned, sitting up. "I thought it was the other way."
"I don't mean he gets more but I certainly mean that he produces more. The appliances are so much better, and the sub-division of labour, that is each man doing one thing until he becomes an expert at it, is carried so much further by very virtue of the thicker population."
"That's to say they have things fixed so that they crush more to the ton of work."
"About that. Taking the people all round, and throwing in kings and queens and aristocrats and the parsons that Ford loves so, every average Englishman produced yesterday more wealth—more boots, more tools, more cloth, more anything of value—than every average Australian. And every average Belgian produced yesterday, or any day, more wealth than every average Englishman. These are facts you can see in any collection of statistics. The conservative political economists don't deny them; they only try to explain them away."
"But how does it come? Men produce more there than we do here and earn less. How's that?"
"Simply because they're robbed more."
"Look here, Mr. Geisner!" said Ned, gathering his knees into his arms. "That's what I want to know. I know we're robbed. Any fool can see that those who work the least or don't work at all get pretty much everything, but I don't quite see how they get it. We're only just beginning to think of these things in the bush, and we don't know much yet. We only know there's something wrong, but we don't know what to do except to get a union and keep up wages."
"That's the first step, to get a union," said Geisner. "But unless unionists understand what it's all about they'll only be able to keep up wages for a little while. You see, Ned, this is the difficulty: a man can't work when he likes."
"A man can't work when he likes!"