Three members of the executive council, Norman, Barbara, and Tom, began at once the task of assigning work. The problems which immediately faced the council were overwhelming, but they were urgent and could admit of no delay. The absolute refusal of every member of the Brotherhood to do the dirty and disagreeable work brought at once two issues to a crisis. Either labour must be voluntary or involuntary. The people who did this work must be induced to agree to perform it or they must be forced to do it by a superior authority without their consent.
They could only be led to choose this work by inducements of an extraordinary nature—the payment of enormously high wages and the shortening of each day's work to a ridiculous minimum.
If wages were made unequal, the old problem of inequality would remain unsolved. For equal wages no man would lift his hand.
Confronted by this dilemma the executive council decided at once to fix wages on an unequal basis rather than reduce its unwilling members to a condition of involuntary labour, which is merely a long way to spell slavery.
When this decision was announced, Roland Adair, the Bard of Ramcat, once more lifted his voice in solemn protest:
"I denounce this act in the name of every principle which has brought us together," he cried, with solemn warning. "You have established a system far more infamous than the unequal wages of the old society where the law of the survival of the fittest is the court of last resort. You have opened the door of fathomless corruption by substituting the whim of an executive council for the law of nature. It is the beginning of jealousy, strife, favouritism, jobbery, and injustice."
"Then what's a better way?" Old Tom asked, with a sneer.
"It's your business to find a better way," cried the man of visions.
Tom glared at the poet with a look of fury and Norman whispered to the old miner:
"Remember, Tom, you're sitting as a judge in the Supreme Court of State!"