Melsom.

"Now, where do we differ?" Strong asked, when Melsom had gone.

"We are you and me, of course," said Ned, putting his hat on the floor.

Strong nodded.

"Well, you have sat down at your desk here and drawn up a statement as to how I shall work without asking me. I object. I say that, as I'm concerned, you and I together should sit down and arrange how I shall work for you since I must work for you."

"In our agreement, that you refer to, we have tried to do what is fair,"

replied Strong, looking sharply at Ned.

"Do you want me to talk straight?" asked Ned. "Because, if you object to that, it's better for me to go now than waste words talking round the subject."

"Certainly," answered Strong. "Straight talk never offends me."

"Then how do I know you have tried to do fairly?" enquired Ned. "Our experience with the pastoralists leads us to think the opposite."

"There have been rabid pastoralists," admitted Strong, after a moment's thought, "just as there have been rabid men on the other side. I'll tell you this, that we have had great difficulty in getting some of the pastoralists to accept this agreement. We had to put considerable pressure on them before they would moderate their position to what we consider fair."

Ned did not reply. He stowed Strong's statement away for future use.

"Besides," remarked Strong, after a pause, during which he arranged the letters before him. "There is no compulsion to accept the agreement. If you don't like it don't work under it, but let those who want to accept it."

"I fancy that's more how it stands than by being fair," commented Ned, bitterly.

"Well! Isn't that fair?" asked Strong, leaning back in his office chair.

"Is it fair?" returned Ned.

"Well! Why not?"

"How can it be fair? We have nothing and you have everything. All the leases and all the sheep and all the cattle and all the improvements belong to you. We've got to work to live and we can't work except for you. What's the sense of your saying that if we don't like the agreement we needn't take it? We must either break the agreement or take it. That's how we stand."

"Well, what do you object to in it?"

"I don't know what the others object to in it. I know what I object to."

"That's what I want to know."

"Well, for one thing, when I've earned money it's mine. The minute I've shorn a sheep the price of shearing it belongs to me and not to the squatter. It's convenient to agree only to draw pay at certain times, but it's barefaced to deliberately withhold my money weeks after I've earned it, and it's thieving to forfeit wages in case a squatter and I differ as to whether the agreement's been broken or not."

"There ought to be some security that a pastoralist won't be put to loss by his men leaving him at a moment's notice," a.s.serted Strong.

"You've got the law on your side," answered Ned. "You can send a man to prison, like a thief, if he has a row with a squatter after signing an agreement, but we can't send the squatter to prison if he's in fault. The Masters and Servants Act is all wrong and we'll alter it when we get a chance, I can a.s.sure you, but you're not content with the Masters and Servants Act. You want a private law all in your own hand."

"We've had a very serious difficulty to meet," said the other. "Men go on strike on frivolous pretext and we must protect our interests. We've not cut down wages and we don't intend to."

"You have cut down wages, labourers' wages," retorted Ned.

"That has been charged," replied Strong, lifting his eyebrows. "But I can show you the list of wages paid on our stations during the last five years and you will see that the wages we now offer are fully up to the average."

"That may be," said Ned. "But they are less than they were last year. I'm speaking now of what I know."

"Oh! There may be a few instances in which the unions forced up wages unduly which have been rectified," said Mr. Strong. "But the general rate has not been touched."

"The pastoralists wouldn't dare arbitrate on that," answered Ned. "In January, 1890, they tried to force down wages and we levelled them up.

Now, they are forcing them down again. At least it seems that way to me."

"That matter might be settled, I think," said Strong, dismissing it.

"What other objections have you to the agreement?"

"As an agreement I object to the whole thing, the way it's being worked.

If it were a proposal I should want to know how about the Eight Hours and the Chinese."

"We don't wish to alter existing hours," answered Strong.

"Then why not put it down?"

"And we don't wish to encourage aliens."

"A good many pastoralists do and we are determined to try to stop them.

It looks queer to us that nothing is said about it."

"Some certainly did urge that Chinese should be allowed in tropical Queensland but our influence is against that and we hope to restrain the more impetuous and thus prevent friction."

Ned shrugged his shoulders without answering.

"We hope--" began Strong. Then he broke off, saying instead: "I do not see why the men should regard the pastoralists as necessarily inimical and as not desirous of doing what is fair."

"Look here, Mr. Strong," said Ned leaning forward, as was his habit when in earnest. "We are beginning to understand things. We know that you people are after profits and nothing else, that to you we are like so many horses or sheep, only not so valuable because we're harder to break in and our carca.s.ses aren't worth anything. We know that you don't care a curse whether we live or die and that you'd fill the bush with Chinese to-morrow if you could see your way to making an extra one per cent. by it."

"You haven't much confidence in us, at any rate," returned Strong, coolly. "But if we look carefully after profits you must recollect that a great deal of capital is trust funds. The widow and the orphan invest their little fortunes in our hands. Surely you wouldn't injure them?"

"I thought we were talking straight to one another," said Ned. "You will excuse me, Mr. Strong, for thinking that to talk 'widow and orphan' isn't worthy of a man like you unless you've got a very small opinion of me.

When you think about our widows and orphans we'll think about your widows and orphans. That's only clap-trap. It doesn't alter the hard fact that you're only after profit and don't care what happens to us so long as you get it."

The financier bit his lips, flushing. He took up a letter and glanced over it before replying.

"Do you care what happens to us?"

"As things are, no. How can we? The worst that could happen to one of you would leave you as well off as the most fortunate of us. There is war between us, only I think it possible to be a little civilised and not to fight each other like savages as we are doing."

"I am glad you admit that some of your methods are savage."

"Of course I admit it," answered Ned. "That is my opinion of the way both sides fight now. Instead of conferring and arbitrating on immediate questions and leaving future questions to be talked over and understood and thoroughly threshed out in free discussion, we strike, you lockout, you victimise wholesale and, naturally, we retaliate in our own ways."

"You prefer to be left uninterrupted to preach this new socialistic nonsense?"