feeling amongst the workers that government is easy, and that the most sweeping changes can be effected with little thought. To these causes also may be attributed that excessive belief in equality common to advanced democracies. The Australian worker is as firm in his belief that the social millennium is easy of accomplishment as in his belief in his own worth and in his right to the economic benefits enjoyed by the more fortunate or more able of his fellow-citizens.

This also accounts in part for the intense class hostility, possibly more acute in Australia than in any other place in the world. Comparatively good conditions have not prevented the Labour movement from adopting the Marxian theory of the class war. There is within the movement a large and growing minority of irreconcilables whose influence has recently increased to an extraordinary degree. Large quantities of syndicalist literature have been imported from America. A well-known trade union secretary sent to America some time ago for literature. He received a ton of I.W.W. pamphlets, and declares that they completely destroyed his authority with his union. The war greatly increased the influence of this revolutionary school of thought, for it provided numerous apparent proofs of the truth of the doctrine of the class war. The trial and conviction of twelve members of the I.W.W. in Sydney for sedition and arson aroused a remarkable degree of sympathy amongst unionists entirely opposed to the methods of the I.W.W.; it was enough for them that "these men suffered for their class," a significant indication of the strength of the idea of class solidarity. It is not enough to say that there is no room for the philosophy of violence in a country like Australia, where the worker enjoys good conditions and frequently holds the reins of government. His more fortunate situation whets his appetite, without providing him with the new social system in which he believes. What the ordinary member of the middle class fails to understand is that the

doctrine of the class war is sufficiently close to the facts of modern industrialism to offer a plausible explanation of all its abuses in one simple generalisation capitalism. The Australian worker's class consciousness is deep enough to lead him to see the force of the Marxian call to world-wide labour solidarity. Certainly it is grotesque for the imported revolutionary to preach the same jehad in Australia as in America or England; but once the worker has become fully class conscious nothing is easier than to persuade him that the capitalist system is the same all the world over, and that in spite of all the boasted reforms of Australia he is still a wage-slave; there are degrees of slavery, but it is slavery still. Thus Marxianism appeals to the ordinary worker through its simple theory of exploitation, and to the more intellectual through its internationalism and its abstract economic reasoning. It is curious that this growth of a class-consciousness, based on internationalism, exists together with an extra. ordinary ignorance of the world outside Australia. And yet the one assists the other. In Australia there are few of those many influences which modify extremes and exaggerations of opinion in England. There is no cultured or leisured contribution to the stream of thought and art. There is no complex system of civilisation to give variety and distraction to our society. Issues are too clear cut. The position and outlook of Australia are exceedingly insular and her domestic life very parochial. Everybody's material interests are so obviously involved with those of everybody else; we live too close together. Again, there is no recognition of such striking distinctions between the ability of the best intellects and that of the average worker to give pause to the assumption of equality. Especially is this true in the political sphere, where the continued lack of men of great distinction is remarkable in all parties. The Labour Party suffered in particular by the fact that the split took away its ablest men in State and

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Federal politics, and among the leaders of official Labour to-day in Australia there are none who can approach in capacity of mind and force of personality the leaders of the British Labour Party. Further, the Australian worker has an even narrower conception of the State than the average Marxian. Not only is his outlook narrowly industrial, but hẹ uses political action as merely another form of industrial action. He neither knows nor cares that politics is wider than economics. It is to him but one part of the great fight against capitalism. high ability, coupled with the statesman's breadth of view is absent from Labour counsels, there has grown up in the last few years a chicane that will seize every tactical advantage and opportunity in a way that the most astute politician of the old parties might envy. This tendency has been fostered by the arbitration system, which turns Union officials and men into special pleaders, keenly on the look-out for the smallest chance to make a point in their favour.

The social and economic theory of the Australian Liberal, on the other hand, has all the defects of a commercial and individualist tradition. His natural tendency to repudiate responsibility for the condition of life of the workers has been intensified rather than mitigated by the paternal intervention of the State on the worker's behalf. If the employer admits generally the right of the worker to good conditions, he so frequently opposes any particular efforts to maintain or better those conditions as to induce the belief that he still regards the worker merely as an item in the cost of production and not as a citizen exercising his social function. The striker is a rebel, to be dealt with by the strong hand. Of the worker's psychology the majority of employers know practically nothing. Such employers fail entirely to understand that the most deep-seated cause of industrial unrest throughout the world is the feeling of the worker that his personality has no opportunity in the present industrial system of expressing itself, and his self

respect is deeply injured by his being treated as an inanimate tool. This feeling is even stronger than the sense of economic insecurity. Though such insecurity is by no means so prevalent in Australia as elsewhere, it is within the experience of practically all Australian workers. But far more powerful is the determination of the worker to be satisfied with nothing less than a full human share in the control of industry as in the control of government, and the growing belief that this will not be realised without fundamental social changes --a belief that is greatly reinforced by the worker's exaggerated interpretation of equality. Always opposed to profit-making in any form, he is able to point to the increased prosperity of many capitalists as a direct result of the war. Though he generalises with gross unfairness over the whole field of capitalist enterprise, it is not surprising that he exhibits intense impatience when talk of loyalty and sacrifice differentiates against his class, which suffered like others in the war. A further aggravation of class division during the war was due to resentment in Labour circles at the number of prosecutions of workers for industrial offences in 1917 and 1918, which to them have a decided colouring of political bias. Under the Unlawful Associations Act, many members of the I.W.W. were imprisoned for six months; three of the Sydney strike leaders were prosecuted for conspiracy, though they were not convicted owing to a disagreement of the jury. Many persons were also put in gaol merely for waving the red flag! However divided may be the rank and file upon economic doctrine, they are absolutely at one in regarding these cases as demonstrations of class bias. Furthermore, the use of the censorship to examine the correspondence of the Trades Hall during the Sydney strike greatly increased the belief in a political and capitalist conspiracy against Unionism.

Australian Governments are alive to some of the dangers exposed by recent events. A Conference

was held, in 1918, of representatives of the various States and the Commonwealth for the purpose of dealing with the overlapping of industrial awards. Unfortunately, it was abortive. Other measures of amelioration foreshadowed by the Government of New South Wales were a scheme of Unemployment Insurance, a basic living wage, and a bonus for every child after the third in a family. It is unlikely, however, that for reasons already indicated, any mere improvement in governmental machinery or in wages and conditions will go to the root of the industrial trouble. The workers are certain to go on organising towards the One Big Union. The employers show an equal propensity towards closer union. There could be no greater curse to Australia than the deliberate fomentation of the already bitter antagonism between the two sides. The prevailing narrowness of outlook and want of social responsibility can be reformed partly by education, but chiefly by means designed to carry the worker through his apprenticeship in playing his part in the control of industry. There are so many State enterprises in Australia that the Governments are offered an excellent opportunity for experimenting with some of the measures proposed by the Reconstruction Committee appointed by the Prime Minister in England. It would be comparatively easy to draw the workers into a share of the control of the purely Labour side of Government enterprises. It might be possible, also, to base upon the Arbitration Courts a similar system of co-operation between employers, workers, and the State for the management of industry. The greatest barrier to any such constructive scheme as that of industrial parliaments outlined in the Whitley Report is the hostility between the two classes. But unless some positive effort is to be made to set up a workable scheme of co-operation more extensive than the experiments hitherto made, the outlook for Australia is dark indeed.