ch value as men around him
receive in wages for working for somebody else. Of course! You might
starve working on Mount Morgan or Broken Hill with a pick and pannikin,
though on an alluvial your pick and pannikin would be all you needed.
That's the kernel of the industrial question. Industry has passed out of
the alluvial stage into the reefing. We must have machinery to work with
or we may all starve in the midst of mountains of gold."

"I don't quite see how you mean."

"Just this. If every man could take his pick on his shoulders and work
for himself with reasonable prospect of what he regarded as a sufficient
return he wouldn't ask anybody else for work."

"Not often, anyway."

"But if he cannot so work for himself he must go round looking for the
man who has a shaft or a pump or a stamping mill and must bargain for the
owner of machinery to take the product of his labour for a certain price
which of course isn't it's full value at all but the price at which,
owing to his necessities, he is compelled to sell his labour.

"Things are getting so in all branches of industry, in squatting, in
manufacturing, in trading, in ship-owning, in everything, that it takes
more and more capital for a man to start for himself. This is a necessary
result of increasing mechanical powers and of the economy of big
businesses as compared to small ones. For example, if there is a great
advantage in machine clipping, as a friend of mine who understands such
things tells me there is, all wool will some day be clipped that way.
Then, the market being full of superior machine-clipped wool,
hand-clipped would have little sale and only at lower price. The result
would be that all wool-growers must have machines as part of their
capital, an additional expense, making it still harder for a man with a
small capital to start wool-growing.

"All this means," continued Geisner, "that more and more go round asking
for work as what we call civilisation progresses, that is as population
increases and the industrial life becomes more complicated. I don't mean
in Australia only. I'm speaking generally. They can only work when
another man thinks he can make a profit out of them, and there are so
many eager to be made a profit on that the owner of the machine has it
pretty well his own way. This system operates for the extension of its
own worst feature, the degradation of the working masses. You see, such a
vast amount of industrial work can be hel