“That’s a funny notion,” said Nellie.  “But all employers have it or pretend to have it.  I fancy it comes through men, afraid of being victimised if they display independence, shifting the responsibility of their sticking up for rules upon the union and letting the boss think they don’t approve of the rules but are afraid to break them, when they’re really afraid to let him know they approve them.”

“That’s about it, Nellie, but most people find it easy to believe what they want to believe.  Anyway, I’ve got it straight from headquarters that the squatters expect to get blacklegs working under enough military protection to make blacklegging feel safe, as they look at it, and then they think our unions will break right down.  And, of course, what maddens our crowd is that blacklegs are collected in another part of the world and shipped in under agreements which they can be sent to prison if they break, or think they can, which amounts to the same, and are kept guarded away from us, like convicts, so that we can’t get to them to talk to them and win them over as is done in ordinary strikes in towns.”

“That’s shameful!” said Nellie.  “The squatter governments have a lot to answer for.”

“And what can we do?” continued Ned.  “They won’t let us have votes.  There are 20,000 men in the back country altogether and I don’t believe 5000 of them have votes and they’re mostly squatters and their managers and ‘lifers’ and the storekeepers and people who own land.  I’ve no vote and can’t get one.  None of the fellows in my lot can get votes.  We can’t alter things in Parliament and the law and the government and the military and the police and the magistrates and everything that’s got authority are trying to down us and we can’t help ourselves.  Do you wonder that our chaps get hot and talk wild and act a little wild now and then?”

Nellie pressed his arm answeringly.

“I feel myself a coward sometimes,” went on Ned.  “Last drought-time some of us were camped ’way back at a water-hole on a reserve where there was the only grass and water we could get for hundreds of miles.  We had our horses and the squatter about wanted the grass for his horses and tried to starve us away by refusing to sell us stores.  He wouldn’t even sell us meat.  He was a fool, for we took his mutton as we wanted it, night-times, and packed our stores from the nearest township, a hundred and eighty miles off.  I used to think that the right thing to do was to take what we wanted off his run and from his store, in broad daylight, and pay him fair prices and blow the heads off anybody who went to stop us.  For we’d a better right to the grass than he had.  Only, you see, Nellie, it was easier to get even with him underhand and we seem to do always what’s easiest.”

“They’ve always acted like that, those squatters, Ned,” said Nellie.  “Don’t you recollect when they closed the road across Arranvale one drought ’cause the selectors were cutting it up a bit, drawing water from the reserve, and how everybody had to go seven miles further round for every drop of water?  I’ve often wondered why the gates weren’t lifted and the road used in spite of them.”