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,” asserted 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 assure 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.”