“But I thought the newspapers were against unions.”

“Naturally they are.  They are simply business enterprises, conducted in the ordinary commercial way for a profit, and therefore opposed to everything which threatens to interfere with profit-making.  But the men and women who work on the press are very different.  They are really wage-workers to begin with.  Besides, they are often intelligent enough to sympathise thoroughly with the Labour movement in spite of the surroundings which tend to separate them from it.  Certainly, the most popular exponents of Socialism are nearly all press writers.”

“We are only just beginning to hear about these things in the bush,” said Ned.  “What is Socialism?”

“That’s a big question,” answered Geisner.  “Socialism is——­”

He was interrupted.  “Silence, everybody!” cried Mrs. Stratton.  “Listen to Arty’s latest!”

CHAPTER VIII.

THE POET AND THE PRESSMAN.

“Silence, everybody!” commanded Mrs. Stratton.  “Listen to Arty’s latest!”

She had gone up to him as they all came in.  “Is it good?” she asked, looking over his arm.  For answer he held the slips down to her and changed them as she read rapidly, only pausing occasionally to ask him what a more than usually obscured word was.  There was hardly a line as originally written.  Some words had been altered three and four times.  Whole lines had been struck out and fresh lines inserted.  In some verses nothing was left of the original but the measure and the rhymes.

“No wonder you were worrying if you had all this on your mind,” she remarked, as he finished, smiling at him.  “Let me read it to them.”

He nodded.  So when the buzz of conversation had stopped she read his verses to the others, holding his arm in the middle of the room, her sweet voice conveying their spirit as well as their words.  And Arty stood by her, jubilant, listening proudly and happily to the rhythm of his new-born lines, for all the world like a young mother showing her new-born babe.

The vision of labour.

There’s a sound of lamentation ’mid the murmuring nocturne noises,
And an undertone of sadness, as from myriad human voices,
And the harmony of heaven and the music of the spheres,
And the ceaseless throb of Nature, and the flux and flow of years,
Are rudely punctuated with the drip of human tears
—­As Time rolls on!

Yet high above the beat of surf, and Ocean’s deep resounding,
And high above the tempest roar of wind on wave rebounding,
There’s a burst of choral chanting, as of victors in a fight,
And a battle hymn of triumph wakes the echoes of the night,
And the shouts of heroes mingle with the shriekings of affright
—­As Time rolls on!