“Look here, Mr. Geisner!” said Ned, gathering his knees into his arms.  “That’s what I want to know.  I know we’re robbed.  Any fool can see that those who work the least or don’t work at all get pretty much everything, but I don’t quite see how they get it.  We’re only just beginning to think of these things in the bush, and we don’t know much yet.  We only know there’s something wrong, but we don’t know what to do except to get a union and keep up wages.”

“That’s the first step, to get a union,” said Geisner.  “But unless unionists understand what it’s all about they’ll only be able to keep up wages for a little while.  You see, Ned, this is the difficulty:  a man can’t work when he likes.”

“A man can’t work when he likes!”

“No; not the average man and it’s the average man who has to be considered always.  Let’s take a case—­yourself.  You want to live.  Accordingly, you must work, that is you must produce what you need to live upon from the earth by your labour or you must produce something which other working men need and these other men will give you in exchange for it something they have produced which you need.  Now, let’s imagine you wanting to live and desiring to start to-morrow morning to work for your living.  What would you do?”

“I suppose I’d ask somebody.”

“Ask what?”

“Well, I’d have to ask somebody or other if there was any work.”

“What work?”

“Well, if they had a job they wanted me to do, that I could do, you know.”

“I don’t ‘You know’ anything.  I want you to explain.  Now what would you say?”

“Oh!  I’d kind of go down to the hut likely and see the boys if ’twas any use staying about and then, perhaps, or it might be before I went to the hut, that would be all according, I’d see the boss and sound him.”

“How sound him?”

“Well, that would be all according, too.  If I was pretty flush and didn’t care a stiver whether I got a job or not I’d waltz right up to him just as I might to you to ask the time, and if he came any of his law-de-dah squatter funny business on me I’d give him the straight wire, I promise you.  But it stands to reason—­don’t it?—­that if I’ve been out of graft for months and haven’t got any money and my horses are played out and there’s no chance of another job, well, I’m going to humor him a bit more than I’d like to, ain’t I?”

Geisner laughed “You see it all right, Ned.  Suppose the first man you sounded said no?”

“I’d try another.”

“And if the other said no?”

“Well, I’d have to keep on trying.”

“And you’d get more inclined to humour the boss every time you had to try again.”

“Naturally.  That’s how they get at us.  No man’s a crawler who’s sure of a job.”

“Then you might take lower wages, and work longer hours, after you’d been out of work till you’d got thoroughly disheartened than you would now.”