One night a big dock bruiser grabbed a package of tobacco off the counter, but before he could move a step Hughes had caught him under the jaw with his fist.  His burly associates cheered the game little shopkeeper.  They now came to him with their troubles and he was soon their friend, philosopher and guide.

For years the synonym for Australian Labour was strike.  When the unions were merged into a national body Hughes was the unanimous choice of the husky stevedores for leader.  He became the Great Restrainer.  Never was influence of lip and brain over muscle and temper better demonstrated.  The wild men of the wharves—­the roughest crowd in all labour—­were under his spell.  This nimble-footed shopkeeper flouted them with his wit:  ruled with his mind.

On a certain occasion five hundred of them were crowded into a building at Sydney yelling bloody murder and clamouring for violence.  Suddenly the tiny figure of Hughes appeared on the platform before them.  At first they yelled him down, but he stood smiling, resolute, undaunted.  He began to talk:  the tumult subsided:  he stepped forward, stamped his foot and said in a voice that reached to every corner: 

“You shall not strike.”  And they did not.  David had defied the Goliaths.

From that time on Hughes was the Brains of Australian Labour.  He organised his industrial rough riders into a powerful and constructive union.  With it he drove a wedge into the New South Wales Legislature and gave industry, for the first time, a seat in its Councils.  He became its Parliamentary Voice.  He was only thirty.

Having got his foot in the doorway of public life, he now jammed the portal wide open.  As trade union official he forged ahead.  He became the Father Confessor of the Worker.  His advice always was:  “Avoid violence:  put your faith in the ballot box.”  With this creed he tamed the Labour Jungle:  through it he built up an industrial legislative group that acknowledged him as chief.

Though he was rising to fame the struggle for existence was hard.  No matter how late he toiled in legislative hall or union assembly, he read law when he got home.  He was admitted to the bar, and despite his deafness he became an able advocate.  When he had to appear in court he used a special apparatus with wire attachments that ran to the witness box and the bench and enabled him to hear everything that was going on.

He became a journalist and contributed a weekly article to the Sydney Telegraph.  An amusing thing happened.  He noticed that remarkable statements began to creep into his articles when published.  When he complained to the editor he discovered that the linotype operator who set up his almost indecipherable copy injected his own ideas when he could not make out the stuff.

The limitation of a State Legislature irked Hughes.  He beheld the vision of an Australian Commonwealth that would federate all those Overseas States.  When the far-away dominions had been welded under his eloquent appeal into a close-knit Union, the fragile, deaf little man emerged as Attorney General.  At last he had elbow room.