n Socialism and let each man work for himself
instead of "each for all and all for each." Then things began to
prosper. The ambition of each was to become a capitalist. There was no
talk of an "eight-hour day"! From sunrise to sunset men, women, and
children worked, and in an incredibly short time houses rose, gardens
developed and later teachers came to uplift the children and to start a
Sunday School.

What is left of "New Australia" to-day is an average community of sane,
sober and hard-working farmers, taking as their motto: "What we have, we
hold"!

Yet the failure of that experiment was forgotten in the rush of
Socialistic legislation that gripped Australia before and during the
war; and the rise of the "Syndicate" saved Australia from a similar
wreck that followed the previous experiment.

The "Syndicate" idea began to develop. It became another name for
co-operation. The keen people at the head of it saw that its continued
success depended on the people having an interest in the profits of
their work, so they gave the public opportunity to share in it.

The "Syndicate" expanded its sphere of co-operation. Did a State factory
fail, then, if there was a chance of profit in the material it
manufactured, a co-operation "Syndicate"--a subsidiary branch of the
combine--took it over. The workers, supplanted by labor-saving
machinery, were taken up by the great farms the "Syndicate" was
developing throughout the country.

The "Syndicate," however, did not encourage manufacture unless the goods
could be made cheaper and better than they could be imported duty free.
It studied every new manufacturing proposition apart from any tariff
possibilities. The first point it considered was whether it was
advisable to establish in Australia a factory with necessarily expensive
power to compete with Canadian or other factories that utilised cheap
water power.

This policy naturally brought about two conditions. It established
manufacture on an honest basis by doing away with the necessity for the
usual political wire-pulling for the imposition of tariff duties, and it
gradually brought about free trade in goods not worth manufacturing in
Australia.

From an industrial point of view the "Syndicate" system revolutionised
the lot of the Australian worker. It fixed a minimum wage, much higher
than the then ruling rate, and instituted piece-work. The regular wage
was guaranteed whatever the output, and the piece-work rate was a