y about the unions and know what lies most of it is
that I've seen them tear the papers up and dance a war-dance on the
pieces."

"It's along story to explain properly," said George. "Roughly it amounts
to this that papers live on advertisements as well as on circulation and
that advertisers are sharp business men who generally put the boycott on
papers that talk straight. Then the cable matter, the telegraph matter,
the news matter, is all procured by syndicates and companies and mutual
arrangement between papers which cover the big cities between them and
run on much the same lines, the solid capitalistic lines, you know. Then
newspaper stock, when it pays, is valuable enough to make the holder a
capitalist; when it doesn't pay he's still more under the thumb of the
advertisers. The whole complex organisation of the press is against the
movement and only those who're in it know how complex it is."

"Then there'll never be a Labour press, you think?"

"There will be a Labour press, I think," said George, turning Josie's
hair round his fingers. "When the unions get a sound system it'll come."

"What do you mean by your sound system, George?" asked Geisner.

"Just this! That the unions themselves will publish their own papers, own
their own plant, elect their own editors, paying for it all by levies or
subscriptions. Then they can snap their fingers at advertisers and as
every union man will get the union paper there'll be a circulation
established at once. They can begin with monthlies and come down to
weeklies. When they have learnt thoroughly the system, and when every
colony has its weekly or weeklies, then they'll have a chance for
dailies, not before."

"How would you get your daily?" enquired Geisner.

"Expand the weeklies into dailies simultaneously in every Australian
capital," said George, waxing enthusiastic. "That would be a syndicate at
once to co-operate on cablegrams and exchange intercolonial telegrams.
Start with good machinery, get a subsidy of 6d. a month for a year and
3d. a month afterwards, if necessary, from the unions for every member,
and then bring out a small-sized, neat, first-rate daily for a ha'penny,
three-pence a week, and knock the penny evenings off their feet."

"A grand idea!" said Geisner, his eyes sparkling. "It sounds practical.
It would revolutionise politics."

"Who'd own the papers, though, after the unions had subsidised them?"
asked Ned, a little suspiciously.

"Why,