of
you would leave you as well off as the most fortunate of us. There is war
between us, only I think it possible to be a little civilised and not to
fight each other like savages as we are doing."

"I am glad you admit that some of your methods are savage."

"Of course I admit it," answered Ned. "That is my opinion of the way both
sides fight now. Instead of conferring and arbitrating on immediate
questions and leaving future questions to be talked over and understood
and thoroughly threshed out in free discussion, we strike, you lockout,
you victimise wholesale and, naturally, we retaliate in our own ways."

"You prefer to be left uninterrupted to preach this new socialistic
nonsense?"

"Why not, if it is sound? And if it isn't sound, why not? Surely your
side isn't afraid of discussion if it knows it's right."

"Do you really think that we should leave our individual rights to be
decided upon by an ignorant mob?"

"My individual rights are at the mercy of ignorant individuals at
present," said Ned. "I am not allowed to work if I happen to have given
offence to a handful of squatters."

"I think you exaggerate," answered Strong. "I know that some pastoralists
are very vindictive but I regard most of them as honorable men incapable
of a contemptible action."

"Of course they are," said Ned. "The only thing is what do they call
contemptible? You and I are very friendly, just now, Mr. Strong. You're
not small enough to feel any hatred just because I talk a bit straight
but you know very well that you'd regard it as quite square to freeze me
out because I do talk straight."

The two men looked into each other's eyes. Strong began to respect this
outspoken bushman.

"I think that one of the most fundamental of all rights in any civilised
society is the right of a man to employ whom he likes at any terms and
under any conditions that he can get men to enter his employment. It
seems to me that without this right the very right to private property
itself is disputed for in civilisation private property does not mean
only a hoard, stored up for future use, but savings accumulated to carry
on the industrial operations of civilisation. These savings have been
prompted by the assurance that society will protect the man who saves in
making, with the man who has not saved, the contracts necessary to carry
on industry, unhampered by the interference of outsiders. That seems to
me, I repeat, a fundamental right essential