Page:The empire and the century.djvu/484

 Labour Party, much to the chagrin of their opponents, the 'Socialists'—for there is a 'Socialist' Party in Australia which runs candidates against the Labour Party—has not adopted this policy as a plank in its political platform. It has only gone so far as to maintain that collective ownership should supersede or prevent monopolies, which is the creed of the Progressive Party on the London County Council, and the mainspring of almost all the activities of such Municipalities as Birmingham and Glasgow. In practice, this would mean that the Commonwealth Government would buy out the Tobacco Trust, and thus establish a State monopoly in that most profitable source of revenue, similar to that which the Colonial Office now enjoys in Cyprus, and to those which have existed for many years in other European States whose rulers have never yet been suspected of 'Socialistic' tendencies.

But the Labour Party is perhaps more discredited by a partisan disparagement of its specific measures than by a general attack upon its so-called Socialistic principles. The dispute between the Commonwealth and the Orient Company over the mail subsidy furnishes a recent illustration. Probably there is not one person in a thousand, even of the well-informed, who does not believe that all this trouble was occasioned by the clause in the Postal Act which required the employment of white crews on all mail-boats. Yet the question of white labour has never entered into this dispute. The letter from the Secretary of the Orient Company, which was published in the Times of March 30, 1905, should finally dispose even of this hardy fiction, although, judging from experience of similar cases, it will probably be resurrected at the next Australian election. 'The Six Hatters' is another case in point. The 'Undesirable Immigrant Act' forbids the importation of indentured labour, in order that all con-