THE CREED OF HUMANITY

We want a new religion, a new faith, a new ideal and we are getting it. We are tired of the hopeless hope of Patience; we are weary of the barren glories of Submission; we have knelt to an idol miscalled Fate until the pain of our kneeling is greater than all other pain beside. They have told us that the Eternal Wisdom, by whose breath we live and of whom the whole universe is but an incarnation, is a miserable Folly, that generation after generation must be born to suffer and die in this loathsome world which might well be so joyous and glad. They have taught us to believe that all struggle is vain and all effort useless and all blows struck at social conditions but as the blows a child strikes against a stone wall. We have been bidden to look after ourselves and to care nothing for the others and to hold as mere drivelling dreamings the teaching of the Christ. And the world’s heart has been saddened and Life’s horror has driven men mad and a cloud of gloomy doubt has blotted out the stars and despair has nerved desperate hands to do desperate needs.

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There in the old lands Injustice lords it and to this new land men fled, asking only for livelihood, bringing brawny muscles and skilled hands and clever brains. Nature strewed her treasures before the feet of the white man as for the aboriginal she never did. From the rocks she gave him gold and from the great plains wool and from the coast lands sugar and corn and wine. But Social Injustice came over the ocean and laid its hands on the gold in the rocks and the wool on the plains and on the sugar and the corn and the wine. Men hunger now in the Australian land. They hunger because the workers are robbed just as they are in the old lands, because between the labourer and the land stand the land-holder and the machine-holder, bloated with the wealth his work won for them, denying him leave to work except as it please them. By hunger is the Australian worker being forced down to Degradation. By the drawn face of his wife and the clamour of his children and by his own needs, which should be an incentive to Industry truly but not to Slavery as they are. It is in Australia as it was in Europe; it will be here as it is there; if man was indeed made to mourn there is indeed no escape by crossing the ocean and no hope merely because we see the Southern Cross instead of the Great Bear. Yet there is hope; there is an uprising which is not of despair; there is a dream of an Australia in which Social Injustice shall be unknown. For the new religion has spoken; the new faith has reached our hearts; the new ideal has burst through the clouds of gloomy doubt and shines ever in the heavens of our better thoughts. This is the new religion: that Humanity is. This is the creed: that we stand together

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It was the Christ who said "Love one another" for which they scourged him before Pilate. It was the Christ who said "Sell all that thou hast and give to the poor" for which they hung him between two thieves. His was Humanity in its dawn, Humanity lifting itself to the east wind, Humanity trembling into expression like love on the lips of a girl. And through all the centuries Humanity has been growing and spreading, watered by the martyr’s blood and the sufferer’s tears, hidden by the shell of a religion that ignored the workers, unknown to the modern representatives of those who crucified Christ. And in our hour of hopelessness, in our day of doubt and despair, in our time of bitterest need, it has come to us. " Be men!" it bids us. "Be men and think of the others! There is safety in Solidarity and Solidarity is that ye stand together"

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There in Wallaroo, South Australia, two men were oppressed. They were worked twelve hours a day in this boasted Eight-Hour land. They asked for fair hours and Capitalism denied them; it would not yield for them one crumb of its cake, one sip of its champagne. What could they do? What could any of us do, workers of Queensland, if we stood alone and had wives and children and if everywhere there were men still worse off, anxious to work at any terms! They turned to their mates, to the Eight-Hour miners for whom they kept the engines running at Capitalism’s behest, urging the motto of unionism that he who injures all. The rich syndicate sneered, but the digger did not. It was no concern of his, perhaps in the old selfish creed that has brought us to all this wretchedness. It was concern of his in Humanity’s creed, the creed of solidarity which bids us "stand together." Up from the shafts the miners came, from the surface work, from the stampers; there was none left to lift a pick or turn a winch or tend a pump. For these two brother-men, 450 who had no complaint threw down their tools and tightened their belts, ready for all the silent agonies of an industrial struggle. Surely that is the spirit of what Christ felt when he cried: "Love one another."

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To stand together, that is Solidarity, to be each for all and all for each, to move with a collective strength inspired by a collective thought for the collective good. To be linked together by the sympathies that have materialized into organization, to be bound together by the handclasp of a fellowship which has been bred into the bone and made part of our being, to have become welded into one glowing solid mass by the resistless Forces which are the hammer which God himself swings over the anvil which is Eternity, that is Solidarity and behind Solidarity is Humanity as behind the sunlight is the glorious sun itself.

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Here in Queensland, the shearers are fighting the labourers’ battle, making it their own, risking for it their own great organization. And in this they are fighting the battle of every worker in Queensland, for if the bush-labourer’s wage is forced down the town-labourer’s wage will soon follow and the town-artisan’s also. They are bearing the brunt of the battle while Federation is still in embryo, while it is still lacking in the perfect organization which becomes habit. They do it because Humanity is moving them, because it is the creed of Humanity that we should stand together.

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As the shearers are being moved and as the Wallaroo miners were moved, so are we not at all being moved? Is there a union now that will deny aid to another struggling against odds and needing assistance? Will the miner dig the coal for Capitalism to crush his seafaring brother with? Will the wharf labourer handle the wool of squatters who are forcing wages down and against whom the shearers fight unitedly? How long will the railway men, who can only expect going wages and hours, stand out the general alliance to uphold wages and reduce hours at all hazards and at any cost? And will not the day come when no man will lift his hand to labour in a community that permits gross wrong to be done to the weak or that does not heed the right to live even of the humblest?

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Patience, workers! Patience! And the battle is ours; the issue is in our own hands. Without us there is nothing possible. It is only by our disunion that wrong is done us. It is only because we are hasty with one another and distrustful and do not bear and forbear, that we are played off against each other and crushed down in this pitiless competitive way. It is a religion we need, to fill our hearts and nerve our arms and blot out from us all fear and all malice and all seeking after self. And that religion is being preached to-day by the myriad voices of a world so bad that it must either mend or break; it is being preached wherever two or three are gathered together; it is being preached by the very press and pulpit and plutocracy that attempts to prevent its propaganda. All over the world, in every phase of life, there is organization – organization. Everywhere we are learning with opening eyes that the many are strong while the few are weak. We cannot turn but it is brought home to us that Unity is the great lever of Progress and that men are being driven to act together against unbearable industrial wrongs. In strikes and lock-outs and huge labour upheavals we hear the clash of conflict between the old and the new. The old is Brutality, the accursed, the ungodly, the savage brutal competition which drives us to tear each other’s flesh; the new is Humanity, the all-loving, the true-hearted, the sympathy which makes us feel others’ cares as our own. And the creed of Humanity is only this: that we stand together.

J.M