A CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY OF EDWIN JAMES BRADY - Mallacoota ...

They fell about her slimy deck: they clung to what they could;
Amid the crack of falling spars, the wrack of riven wood,
They crowded like rats – that would not drown for one-and-six a day –
They died to swell a bank account that night of Table Bay.
Aye, twenty things of bloated shape that sought a resting place,
And three shipowners shaking hands by God’s own holy grace:
Aye, twenty things of clammy kind that, very shortly, stank,
And three well-scented Englishmen with money in the bank. 1
The sad tale of the conditions of seamen and stevedores is told in many a poem in
hard-hitting language and in the dialect of the mariners who “yakker, yakker, yakker
/ For the drop o’ beer and bacca”. 2 Nor will any great change come about until there
is less hypocrisy on the part of the owners (hypocrisy as blatant as in “The Hiram
Brown” 3 ) or those who appeal to the workers’ patriotism alone and expect them to
slave because of it alone: “It’s a re-a-ri-a-rally an’ another tier of bales / For the glory
of the Empire, an’ the good of News South Wales”. 4 Nor will improvement come
without a change in the callousness of the ruling classes towards accidents, which are
regarded as expensive interruptions to work, as in “The Winch”, 5 and towards
inadequate machinery or inefficient safety and work routines.
If the city workers, the stevedores and seamen, the factory hands and clerks have their
difficulties in maintaining their dignity as men, so do also the workers in the country.
The shearers, the settlers in isolated places, they who “face the raging summer and
pray the cooling change”, 6 the migrants settling in a new country against great
hardships, 7 the small-town dwellers and farmers have penury of soul as well as of
body to contend with. But the country has distinct compensations. As in “Clancy of
the Overflow”, the country could by a mere escape from the city on occasion, but
others loved it for what it was. The contrasting characteristics of the two
environments are brought out in “Knights of Chance”, which opens:
Men do not live in cities. Between the narrow ways
They walk as meek-faced merchants, dissembling all their days.
Ours are the open places; ours are the Plain and Sky;
The clean, deep-hearted Ranges, the Hills – which cannot lie. 8
But wherever he lived and worked, the Australian workingman had a strong advocate
in Brady. The assumption is usually made that he is economically depressed (which
was more often than not true) and that he and all his colleagues put forth their total
energies to fulfil the demands of an unreasonable and harsh employer, which was not
doubt less true. Although there was much wrong to be remedied, the most pressing
need was seen as more money to meet many commitments, rather than more money as
an end in itself, which “Give Us Gold” practically suggests. 9
1 “A Tale of Twenty Men”, The House of the Winds.
2 “Laying on the Screw”. The Ways of Many Waters
3 “The Hiram Brown”, ibid.
4 “Laying on the Screw”.
5 “The Winch”, The Bulletin, 23.4.1925
6 “Outposts”, Bells and Hobbles.
7 “The Blackball Line”, The Bulletin, 23.4.1925
8 “Knights of Chance”, The Earthen Floor.
9 “Give Us Gold”, Truth, 1.10.1893
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