[Editor: This article is from the “Tray Notes” column, published in The Worker (Brisbane, Qld.), 30 March 1901.]
The Last Word.
Let every man with a vote go to the poll. Let a full tally be taken so that it may be known how many white men or pro-kanakas Queensland contains. Let the fight be fought to the bitter end, and let every man strike a blow for or against.
Don’t strike both ways trying to benefit both sides. If you do you will succeed only in injuring both. Make up your own mind, and whatever it is give it effect at the ballot-box. The majority of Queensland’s manhood will decide the issue for the first time in her history, and the issue is the first beginnings of a nation.
Australia is to be saved from the coloured curse, to be relieved from strikes, to be famous for having no paupers or poor-houses, to be a government of, by and for the people. Or else to be a mongrel nation torn with racial dissension, blighted by industrial war, permeated with pauperism, and governed by cliques of lawyers and bankers and commercial and financial adventurers.
The man who votes against the Labour candidates will be bequeathing a terrible birthright to his children in the shape of the coloured alien curse.
The man who votes Labour will have his own self-respect and a confidence in the future of this the youngest nation of the world as his satisfaction. His loyalty to his fellows and stern, uncompromising opposition to his enemies will win even his opponent’s respect.
But the voter who dallies till it is too late to vote, the man who is too lazy or has some pettifogging private interest which he allows to keep him from the poll, the careless one — for these men who refuse an hour to the making of their nation, nothing but contempt remains.
But as the strong may always help the weak, so the active, sturdy, and vigorous voters may rally their weaker or careless brethren round them. Outside every booth two or three good workers are required to point out the methods of voting. In every house and street and parish and shire or division a host of workers must labour to make this poll a record one. Don’t wait to be asked, but step right up and get to work.
It is the grandest fight you will ever have a chance of taking part in — the fight for a
WHITE AUSTRALIA.
Source:
The Worker (Brisbane, Qld.), Saturday 30 March 1901, page 3
[Editor: Corrected “White Austtralia” to “White Australia”.]
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