values w ere largely due to the fact that large sums of public money had been spent building ports, harbours and railway lines w hich provided excellent tran sp o rt facilities throughout the region, However, as more and more of this land was being used for sheep grazing, little use was made of the railways w hich ran at a loss, thus forcing taxpayers throughout the state to bear the burden of in terest payments on the public loans raised to build them This m eant that:
...so long as Parliam ent refuses to impose a tax upon landed monopoly, so long must Railways Commissioners impose upon growers of produce throughout the agricultural regions a h ig h e r fre ig h t charge than would otherwise be necessary,93
Following an analysis of the comparative profitability of d ifferen t lines in the Western District, he argued that:
Under existing conditions the man who holds the most land and puts it to the least use, contributes the least in taxation, and the least to the upkeep of the railways. The more the agriculturalist or the dairy farm er labours, the more he produces, the more he contributes to the railways and the Income Tax.
High railw ay freight, necessitated by non-paying lines in sheep carry in g country, is a land tax, imposed NOT upon the value of the land, but upon the industry of the occupier, and the wealth produced.94 Pastoral monopoly was, therefore, not only a cost to the public purse in revenue foregone but also a burden on the more productive agriculturalist. Idle capital was, in fact, being subsidised by productive labour via the agency of the state
According to Anstey, th ere was an o th er kind of monopoly w hich, while economically efficient, was socially damaging. The share farm ing system, w hereby the monopolist bought up small agricultural holdings but did not w ant to convert them into a large sheep ru n and so rented them to small farm ers in re tu rn for a share of th e ir income, at least had the virtues of keeping agricultural land under cultivation and m aintaining ru ra l population. That system, however, only served to en rich the totally idle landholder who received income w ithout e ith e r work or w orry. Moreover, the hig h productivity of these consolidated holdings increased the value of
93 Ibid.. p H 94 Ibid, p 12
4: Liberty & Land 145
the land to a price which kept the small, independent farmer out of the market. The end result was a socially backward step :
It is the modernisation of the old feudal system. It is the localisation in the new world of the iniquitous land system of the old, Note then, that not only are farm holdings diminishing in number, but that there is going on a rapid transition of the agricultural producers from a freeholding Yeomanry into agricultural tributors and tenants.9^
Thus were the common people denied freedom and independence on the land.
Anstey acknowledged that the existing Victorian land tax had, when first levied in 1877, been designed to break up the large estates and encourage closer settlement He claimed, however, that for a number of reasons it had been a failure Because it was not a graduated tax its incidence per acre was the same on both large and small properties and so did nothing to discourage aggregation, On the contrary, many large landholders had secured from successive governments a progressive reduction of the classification of their properties on the tax scale so that they paid less and less as the years passed Others avoided liability by having their estates exempted under separate provisions of the Act. Some of those who did pay found that the financial benefits of cheap transport provided by adjacent railways offset their tax burden. Still others avoided it by letting portions of their land to share farmers whose rent covered the tax bill and, at the same time, gave the appearance of closer settlement which masked the process of monopolisation. By these and other subterfuges the business of land aggregation had gone unchecked so that ‘550 individuals, families, or corporations own one half of the alienated land of Victoria'96 All of this, in Anstey’s view, was compelling evidence of the need to implement Labor's rural policies which had, as their centre-piece, a graduated tax on unimproved land values
Therefore is required taxation based upon land values, because such mode of basing contributions to the general exchequer' is not a tax upon industry, but upon monopoly, It brings to an end the monopolist
Ibid p i 4.
replaced the sheepwalk with homesteads, It calls for the work of the artisan to develop a home m arket. It stimulates not the exodus, but the advent of people. With more people the tax per head is less, w hile the general revenue is more, It penalises idleness, and stimulates production. Multiplied production increases railway freig h t, piles up the iron road revenues, and, as the railw ays are for the public service, and not private profit, railw ay charges may be dim inished as the volume of traffic rises. Facilities may thus be extended w ithout extended loans. Such are some of the inevitable consequences of a contributory system, that calls upon a man to pay for the upkeep of his country in proportion as he owns it.97
This apparently simple answ er to the problem of landed monopoly had a long history w hich stretched back, by a circuitous route, as fa r as the French physiocrats of the e ig h teen th century. In the Australian colonies the long political campaign to unlock the lands' had preoccupied radicals and reform ers in the years following the 1850s gold ru sh es It was most clearly expressed in the 1857-60 Land Convention in M elbourne.98 The Duffy and Robertson land acts, w hich arose from the struggle between an aristocratic conception of society based on large scale land ow nership and the radical ideal of equality of opportunity, had not fulfilled th e ir promise of independence on the land'.99 In the 1880s and 1890s radicals came up with a multitude of ideas, most of w hich centred around two main proposals; land nationalisation w hich involved perpetual governm ent ow nership with individuals taking out crown leases, or private ow nership subjected to heavy taxation 100 During this period, 1886 in fact, Anstey copied a verse into his commonplace book w hich suggested an early in terest in the radical ideal. The chorus was:
Yet millions of hands w ant acres
While m illions of acres w ant hands.101
97 Ibid, p 35
98 For a summary of ihe Convention's programme seeTH Irving ,1830-70' in Frank Crowley (ed ), A New History? o f Australia, Melbourne, William Heinemann, 1974, pp 145-146
99 Robin Go llan, Radical and Working Class Politics chapter 2 100 Craufurd D W Goodwin, Economic Enquiry?in Australia chapter 4
101 Commonplace book, opcit, pp 57-58 He quoted it again in Tocsin 13 July 1905 when the first of his Monopoly and Democracy' articles appeared
4: Liberty 6c Land 147
Like many other radicals of the period, he had taken an interest in Henry George's writings, copying a passage from Social Problems into the same book When the Labor Party, which had inherited the ideal of independence on the land', came to formulate a policy it found George's single tax the more congenial option. His panacea had an established and wide-spread appeal that was both simple and direct. As such it could be easily explained yet permitted an almost infinite variety of interpretations around the central theme. Moreover, it had the additional benefit of being compatible with parliamentary politics. An Act could be passed and a tax levied, but in such a way as to allow for the inevitable compromises that would be necessary to get it through It was also, in accordance with Labor's broad strategy, a policy which gave the state an interventionist role in shaping the direction of economic development in a cautious, pragmatic way while, at the same time, keeping faith with the egalitarian ideal that lay behind it That was the kind of policy that Anstey was arguing for in Monopoly
and Democracy.
However, the book provided more than a simple exposition of the evidence in favour of his party's policy on land ownership, although that was its main purpose. He also offered a number of detailed proposals for the economic development of Victoria which took account of the topography and natural resources of each region within the state. In Gippsland, for example, he suggested the expansion of the railway network or, in the more difficult terrain that he and McGrath had traversed, the building of nationalised' roads, that is, those constructed and maintained by the state rather than local government. This would open up hitherto inaccessable areas, first to the timber industry and later to mining and homestead settlement. Taking up an idea raised by Thomas Bent some time earlier, he also suggested that the Snowy, Tambo and Bemm rivers be harnessed to produce hydro-electricity as a source of power for both industry and transport in the region .103 Referring to a proposed rail link between the
102 Commonplace book, op tit, p 117
port of Geelong and existing lines serving the Western District, he suggested that land on either side of the line could be resumed by the crown and sold in small holdings, In that way, the higher price that the land would bring because of its proximity to the railway could be used to defray the cost of construction. Thus fertile land would be opened up to agriculture without any detrimental effect on the carrying capacity of existing grazing properties in the area,104
These specific proposals, however, were merely part of a more general strategy which he had in mind for how the state should be developed He envisaged a more systematic approach to socialised settlement' where transport and other facilities would be properly planned and constructed, but only after careful scientific research had been conducted to establish the true potential of the area That having been done, there would then be careful regulation of who could buy and develop land, special care being taken to prevent the entry of speculators and monopolists into the market, The primary objective remained closer settlement', All this would be planned and supervised by a new form of unified regional administration, free from the inter departmental rivalries of centralised government and tailored to the specific needs of each region. It was a practical, business-like scheme inspired by a wider vision for the future
The old order is touched with decay, and is doomed to extinction. Ever more coherently and cohesively the democracy demands that modern Governments shall be more of industrial directorates, and less mere policemanised States, symbolising the supremacy of Money Bags and Soil Monopolists. It demands a democratised industry - a consideration of the means by which men live, upon the proper conduct of which depends social well-being and general happinessJ°5
It was also a politically astute attempt to widen Labor's rural constituency. His principal theme throughout the book was an exploration of how land monopolisation had systematically dispossessed the small farmers of Victoria. It was precisely those
104 Ibid, pp 47-48
Ibid pp 37-39 Although it bore no direct relevance to the rest of the book Ansley included a chapter on the Decline of Drink and Crime in Victoria' This was because of his involvement in the debate over the Licensing Bill at the time they were going to press See VPD, vol 113,30 August 1906, pp 1280-1282 and chapter 5 below
4: Liberty L Land 149
people who had to be won over to the Labor cause if the party was to break out of the metropolitan enclave in which Irvine and Bent had so neatly isolated it, The Reform Movement had secceeded in convincing country electors that the main source of their difficulties was to be found in the city where the urban malaise of state socialism' had been spawned by an unholy alliance between the Liberals, the Labor Party, the Trades Hall and the public service. Anstey's political point in Monopoly and Democracy was to offer them an alternative populism with a different villian, the large landholders who had manipulated the agencies of state to expand their wealth and power at the expense of the little man'. But the state need not be an enemy of country people, In the hands of the Labor Party it could become their champion in the struggle with pastoral capital for a secure future of independence on the land'. The state under Labor administration would cease to be a mere policemanised' apparatus designed to maintain the supremacy of Money bags and Soil Monopolists', It would become, instead, a set of rationally organised, democratic agencies dedicated to the social well-being and general happiness' of its citizens. The principal means of achieving this would be Labor's policy of closer settlement' which would return the land to the people and the people to the land. The great pastoral estates would be gradually replaced by small homesteads, Fertile soil would be turned from grazing to cultivation, agricultural output would rise, the rural population increase and income, along with the burden of taxation, would be spread more evenly. The common man would thus come to have a stake in the country' where, with the encouragement of a benevolent state, he might provide his family with the simple necessities of life and a certain measure of frugal comfort. Content in his pursuit of this modest ambition, the small yeoman farmer would become a balkwark of political democracy in the countryside and a tangible expression of economic equality on the land.
In placing the independent small farmer at the centre of Victorian Labor's rural policy Anstey was drawing on an established radical populist tradition that had
worked very effectively for the party in the past and in other States.^06 He provided an enduring ideal as the basis for country campaigning. It was a symbol, moreover, which not only carried distant echoes of his Devonish ancenstry, but also encapsulated two of the main preoccupations of his political career so far; political liberty and economic democracy.
106 On this see Peter Love, Labour and th e Money Power, chapter 1 and Raymond Markey The Making o f the Labor Party in New South Waies, 1SS0-190Q, Kensington, University of New South Wales Press, 1988, especially chapter 10
By 1906 Anstey’s reputation as a leading propagandist, both on the platform and in p rin t, was well established. After his speech on the Strike Suppression Bill he was being acknowledged as one of Labor s most prom ising parliam entary orators, There w ere some, in fact, who marked him down as a future leader. Readers of Tocsin
had come to appreciate his vigorous, combatative style of journalism . Electors throughout the State had seen and heard him during his extensive organising tours, He was one of the party's most visible members; widely recognised and much sought after. His reputation was such that, w hen the Tasmanian Labor Party decided to make a determ ined effo rt during the March 1906 State election, Anstey was one of the mainland politicians invited to join the cam paign.*
Like th e ir Victorian counterparts, the Tasmanians had been isolated w ithin a small electoral enclave; in this case the west coast m ining areas around Mt. Lyell. Queenstown and Zeehan. Their poor representation in the House of Assembly reflected a weak organisational base and a lack of effective co-ordination with the unions. They had only th ree of the th irty -fiv e lower house seats, Realising th at a good election result could generate sufficient momentum to make the party an effective force in Tasmanian politics, they sought help from th e ir m ainland comrades who responded with an impressive arra y of political talent. Dr. Maloney, King O’Malley, W G, Spence, J, C, Watson and Senator O’Keefe came from the Common'wealth Parliam ent, Anstey and Billson led the Victorian contingent, supported by Coneybeer and Roberts from South
* Although his reputation as a campaigner would have been sufficient to recommend him he may have been suggested by Lillian Locke who, before she married the Labor MHA George Burns and moved to Queenstown and, in 1907 to Charters Towers, had worked with Anstey on organising tours in central Victoria For a brief account of Locke's career as a champion of working women see Betty Serie, Silk and Calico Class, Gender and the Vote, Sydney, Hale and Iremonger, 19S&, pp 39-38
5: Wowsers 6c the Working Class 1 5 2
Australia, and Albert Wilson from Western Australia.^ Since Labor was contesting th irteen seats compared with only five at the 1903 election, the assistance of these peram bulating p h ila n th ro p is ts , as the conservative Hobart Mercury called them, was particularly welcome. Each was assigned to a p articular electorate w here it was thought th at th e ir background and special talents would be best received by the voters. Anstey and Roberts, both ex-seamen and w h arf labourers, were sent to Hobart w here, in conjunction with O'Keefe and Coneybeer, they embarked on a hectic programmme of m eetings and rallies. On each occasion the specifics of Labor policy were left to the local candidate, The visitors were expected to address themselves to the wider, more philosophical issues. Anstey did just that in a speech to a large meeting of waterside w orkers at the Argyle Street Pier on 26 March Taking up a fam iliar theme, he told them that the Labor Party's policy was national in character, and not in the interests of any one class . It aimed to legislate for the w elfare of the people who, in