Explore "All That Swagger" by Miles Franklin on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Bicycles caused no uneasiness at Burrabinga. The precipices were against them. A few far-seeing horse breeders were alarmed, but the parrotry, clacking that no new invention can influence the existing order, remained undisturbed. People who rode bicycles were graded as flash townies. Squatters and selectors had a feeling of wholesome superiority over the town-dweller as a parasite. The male townie was on a lower grade of manliness generally; his female was suspect in virtue and home-making ability. In the incipient Australian nation the parasite had not then become as a whole more important than the person who supported him.
The system of profiteering and business rationalization, under which every man finally naively expected to live by usury at the expense of his brother, had not yet induced world paralysis of trade, nor so universally grafted the artificial fruit of poverty on to the tree of plenty. The regulations of trades-unionism were still being resisted as anarchy by those subscribing to the doctrine that slave labour is imperative to maintain a prosperous state. A world strike of workers for the limitation of the hours of the working day with an increase in wages was extreme among postulates for reform. Recurrent minor strikes in various trades--shearers, dock labourers, building workers, or workers in manufactories--were the nightmare of employers.