Summary

A one-act play of the social-realism model.

Some of the dialogue of the novel The Cruel Field and that novel's related plays are to be found in this play but it has different characters and a different but nonetheless familiar storyline. The tensions of cane cutting are vividly emphasized and Naish's own 'anarchic' view of the world are transparently communicated through the character bearing his own name 'Jack'. The views expressed are militantly working-class.

Like many of Naish's plays this play has a prelude which he advises in a note at the back of this play is an adaptation for a radio play.

The prelude sets the scene. New chum Pommy "stranger" tramps up a "white" and "dusty" road to a farm owned by Barry. The stranger is looking for a cut. Barry warns him off cane cutting and cannot offer him a cut. Barry sends him off with the warning "Hey, stranger, Cain killed Abel: and cane will kill you."

The play proper begins in the galley of a cane barracks. The characters in the play are the cane cutters: Bill, a nineteen-year-old new chum; Fred, the ganger; Jack, a hothead; Ben; and Steve, Fred's brother and married cane cutter; and the farmer Barry. Over their bacon and eggs dinner the cutters complain of the cane and the poor price arbitrated by the cane inspector for the bad cane they have been cutting. Cane cutter Jack attacks Barry, the farmer, verbally over the state of the cane and price and also threatens him physically. Jack's words ring clearly as a political manifesto. The play ends with the burn getting away from them and Barry and Ben (a cutter who has cut for 24 years) dying in the fire. Fred suspects that Jack was in a position to help Barry but let Ben rush ahead to do so, motivated by selfishness and greed reminiscent "of the bad old days of the green cane." Jack's action in this case is at variance with his earlier proclamation that if one member of the gang is wronged, they all are. Jack's pensive drawing of his finger across his cane knife hints at a contemplation of suicide.

The realistic dialogue, and occasional monologue, offers descriptions of the cane cutting job, the pushes and pulls of the work and the tensions of relationships between farmers, cane inspectors and cane cutters. It also describes what makes a good canecutter, and attitudes to the various groups who cut cane: Italians, Displaced Persons, Anglo-Australians, and 'Poms'.