In this account Gordon Sheldon has tried to give an objective narrative story of the Mount Isa dispute, to put the whole affair in perspective and to relate events to each other.
Gordon Sheldon, who has great affection for Mount Isa, saw the community as a helpless victim of industrial folly which the people themselves failed to recognise and failed to combat. His account does not recriminate or lament; rather looks forward to the time when Mount Isa has recovered from its ordeal and is as prosperous and lively as ever. He says at the end: "The only assets to be grimly wrested from the debris are the lessons to be learned; and if they are not learned Mount Isa faces a doubtful future, not because the riches of North-West Queensland will turn sour in the ground, but because men will demonstrate themselves incapable of working an enterprise in amity and of dividing equitably the wealth of the earth."