XXVi. PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS 
show most exceptional aptitude for science. Had there 
been an educational system they might have become leaders 
in pure science, or have devised newer and cheaper methods 
of treating our ores. One I remember in particular, whose 
appetite for science was insatiable, failed to get an Annual Ex- 
hibition because he could not stew up Latin and Greek suffi- 
ciently well, and the marks given in that examination for 
these subjects were out of all proportion to their importance. 
That young man is now a clerk in an office. To take another 
view. We are trying to establish several secondary indus- 
tries here. I have often been interviewed by individuals 
engaged in these industries, and the ignorance they show 
of the foundation principles of their trades is only equalled 
by their courage and perseverance. Some time ago 
a man brought to me an article he had manufactured. He 
said it contained about 14 % of a certain constituent. 
He was basing his calculations on that, but wanted to make 
quite sure. It contained 34 %. Another manufacturer 
of the same article, when asked, stated he did not know 
how much was in his—he thought about 20 %—but there 
was over 30 %. Now a comparatively elementary know- 
ledge of practical chemistry, such as would be obtained in 
second year’s chemistry at a University would have sufficed 
to put these men right. Where the educational system is 
good, such small manufacturers easily get a man to do all 
their clerical and chemical work, and the saving is enormous. 
Until skilled labor is cheap Queensland’s secondary indus- 
tries will not thrive, and skilled labor will not be cheap until 
we get a modern University. Had one tenth part of the 
famous £10,000,000 loan been devoted to establishing a 
complete educational system, we would not still have been 
waiting for outsiders to show us how to develop our mag- 
nificent mineral resources. Young Queenslanders would 
have been discovering and turning out copper, tin, lead, 
and other metals by the thousands of tons, and Queensland 
would have already occupied the postiion to which she will 
one day attain—the wealthiest mineral State in Australasia, 
and one of the greatest if not the greatest mineral pro- 
ducer in the world. £1,000,000 invested then in that way 
would by this time have given returns in actual cash 
worth the whole loan. 
