578 INDUSTRIAL INSTITUTIONS. 



them friendly feeling; and in the country, a ploughman 

 looking over the hedge as a titled lady drives by, may not 

 unnaturally be angered by the thought of his own hard 

 work and poor fare in contrast with the easy lives and 

 luxuries of those who own the fields he tills. After contem 

 plating the useless being who now lounges in club-rooms and 

 now rambles through game-preserves, the weary artizan 

 may well curse a state of things in which pleasure varies in 

 versely as desert ; and may well be vehement in his demand 

 for another form of society. 



How numerous have been the efforts to set up such a 

 form, and how numerous the failures, it is needless to show. 

 Here it will suffice to give one of the most recent examples 

 that of the South Australian village-settlements. These 

 were established by government and started with govern 

 ment funds. A commission of inquiry lately travelled 

 through them. Fragments of the evidence given before it 

 respecting the Lyrup settlement run thus. 



Harry Butt said: &quot; I reckon I worked very hard when I came 

 here; but other feelings have crept into me, and they have crept into 

 other people . . . They say We should not work for such and such 

 a big family. . . .We are not fit for a true communism. We people 

 are not educated up to it. I was a communist when I came ; but I 

 found that it would be impossible for a communist to live here. The 

 system is rotten . . . The people are not fit for co-operatives, let 

 alone communists . . . My idea was that we should all live in brotherly 

 love and affection.&quot; (pp. 50, 51.) 



Francis Peter Shelley said : &quot; Great abuses can creep in. You have 

 to oppose a proposal made by some people who can sway a majority 

 against an individual who has done more than they for the settlement, 

 and they can expel a man by their majority, or fail to give him con 

 cessions that they give to others, and so make his life miserable.&quot; 

 &quot; You say the men here are fond of place and power ? &quot; &quot; Yes, like 

 the capitalists, with the difference of being more selfish.&quot; (pp. 52, 53.) 

 At the Pyap Settlement examination of the ex-chairman, 

 A. J. Brocklehurst, resulted in the following questions and 

 answers: 



&quot; Why has more land been cleared than has been utilized ? &amp;lt; Well.. 



