TROPICAL INDUSTRIES 69 



lives on the land. The alien race does the hard work, and 

 takes the greater portion of profit ; but he enjoys the 

 luxury of possession, and must make sacrifices accordingly. 



I am fearful of entering upon a description of the 

 cultivation of maize, or bananas, or citrus fruits, or pine- 

 apples, or mangoes, or coffee, or even sweet potatoes, 

 because experience teaches me that others know of all the 

 details in a far more practical sense. 



Would it not be presumptuous for a mere idler, an 

 individual whose enterprise and industry have been sapped 

 by the insidious nonchalance of the Beachcomber, to tell 

 of practical details of cultural pursuits — the enthusiasm, 

 the disappointments, the glowing anticipations, the realisa- 

 tion of inflexible facts, the plain emphatic truths which 

 others have reason to know ever so much more keenly ? 



But it may be forgiven if I generalise and say that the 

 minor departments of rural enterprise in North Queensland 

 are in a peculiar stage — a stage of transition and uncertainty. 

 Coloured labour has been depended upon to a large extent. 

 Even the poorest settler has had the aid of aboriginals. 

 But with the passing of that race, and prohibition against 

 the employment of any sort of coloured labour, the question 

 is to be asked. Can tropical products be grown profitably 

 unless consumers are willing to pay a largely increased 

 price — a price equivalent to the difference between the 

 earnings of those who toil in other tropical countries and 

 the living wage of a white man in Australia ? 



Fruit of many acceptable varieties can be grown to 

 perfection with little labour in immense quantities. Coffee 

 is one of the most prolific of crops. Timber is obtainable 

 in munificent assortment and unrealisable quantities. 

 Poultry and pigs multiply extraordinarily. Apart from 

 bananas the fruit trade is shifty and treacherous. The 

 markets are far away and inconstant, the means of transport 

 not yet perfect. Many assert that not half the pine-apples 

 and oranges, and not one-hundredth part of the mangoes 

 produced in North Queensland are consumed. That the 

 quantity grown is trivial in comparison with what would 



