1 Ava., 1899.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 189 
the Bill was shelved. But, as both the experts and the public still ask for stringent 
legislation, another attempt is likely to be made soon to pass this or a similar measure. 
As the Bill concerns dairymen and farmers directly, this Conference seemed a good 
opportunity of bringing the matter up, especially as the present Ministry is not. 
committed to or responsible for the measure. ‘Ihe aim of the Bill must meet*with 
general sympathy, since it is to protect the public health and to secure a better quality 
of dairy produce for export. But this very fact makes it all the more necessary to 
criticise. Unpopular measures meet with plenty of opposition, and are therefore 
framed carefully. Popular measures have not to face the same criticism, and are 
framed and passed often without due consideration, especially when they affect a class 
like dairymen and farmers, the nature of whose occupation makes it dificult for them 
to organise and influence public opinion and parliamentary debate. The popular aim is 
generally right, but the popular methods of attaining the end in question are generally 
wrong, for the average man, unaware or heedless of the complex nature of society, likes 
to take the direct royal road. And this is what the Dairy Act proposes to do: Instead 
of trying to reform the dairyman gradually by education, instead of teaching him and 
rsuading him to co-operate, its method is direct compulsion. The local authorities 
fer been very lax in sanitary matters for many years, although Acts are in existence 
—the Public Health Act, the Food and Drugs Act, the Stock Diseases Act—which, 
had they been enforced, would have made this Dairy Act unnecessary. Local control 
and local inspection have proved failures, so we are to jump to the opposite extreme of 
complete centralisation, although common sense ought to tell us that if local control 
has failed because the local authorities are too much interested, central control is 
certain to fail for the opposite reason—that the central authorities are too little in- 
terested. Here, as everywhere, the true legislator should try to hit the middle way. 
A judicious mixture of compulsion and persuasion is what has to be provided for. 
Local control is weak because little can be done which people object to, and central 
control is harsh because everything is done or attempted without consulting or 
getting the consent of the people of the locality where the Act is adminis- 
tered, It is surely easy to combine the two by having a local board or council 
to advise _a single head appointed by and responsible to the central authority. 
But this Dairy Act provides for nothing of the sort. The district inspectors not 
having any local body to advise them will have to receive all instructions from head- 
uarters: instructions which are sure to be unsuitable to many localities. It is the 
class of small dairymen and selectors which will suffer under this Act, for the big 
factories can always take care of themselves. With ample capital to pay for first-class 
management and improved machinery, the Dairy Act will not affect them directly—in. 
fact, the big factories approve of the Act because it saves them trouble and expense in. 
inspecting the sources of their milk supply and educating their suppliers in habits of. 
cleanliness and improved methods. They complain, as it is, thatone careless or ignorant. 
supplier may contaminate the milk supplied by all others. They have in some cases 
offered more for aerated milk, but dairymen have neglected to purchase and use aerators 
even then. Naturally the big factories welcome an Act which makes aeration compul- 
sory, and supplies inspectors at other people's expense who can give the factory 
managers a hint as to any impure source of milk supply. But a Minister settled in 
Brisbane, and a board of experts, are not at all likely to realise the difficulties a small 
farmer has to contend with—the want of capital, the extreme difficulty of getting suit- 
able labour, the manual drudgery of which Tesece him no energy or time to think how- 
he can improve things. Andif the provisions of the Act are’ strictly enforced, the 
small dairymen and farmers who do not make dairying a principal feature are certain 
either to give up the business, as they have actually mative to do in some places, 
or to be compelled to get ito debt and eventually ruined in order to comply with the 
requirements of the Act. Then the big factories, in order to keep up their milk supply, 
will have to take over the selections themselves or to employ their late owners on 
wages. If the Government finds funds for the factories and creameries, the end of itis 
likely to be State socialism, while the independent yeoman farmers will be gradually 
wiped out. Labour members in Parliament approve of Acts like this precisely on this 
und. It is a step towards socialism, they say. And “socialism in our tine” isin 
: Paslament now, which looks like business. Individualism and socialism are both extremes 
tobe avoided. [ look rather to co-operation as the “golden mean,” and think that we - 
shall eventually realise in Australia a true co-operative Commonwealth. But I do not 
think we are ripe for this yet, and must for the present be content with individual owner- 
ship of Spr and machinery and profit-sharing with employers. These preliminary 
remarks may seem superfluous, but they are not really so, for unless the legislator, 
understands the tendency of society-—what the society for which he makes laws is 
becoming —legislation is a leap in the dark. If we are going to trust to pure individual 
