1 Jury, 1901.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 31 
paid for money—this “‘contrivance for saving time and labour’’—what no industry 
under the sun can afford to pay. 
This paper does not presume to suggest a remedy, but claims to be an effort, on 
the part of one who has suffered from the evil he denounces, to assist in arriving at a 
true diagnosis of the mischief at work, in order that those we have placed in power 
may be strengthened and encouraged in wielding that power as a weapon in defence 
of those engaged in the primary industries of this young country against the further 
encroachments of big interest, with its banefully paralysing and ruinous consequences. 
From the public utterances of our leading men, let us examine what grounds we 
have for hoping that any immediate action will be taken in this direction. We have 
it impressed upon us by the Press of the country that there are only two political parties 
in the State—the Individualist and the Socialist. First, let us take the Socialist: 
From a newspaper having for its motto, “ Socialism in Our Time,” an excerpt has 
been taken referring to a resolution carried by the South Australian Legislative 
Assembly, affirming that the State Advances Act should be extended in the direction 
of allowing advances not only to farmers, but to other producers. Itreads as follows :— 
“This might be used to open up a discussion on a question that is rapidly 
growing in importance, and, indeed, deserves the fullest consideration. It is briefly 
thus—‘ As a means towards the attainment of a socialistic method of production, is 1t 
more wise to encourage a system of State aid to small producers—in other words, a 
systematised hampering of capitalism, or to allow the capitalist system to evolve 
unchecked, along the lines of competition and individual monopoly, towards that 
organisation and public monopoly, which is socialism ?’ 
“This question has been considered in America, the home of triumphant pluto- 
eracy, and the People, the socialist organ of New York, declares that the most speedy 
attainment of Socialism will come through the unrestricted development of private 
capitalism, until all the resources of a nation are concentrated in the hands of a 
few individuals, when the mass can the more readily Le brought to see the 
benefits of the nationalisation of the means of production and distribution. 
Tt points to New Zealand as an example of the opposite policy, and points 
ont that it is purely a case of ‘hampered capitalism’; leaving the intelligent 
reader to infer that inasmuch as society is an organism, and private capitalism 
being merely a stage in society's development, the more you hamper private 
capitalism the longer you keep it in that stage, and the more you check the progres- 
sion of the organism to a higher development. America herself is a pregnant 
example of the extraordinary rapidity with which the social organism may advance 
through the various stages of capitalistic development when unhampered by restric- 
tive conditions. America is rapidly reaching a condition when all the resources of 
the nation will be in the possession of so few indivicuals that one will be able to count 
them on one’s fingers. That nation, then, will be ready for socialism. ‘The time will 
have come when it must advance to anentirely new stage of development—a degree of 
evolution unattained by any society of which the world possesses a record. The 
dectrine of socialism is rapidly spreading among the masses of America. Already 
they have candidates in the field for the presidency and vice-presidency ; and, doubt- 
less, when the great crisis comes, the workers of America will know how to work out 
their own salvation. 
«The real question to us, then, resolves itself into this—Which is the better plan for 
us in these colonies to pursue ? Already in these colonies we are committing ourselves 
to theewrong end of New Zealand’s policy, and we have great projects for buying 
back land from monopolists, and selling it at a low price to the worker who desires to 
go upon the land, systems of State aid to farmers now proposed to be extended to 
other producers, &c., &c.—in a word, numberless projects for stopping the 
encroachment of the large capitalist upon the smaller. This is the point: It is 
contended by some that this is the correct policy to pursue, in order to bring about 
the accomplishment of ‘ Socialism in Our Time’; that the State should be used as a 
means to stop the expropriations of the large capitalist, and to assist the small 
producer. Others, again, hold with the United States journalist, that measures such 
as are now being jee can be at best only palliatives, and that the most 
speedy way in which to attain socialism, either in our or anyone else’s time, is to throw 
all our energies into the task of educating the workers in the doctrines of socialism, 
to pursue a ceaseless and unremitting socialist propaganda against private ownership 
of the means of production, to show the worker that nothing can permanently better 
his condition but a complete change in the method of production, and in the meantime 
let the extinction of the small capitalist go on unchecked until we reach that stage 
when the birth of a new system becomes not only speedy and possible, but absolutely 
necessary. 
