528 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Drc., 1901. 
schools—in all Great Britain and her colonies. Nothing has ever been taught 
in any of them, tending in the remotest degree to educate a lad or a girl to 
rural occupation. The whole system has fitted the student for nothing else 
but the professions, for clerks, shopmen, &c. They have learned to be, accord- 
ing to the old schoolboy oracle, either soldier, sailor, parson, tailor, ploughboy, 
apothecary, gentleman, or thief. Note the ploughboy ; no mention is made of 
the farmer. The boy was not taught anything so low as agriculture. The 
farmer’s boy goes to school. He learns Huclid, latin, algebra, grammar, 
geography, probably dancing, and the piano, all things most useful to a farmer. 
What he has thus imbibed gives him the idea that with these accomplishments 
he can do better in the city, enjoy more—not comfort, but leisure—and have 
more pleasures than are possible on a farm; so the deluded youth, deluded and 
robbed of an honourable, independent profession by those blind guides who 
professed to fit him for his passage through life, this much-wronged lad aban- 
dons the farm and becomes a city office boy or clerk, and he is lucky if ever he 
rises to be anything but a clerk. What he has not learnt at those schools has 
been what would have given him a keen interest in the land and its crops, what 
would have lightened his labour, what would have increased his and his family’s 
comfort, and what would have helped to swell his banking account, and what 
would have made him for ever independent of those city masters who grow 
wealthy by the sweat of the brow of their servants. 
In this sense, then, we say that education has been one of the factors in 
drawing the farmer’s son from the land. 
Next take the increased facilities for travelling. A hundred years ago 
farmers rarely saw any other town but the nearest market town of their own 
country. A visit to “ Lunnon town,’ Dunedin, or Dublin was hardly ever 
dreamt of by the boldest farmer. And if he did travel 100 miles, he first 
made his will, the wife of his bosom and the household generally wept in 
unison, and if he returned safely he was looked on as a wonderful traveller. 
In Australia it used to be much the same thing. Before railways were built 
the roads were mere tracks, all travelling was done on horseback or by bullock 
dray, bushrangers were not unknown, and living in the larger towns was very 
expensive. So the plain or scrub farmer only visited the town at which he 
sold his produce. There was no inducement for the young men to settle in 
the towns, because there was no opening for them, trade was small, and 
amusement was rare. 
See how things have changed. The railways came along, goldfields, coalfields, 
opal-fields, tinfields, copper, and, best of all, canefields sprang into existence. All 
kinds of businesses, trades, and professions offered employment to young men 
possessing only the education we have indicated. Distance had been annihi- 
lated. The educated farmer’s son could take employment in the large towns 
at a low salary, because he was able to travel by rail at a cheap rate and live 
with his parents. Then he soon imbibed a love of town life, and a dislike for 
the toil and vicissitudes of farm life. If he were inclined towards mining; 
the railways, steamers, and coaches carried him quickly and comfortably to 
many of the gold, tin, or copper fields, whereas in the early days the weeks of 
dreary tramping to reach his destination deterred him from leaving home. 
The British farmer’s son inclined towards a life of adventure is induced 
by the alluring pictures presented to him by the immigration lecturer to leave 
his home and try fresh woods and pastures new. The unknown attracts him. 
He is weary of the monotony of old country rural life, and paints a fancy 
icture of life under sunny skies and under more exciting conditions, not 
owing that ’tis but distance that lends enchantment to the view. But what 
is loss to the British agricultural population is gain to the colonial, for these 
farmer immigrants usually enter upon farming pursuits in the colonies. Their 
descendants, however, at the present day, are more attracted by the allurements 
of town life. The flannel shirt, canvas trousers, heavy bluchers, and slouch hat 
are gladly discarded for the more elegant costume of the city. The early and late 
hours necessitated by the routine of the farm are exchanged for the late hours of 
