1 Dec., 1901.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 529 
the city—late to bed and jate to rise. The theatres, dances, concerts, exhibitions, 
and picnics, the afternoon saunterings in the busy street, the convenience of 
*buses, trams, cabs, trains. excursion steamers—all these tend to wean the 
farmer’s son from a life of honourable independence to one of ill-paid servitude. 
Compare the young farmer with the young city clerk or budding civil servant. 
The former is engaged in a healthy pursuit, in a life-giving, open-air occupation. 
His house is his own, his land is his own. He owns no man as master. He 
has no troubles about rent, and very little has he to do with the butcher, baker, 
grocer, or draper. On a well-managed farm many household requirements are 
produced which the town dweller has to pay for. If he wants a holiday of a 
day, a week, or a month he has no one to consult but himself. His occupation, 
so far from being monotonous, is one of endless variety. The changes of the 
seasons, even ot the weather, bring constant change to his work. Science and 
invention have placed powers in his hands which have reduced hand labour to a 
very limited sphere in the operations of the farm. True he suffers many 
disappointments. He has to take the chances of drought, flood, caterpillar, 
locust, parasitic and fungoid diseases attacking his crops, but this only 
stimulates him to action, and lends additional attractions to his occupation, 
inasmuch as he is by these troubles compelled to study the remedies. If 
farmers, taken as a body, are not men of great wealth, they are in comfortable 
circumstances. They have to obtain advances on their crops, says a carping 
critic of these lines. Possibly, indeed very probably, this contingency will often 
arise. But so good is the security offered by the farmer that in all civilised 
countries of the world (except a few in which Queensland is included) agricul- 
tural banks have been established which make advances to farmers at very low 
rates of interest, and it is not too much to say that for one farmer who goes 
into the insolvent court 10,000 shopkeepers, merchants, clerks, middlemen, and 
other business people of the towns take advantage of the insolvent laws. 
In conclusion, let us ask what is the result of the exodus of the rural 
population to the towns? It may be stated in a few words. The additional 
strength poured into the towns, which, as a rule, are generally overmanned 
with would-be workers, must necessarily tend to the reduction of wages, to an 
increase of taxation; and the low rate of wages from which the taxes have to be 
deducted results in much distress amongst those who are bound by family ties 
to live as best they may, obtain work as best they may, in cities where the 
influx from the country has cheapened labour or rendered it almost impossible 
of attainment. 
We set out with the intention of showing “ How the Extension of Agricul- 
ture would benefit the City Worker.” We have shown how the city worker is 
injured by an oversupply of workers from the country districts. But, with 
our rich agricultural lands thrown open to selection on easy time-payments, 
with the repurchase of such fertile estates as the Government has so wisely 
bought back from the owners to sell again to the farmers, with the removal of 
any restrictions upon selection, the construction of light railway lines or even 
tramlines as feeders to the main lines, the sinking of bores, the dissemination 
of information by means of travelling experts, the removal of prohibitive 
duties on agricultural machinery, and on everything required by the farmer for 
conducting his business, the lowering of railway rates on agricultural produce, 
the distribution of seeds, the importation of new varieties of plants, of stock 
of all kinds, the establishment of agricultural colleges and of State experiment 
farms, the free issue of agricultural literature, the holding of annual agricul- 
tural conferences—with these and a host of other advantages we could 
mention, the extension of agriculture must follow as a matter of course, and as 
thousands of acres of new land come under cultivation the demand for not mere 
mechanical farm drudges, but for workers on scientific principles with scientific 
appliances, must at no distant date result in relieving the towns of the best, 
healthiest, and most honest labourers and mechanics. As a consequence wages 
in the cities must rise, the cost of living would be reduced, and the up-to-date 
farmer could afford to pay a reasonably high wage to his men. 
— Pete, ie i ad 
