88 QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Juxy, 1902. 
steadily directed to it. It certainly is an anomaly that on the one hand we 
should have a piteous cry of distress from the unemployed every year in the 
winter, and that on the other hand we should be told that the impossibility of 
obtaining labour should make a winter industry impossible. It is a curious 
problem that has to be worked out in Victoria as between the conflicting claims 
of the Trades Hall and the country industries.” I am sure that not only in 
Victoria but in Queensland this problem has to be solved. I may claim to know 
something of the difficulties which beset us. I do not claimto be a very large 
dairyman, though I employ three or four persons all the year through. With 
one good man I can manage with lads of fourteen years and upwards for the 
lighter work, as I have fed all the milking cows twice daily for the last six 
years. I know what class of labour the dairymen and farmers require, and 
often during the past seventeen years, when I had got a lad well used to the 
work, and had inculeated habits of cleanliness and care in the treatment of milk 
and cream, &c., I have been met with something like the following: “ Father says I 
am getting strong now, and he wants me to learn the blacksmithing.” If not that 
it is to learn something else, and I have to go over the whole process with someone 
else. Odd ones, of course, have stayed for years. In speaking of my own case 
[ am only describing the experience of others. If it is necessary to teach 
boys other trades, is it not also necessary to teach them farming and dairying, 
and why should we not have a class of men who can say, “I have been 
trained to do farm work or dairying work”? I may say this kind of 
man never need be out of work. I have pointed out the difficulties of the 
present and hinted at those of the future, and I think it is quite time we tr 
and secure for the good of the State as a whole the class of labour we want. 
would not recommend the Government to bring.out any more men to swell the 
ranks of the unemployed. Such a course would be wrong, and I endorse the 
action of the Government in retrenching Mr. Geo. Randall, the immigration 
lecturer, in the United Kingdom. My suggestion is to indent a number of boys 
annually from the United Kingdom. There are homes such as Dr. Barnardo’s 
from which orphan and destitute boys can be obtained under an agreement for a 
number of years. Thousands of these boys have been sent to Canada, and have 
proved so worthy that the Dominion Government have given them free grants 
of land upon which to commence farming for themselves. I understand the 
help which these boys have rendered has given a great impetus to the dairying 
industry in that progressive country. I would get these boys at fourteen years 
of age, and it would be necessary to have a fixed scale of wages to be controlled 
by the Government in a similar way to that now in force ties the orphanage 
system, with certain alterations. The first three years the employer will find 
clothing. On attaining the age of seventeen the boy will have an increased 
allowance to enable him to buy his own clothing, &¢. I will show the age, the 
amount of wages per year, the rate per week, the weekly value of the quarterly 
Savings Bank deposit, and the weekly allowance as pocket money :— s 
Deposit 
Age. Per Year, | Per Week. 3 Per Cent. Pocket Money. 
Savings Bank. 
ae oh Gh oh Gh tk Ub 8. d. 
wheal Te ae Th St sel YA 3 0 2 6 0 6 andclothing . 
15tol6 ... 30 6 x ..{10 8 0 4 0 3 6 0 6 and clothing 
16tol7 ... ny3 at: ne iB? 5 0 4 6 0 6 and clothing 
17 to18 ... oH 43 ge ani) URI GE 0 9 0 6 0 3 0 no clothing 
1 Sitoll Ome Be Ivf: ab a Py (A |) aly 3 if W 3 6 no clothing 
19 to20 ... ee ay Be: sp el. ZO ADE abe ab 8 0 4 Ono clothing 
20to21 ... ny ne 13) ..| 36 8 0; 14 0 9 6 4 6 no clothing 
‘ 
The employer would have paid £149 10s. besides clothing for the first three 
years, and the young man would have standing to his credit in the Savings 
Bank on his twenty-first birthday the sum of £114 17s. 1d.—that is including 
the interest and compound interest. This is without the amounts which he 
ea | a 
