A Settler's 35 Years' Experience in Victoria, Australia: And how £6 8s. became £8,000Hulme, E. (Edward)
History
A Settler's 35 Years' Experience in Victoria, Australia: And how £6 8s. became £8,000
Hulme, E. (Edward)
Hulme, E. (Edward), 1818-1904; Immigrants -- Australia -- Biography; Victoria -- Biography
tobacco, hops, and vine industries can hardly be carried on without
the despised Chinese. We have an example already in the sugar industry
in Queensland. Recently a plant was up for sale that cost £26,000, and
the highest offer was £5000. What are we then to do without this cheap
labor? Without it this vast territory must evidently remain in a state
of nature, or still be devoted to wandering herds of cattle, and by
their vast numbers cripple the farmers of the more temperate parts by
competition. Where, then, are the boasted millions of population to
come from, which so many calculate upon?
One great factor which will stay the progress of this great country
more than any other is the present jealousy and war between Capital and
Labor. No country can advance without there is perfect security for
life and property. If capital cannot find security in one country, it
can easily go to another. Social order must be maintained at all costs.
It appears coming to this, whether the Elected Government is to rule
the country, or the Trades' Hall Council. There is a class of men in
Melbourne who want to fix things according to their own Utopian ideas,
and upon such "hard and fast" lines that would be totally unbearable
and tyrannical even to their own class. It would be well for them to
ponder the wise words recently uttered by President Harrison, viz.,
"_The safety of the State, the good order of the community, all that is
good, the capacity, indeed, to produce material wealth, is dependent
upon the intelligence and social order. Wealth and commerce are timid
creatures, they must be assured that the rest will be safe before they
build. So it is always in those communities where the most perfect
order is maintained, where intelligence is protected, where the Church
of God, and the institutions of religion are revered and respected,
we find the largest developments of material wealth._" There is far
too much "dog in the manger" feeling among the well-to-do artisans
in Melbourne. They are jealous of others coming into this good land.
They were glad enough to come themselves. It is the fear that a few
shillings will come off their own wages. It is strange that sensible
men, with any idea in their own heads, can listen to, or be guided by
the strange contradictory logic of the leaders of the labor party.
Recently, one of them said, speaking against the "Bloated Capitalists,"
"those who are living without working, you may depend upon it, are
living upon those who do work, and that all independent people are
'loafers or parasites' on the State." Holding that independence is
a crime. Well, many of their own class, by industry and frugality,
are independent or approaching to it. These, then, are graduating to
this new species of crime. Another said these "loafers and parasites"
should be compelled to turn out and work, and in the next breath called
competition the work of the devil, and over-production the curse of
the colony.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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