THE AUSTRALIAN'S PARASITICAL TENDENCIES.
The Australian is a born loafer. Go you north, south, east, or west in
his mortgaged land, and in proportion to the distance you travel, so
does this truth broaden upon you--the truth of his loafing propensities.
He is also a parasite. The big Australian parasite feeds smaller
parasites, and so _ad infinitum_.
Nationally the Australian has been a borrower by choice. He is the
spendthrift, ne'er-do-well, who is always a drain on the old man's
purse. He has from the start been getting remittances from John Bull in
the guise of loans, which, like Micawber, he redeems by more loans.
He has the borrowing habit bad.
The result?
If the Australian wants to develop something, a mine, say, he makes a
bee line to the member of Parliament for the district, and through his
pernicious office enough is squeezed out of the milch-cow government to
sustain him until he can hawk what he has round London. He seldom has
any money himself, and when he has he prefers not to risk it. The role
of promoter suits him best. He gets his profits out of his flotation,
and impudently stands in with the "paid-ups." As often as not this
latter trick is to give verisimilitude to his _bona fides_.
His name is associated with the untamed feline on the London market just
now.
His private ideas about finance are reflected in public accounts,
particularly in the States that have local government or irrigation
boards. Sufficient is it here to indicate his trend and point the
baneful influence--the antithesis of exalting to the country.
There is said to be honour among thieves, and on the _prima facie_ case
thus made out, I cannot bring myself to call the Australian business man
a thief. Americans have a term for a despised class of their community,
"Suckers" they call those who comprise it. In its worst sense the term
fits the Australian. Wherever some sporadic energy is exhibited, there
do you find the suckers.
The sucker is chiefly found in big cities built on borrowed money and by
boom swindles. Thither flock all who have foresworn honest toil, and the
disinclination to work, as has been already observed, is innate of the
Australian.
The sucker fastens on industry wherever it is to be found, and if a
district threatens to thrive, a big town full of suckers arises to drain
the profits, and thus is the producer, who, in Australia, economically
is the country, impoverished. He and the primary industries never get a
chance. Things are foisted upon him that he does not want and is not in
a position to pay for, and he can't move without giving some sucker a
commission. The commission is generally for doing something, which, if
he had any sense, which he hasn't, the producer could do for himself. So
it happens that cities and towns are over populated by suckers, who buy
drinks for the producer with the latter's money, and do ditto for him
who purchases what has been produced (drinks again at the producer's
expense).
And all this the reprehensible politician merely calls centralisation.
If he were less reprehensible, he would acquaint himself with the state
of things and then set about remedying them. The figures would astound a
statesman. Think of it: the population of the Commonwealth was last
census 3,773,248, and 47 towns absorbed 1,859,313 of the number! The
increase per cent. of the population, further, was only 1.71, while the
cities are continuously absorbing the rural dwellers. "Debts,"
remarks Coghlan, "have grown at a much more rapid pace than
population."--[Statistical Account of Australia.]
The sucker curse is daily becoming more acute in Australia. It so
happens that the young Australian whose father is trying to make a
farmer of him registers a resolution that he will be a sucker. With
justification, no doubt, he regards his father as a fool. (All
Australians regard their fathers as fools.) The fool-farmer's son starts
his sucking, therefore, as a commission agent, and goes on the election
committee of the surplus Australian politician standing in the "country
interest," and whose watchword is "settle the people on the land." The
sucker certainly does his best to settle the people on the land, but not
in the sense that the humourless politician utters the shibboleth.