At twenty-five the Australian thinks it"s about time he fixed on some occupation. "I have had a large and varied experience," he now writes when applying for a billet. It is immaterial to him what appointments are offering; he answers the lot. He will manage a station or a tea-house or take a private secretaryship to a Minister of the Crown or test eyesight for an optician. He doesn"t mind taking the message to Garcia--not he. He likes it to be by way of a racehorse, however.
When he"s fixed up in an occupation he thinks will suit him, the Australian gets the sack. His employer finds him absolutely useless. He has not the habit of industry, and he is incapable of sustained effort of any kind. Ask him (if he is in a produce firm) the price of b.u.t.ter as quoted in that morning"s paper, and he won"t know. But he can give you the betting card at Tatt."s without hesitation. He is indifferent to everything connected with the business of his employer. He knows that if the worse comes to the worse he can sleep out.
Australians who think of going to another country with the idea of making a sleepihood should inquire fully as to the climate.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE LISTLESS POLICEMAN.
The Australian policeman never knows anything; it"s no use asking him the time even.
This gives some idea of police protection, and what goes on in Australia:--
"SENSATIONAL ROBBERY.
"600 WORTH OF GOLD STOLEN FROM A POLICE STATION.
"The Inspector-General of Police has been notified by the Superintendent at Albury that a sensational robbery has occurred at Tumberumba, in New South Wales, and that something between 500 and 600 worth of gold dust and retorted gold had been stolen from the local police station."
And from the same paper the same week:--
"WHILE THE CONSTABLE SLEPT.
"At an early hour this morning the house of Constable ----, a constable attached to Redfern Station, was broken into. The constable had gone on duty at an early hour in the morning, and about 3 in the afternoon went to bed in his residence at Young-street, the other members of his family having gone out.
Everything was properly secured, and it did not enter the constable"s head that anyone would have the hardihood to break into his premises. Some time between 4 and 5 o"clock, he got up, and went downstairs, and was astonished to find that the house had been broken into and robbed while he slept. Entrance had been effected by the kitchen window, the woodwork of which had been smashed."
The Australian criminal is the most clumsy scoundrel in creation. He leaves enough clues behind him for a jury to get to work on right away.
But unless he happens to leave his name and address a cracksman working on a fair sized crib is never caught. Most murderers, with the exception of those who gave themselves up, are at large in Australia. This last remark does not refer to cases of murder followed by the suicide of the perpetrator. A list of the undetected crimes of Australia would cost too much to print.
CHAPTER IX.
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 a.s.sociated 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 ant.i.thesis 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 cla.s.s 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.
CHAPTER X.
THE AUSTRALIAN"S LACK OF PATRIOTISM.
It so happens that the Australian couldn"t, even if he wanted to, say, "This is my own, my native land." That is, of course, with any degree of truth. For the Australian has long since put the country in p.a.w.n.
Instead of evincing any lofty sentiment, however, the Australian is generally to be heard cursing his country, and a good number of him get away from it the first opportunity the good G.o.d gives them. And small wonder. It is a land of burlesque. It is built on entirely wrong principles. The mountains are all round the coast, and they keep the rain from going inside. The consequence is that there is always a drought in the interior, which same remark applies also to the Australian himself.
"It"s a good place to live out of," says the ignominious Australian, if you ask him anything about it.
In his dunderheadedness he can"t see that he has fenced out enterprise, and is fast legislating himself out of the country. The emigration figures of Australia represent those of the inhabitants who can sc.r.a.pe a couple of hundred pounds together in order to escape the national debt, the suckers, and the reprehensible politician.
When it was proposed that Australia should borrow the money in England to give England a Dreadnought, one of the State Premiers was interviewed on the subject. He sounded the depths in patriotic sentiment by remarking, "It would be a good advertis.e.m.e.nt!"
It is only in a Mr. Alfred Deakin peroration or that of some other silver-tongue that you hear of Australian patriotism. Silver tongue, by the way, is a mere euphemism; there is a more direct and much shorter Saxon synonym.
If Australia were a great country, it would have the natural corollary, a great man. But it has never produced one.
Sir Henry Parkes once proposed to erect a mausoleum for the ill.u.s.trious dead of Australia, but the hopelessness of getting eligible corpses caused the idea to be abandoned. There are, however, in Australia many unexplained monuments. Among the latest was one in Brisbane, raised to a deceased Rugby football player. Will the Australian ever get any sort of sense of proportion?
But a people, I suppose, must first of all have love of country before it gets a standard of measurement. If a plebiscite were taken it would be found that the memory of Edward Kelly is far more revered by the citizens of this mean country than that of any other citizen. This national hero was familiarly known as Ned Kelly. After a series of misunderstandings with the police, he died suddenly one morning.
The individual Australian, be it here remarked, does not consider the collective Australian much cla.s.s, and the Australian who has travelled has a sneaking disregard for his compatriots. If he has spent two months in London, he returns an ape Englishman. So far as loose clothes and cheap mannerisms will carry him he is a Londoner. It is a noticeable fact that he imitates the most inane of insular types. The more howling the particular London a.s.s of the period, the more sincere the Australian flattery of him. This needs no comment.
And when this two-months-in-England idiot returns to Australia some gushing she-Australian will say to him--