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 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.