The Wanderings of a Spiritualist, Arthur Conan Doyle [best short novels of all time .TXT] 📗

creature is a poor little shadow when his wonderful fleece has been taken from him. The electric clips with which the operation is performed, are, I am told, the invention of a brother of Garnet Wolseley, who worked away at the idea, earning the name of being a half-crazy crank, until at last the invention materialised and did away with the whole slow and clumsy process of the hand-shearer. It is not, however, a pleasant process to watch even for a man, far less a sensitive woman, for the poor creatures get cut about a good deal in the process. The shearer seizes a sheep, fixes him head up between his knees, and then plunges the swiftly-moving clippers into the thick wool which covers the stomach. With wonderful speed he runs it along and the creature is turned out of its covering, and left as bare as a turkey in a poulterer's window, but, alas, its white and tender skin is too often gashed and ripped with vivid lines of crimson by the haste and clumsiness of the shearer. It was worse, they say, in the days of the hand-shearer. I am bound to say, however, that the creature makes no fuss about it, remains perfectly still, and does not appear to suffer any pain. Nature is often kinder than we know, even to her most humble children, and some soothing and healing process seems to be at work.

The shearers appear to be a rough set of men, and spend their whole time moving in gangs from station to station, beginning up in the far north and winding up on the plains of South Australia. They are complete masters of the situation, having a powerful union at their back. They not only demand and receive some two pounds a day in wages, but they work or not by vote, the majority being able to grant a complete holiday. It is impossible to clip a wet sheep, so that after rain there is an interval of forced idleness, which may be prolonged by the vote of the men. They work very rapidly, however, when they are actually at it, and the man who tallies most fleeces, called "the ringer," receives a substantial bonus. When the great shed is in full activity it is a splendid sight with the row of stooping figures, each embracing his sheep, the buzz of the shears, the rush of the messengers who carry the clip to the table, the swift movements of the sorters who separate the perfect from the imperfect wool, and the levering and straining of the packers who compress it all into square bundles as hard as iron with 240 pounds in each. With fine wool at the present price of ninety-six pence a pound it is clear that each of these cubes stands for nearly a hundred pounds.

They are rich men these sheep owners—and I am speaking here of my general inquiry and not at all of Nerrin. On a rough average, with many local exceptions, one may say that an estate bears one sheep to an acre, and that the sheep may show a clear profit of one pound in the year. Thus, after the first initial expense is passed, and when the flock has reached its full, one may easily make an assessment of the owner's income. Estates of 10,000 acres are common, and they run up to 50,000 and 60,000 acres. They can be run so cheaply that the greater part of income is clear profit, for when the land is barb-wired into great enclosures no shepherds are needed, and only a boundary rider or two to see that all is in order. These, with a few hands at lambing time, and two or three odd-job men at the central station, make up the whole staff. It is certainly the short cut to a fortune if one can only get the plant running.

Can a man with a moderate capital get a share of these good things? Certainly he can if he have grit and a reasonable share of that luck which must always be a factor in Nature's processes. Droughts, floods, cyclones, etc., are like the zero at Monte Carlo, which always may turn up to defeat the struggling gamester. I followed several cases where small men had managed to make good. It is reckoned that the man who gets a holding of from 300 to 500 acres is able on an average in three years to pay off all his initial expenses and to have laid the foundations of a career which may lead to fortune. One case was a London baker who knew nothing of the work. He had 300 acres and had laid it out in wheat, cows, sheep and mixed farming. He worked from morning to night, his wife was up at four, and his child of ten was picking up stones behind the furrow. But he was already making his £500 a year. The personal equation was everything. One demobilised soldier was doing well. Another had come to smash. Very often a deal is made between the small man and the large holder, by which the latter lets the former a corner of his estate, taking a share, say one-third, of his profits as rent. That is a plan which suits everyone, and the landlord can gradually be bought out by the "cockatoo farmer," as he is styled.

There is a great wool-clip this year, and prices in London are at record figures, so that Australia, which only retains 17 per cent. of her own wool, should have a very large sum to her credit. But she needs it. When one considers that the debt of this small community is heavier now than that of Great Britain before the war, one wonders how she can ever win through. But how can anyone win through? I don't think we have fairly realised the financial problem yet, and I believe that within a very few years there will be an International Council which will be compelled to adopt some such scheme as the one put forward by my friend, Mr. Stilwell, under the name of "The Great Plan." This excellent idea was that every nation should reduce its warlike expenditure to an absolute minimum, that the difference between this minimum and the 1914 pre-war standard should be paid every year to a central fund, and that international bonds be now drawn upon the security of that fund, anticipating not its present amount but what it will represent in fifty years' time. It is, in fact, making the future help the present, exactly as an estate which has some sudden great call upon it might reasonably anticipate or mortgage its own development. I believe that the salvation of the world may depend upon some such plan, and that the Council of the League of Nations is the agency by which it could be made operative.

Australia has had two plants which have been a perfect curse to her as covering the land and offering every impediment to agriculture. They are the Spinnifex in the West and the Mallee scrub in the East. The latter was considered a hopeless proposition, and the only good which could be extracted from it was that the root made an ideal fire, smouldering long and retaining heat. Suddenly, however, a genius named Lascelles discovered that this hopeless Mallee land was simply unrivalled for wheat, and his schemes have now brought seven million acres under the plough. This could hardly have been done if another genius, unnamed, had not invented a peculiar and ingenious plough, the "stump-jump plough," which can get round obstacles without breaking itself. It is not generally known that Australia really heads the world for the ingenuity and efficiency of her agricultural machinery. There is an inventor and manufacturer, MacKay, of Sunshine, who represents the last word in automatic reapers, etc. He exports them, a shipload at a time, to the United States, which, if one considers the tariff which they have to surmount, is proof in itself of the supremacy of the article. With this wealth of machinery the real power of Australia in the world is greater than her population would indicate, for a five-million nation, which, by artificial aid, does the work normally done by ten million people, becomes a ten-million nation so far as economic and financial strength is concerned.

On the other hand, Australia has her hindrances as well as her helps. Certainly the rabbits have done her no good, though the evil is for the moment under control. An efficient rabbiter gets a pound a day, and he is a wise insurance upon any estate, for the creatures, if they get the upper-hand, can do thousands of pounds' worth of damage. This damage takes two shapes. First, they eat on all the grass and leave nothing at all for the sheep. Secondly, they burrow under walls, etc., and leave the whole place an untidy ruin. Little did the man who introduced the creature into Australia dream how the imprecations of a continent would descend upon him.

Alas! that we could not linger at Nerrin; but duty was calling at Melbourne. Besides, the days of the Melbourne Cup were at hand, and not only was Mr. Wynne a great pillar of the turf, but Mr. Osborne, owner of one of the most likely horses in the race, was one of the house-party. To Melbourne therefore we went. We shall always, however, be able in our dreams to revisit that broad verandah, the low hospitable façade, the lovely lawn with its profusion of scented shrubs, the grove of towering gum trees, where the opossums lurked, and above all the great marsh where with dark clouds drifting across the moon we had stolen out at night to hear the crying of innumerable birds. That to us will always be the real Australia.

CHAPTER VI