A RUSSIAN IN AUSTRALIA.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 9642, 17 January 1903, Page 3

A RUSSIAN IN AUSTRALIA.

THINKS THE WOMEN- SHOULD WORK. Mr Nicholas Krukoff, Imperial Commissioner of Agriculture, who is travelling throughout Australasia and South America by instruction from the Russian Minister of Agriculture, has reached Melbourne. The visitor is a powerful, bearded Russian, 6ft high, and of well-nigh Herculean jiroportions. He possesses a quick, shrewd, good-natured pair of eyes, a hearty manner, and a most stentorian laugh, and he is simply bubbling over with information which he has absorbed during Ms many and great travels throughout his tour of continents. He is now visiting his fifth for the first time, and lie lias already done the greater half of it. He was asked by an Age reporter on the 7th inst. if certain remarks he was said to have made a-s to the laziness of the West and South Australian fanning community were true. • "I have noticed," he said, "that as far as I can judge the Australian farmers I J have seen are not nearly as industrious as fanners m Europe. In Europe farmers work more and work harder, and, what is more, their entire families work very hard, but here ! (with an . expressive spreading of his hands) the women ■here are not inclined to work m that way. Of course, sometimes it must be very difficult for farmers here to keep their women. They do not want to work ; they prefer to play and to go to picnics and read novels. It is a pity; and what is the consequence? The people here do not marry sufficiently. There are too many bachelors, and that is bad for a country. In Russia and Germany we- marry much more, but here m Australia you are afraid. The coming men here fear to get married because they don't want to meet the burden of an extravagant or useless wife." It was suggested that all Australian women were not lazy. "No," he said, shrugging his shoulders ; "m South Australia the agriculturists are nearly all good workers, and among the German settlers particularly, where they work together, family and family — and why not? Why do not Australians work more m the fields, and particularly girls and women? It is very healthy. It is what you call hygienic. Doing nothing is bad ; it makes them feeble and pale, and sitting still indoors is unhealthy. I noticed at one farm m South Australia five or six acras of land lying idle. Why did not the women grow poultry or pigs on it? Eggs are cheap, but not too cheap. They are not cheap enough to let good fowl land go idle. I want to make a note of the food Australians seem to eat. They eat, it seems to me, too nvich delicate food. They are too ford of sweets and soft things, and do not (-at good strong food. We m Russia eat black bread It is hard, but it ma<tos one strong, and is full of good. V->u en*; the' bread with all the good left out. nnd give the good to the pigs. Ah! it te Sad. Your doctors will have to find .«o!.i€ thing for the people to give them baidness. They are too tired, and tin; ea.\:'y When they work, our fanners ->vnvk much harder, and for sixteen hoi.rs a day ai* \ more m the season. VV.t have tn vi '•!.— oh, very hard. In four mcKths we plough and sow and reap and hai-vest. All the rural .and city people I have seen m Australia strike me as delicate. They are too pale, and need something hard and strong for their food, ;is well as the soft stuffs. "Ah, I missed my black bread since I cume here. I want something like that. When I lunch on your soft things, I feel that the food does not do me good." Miss Rose Scott, the popular leader m the woman's franchise agitation, commenting on M. Krakoff's views, said : "Why should the entire family work ? Surely the mother has enough to do inside the house cooking the meals, making butter and broad, mending clothes, attending to the children, and all her other domestic duties, without laboring m the nekls Then the children, have not they enough tr.- do with their home-lewms? Thuy may do that sort of thing vi R-.s---siil and other countries ; but here, lam glad to say, we are more advanced m civilisation, and think we ought to have time for pleasure and enjoyment as well as for work. But what is more important m connection with this question is the greatest difference between the climate of Australia and that of Russia and other European countries. '"That is a. matter which M. Krakoff appears to have entirely overlooked. He seems to forget that there are many kinds of employment which women m Russia could undertake well enough, but of which, women m Australia could never be capable. Here, with our semi-tropical climate, the tendency is rather to shorten the hours of labor. Perhaps women might go m for horticulture, which I think is an occupation for which they tire eminently suited." , "Work, as we know, is a blessing, ovenvork becomes drudgery, and we do not want to see our womenfolk reduced to that,."