NEW AUSTRALIA.

Timaru Herald, Volume LVIII, Issue 1768, 31 May 1895, Page 3

NEW AUSTRALIA.

♦ A CRITICISM. The Adelaide Observer publishes part of a letter written by Mr A. R. McDonald from Colonia Neuva Australia, Paraguay. Alter referring to the success which has attended the nationalisation qr municipalisation of certain enterprises, the writer continues — "As a faithful chronicler I am compelled to state that up to date the New Australia colony has failed to secure the objects for which it was founded It might be said that the unstable character of the material from which th« colonists were recruited, expecting conJ ditions which cannot be realised, was sufficient m itself to ensure the failure of the enterprise. And here truly is one of the rocks on to which we are drifting. It might also be said that the extraordinary financing and administration of the Association m the early days was enough to shipwreck the fairest craft. Serious, however, as these factors may be, yet the real trouble is far deeper. . . . In pioneering generally — and m clearing scrubland particularly — co-operation has no place. The men who subdue nature must have the grit of manhood and be volunteers. The implements required are primitive and within the reach of all. The labour of the individual cannot be made more effective provided ten men work collectively with the axe, the hoe, or the spade ; or if we multiply that number by 10,000 the proportionate ratio cannot be increased. At best — with perfect management — - we lose nothing. But we may lose considerably. Slow men do not usually work up to the fast, but generally the expert measures his pace so as to keep alongside his fellowworkers. The unit— working individually—will have a working plan, and will not waste his labour on useless work. But His a very different matter directing the efforts of 50 or 100 or 1000 men. Every error of management or disconnected plan means a dead loss. The moral is that co-operation is not profitable m this stage and although angels might stand it ordinary men and women of the nineteenth century will hark back to the old order of things. Here m ' New Australia 'fully 50 per cent, of labour has been frittered away on unproductive work. People who come nere to this colony must know that they will have to work for years and years and years with the axe, the hoe, and the mattock, felling trees, grubbing rootß, and chipping corn. What they are to gain beyond an immunity from gout and dyspepsia I know not. Whether we will ever arrive at the stage at which co-operation is profitable is very problematical. The sole duty we perform ia the support of the aged, the infirm, and those unable to work. Even the least intelligent realize that the Association is not based on sound economic principles, and a movement is on foot to decentralize m small groups, which practically means that beyond increasing the natural difficulties class distinctions are to be revived, and that jealously, rivalry, and unequal production will carry the thing to its logical conclusion — ' Individualism.'