Page:The Coming Colony Mennell 1892.djvu/99

 by careful experiment, first ascertain the variety best suited to their land and the conditions, and confined their attention exclusively to its cultivation. To my mind the successful settler of the future will be one who is not bound by hard and fast and arbitrary lines, but one who will cultivate thoroughly and well every product that his land will produce, and for which there is a market. A farmer must combine pig and cattle rearing and dairying operations, on as large a scale as possible, along with that of growing cereals."

Granted the value of the territory, it requires to be handled in a manner at once bold and prudent—i.e., if the shareholders are to see what they ought out of their magnificent estate, and the colony to benefit as it should do by the introduction of some thousands of desirable settlers. England too, with her congested population, has a stake in the fortunes of this and other similar concerns, which are or may be shortly working on the same lines, so that even General Booth might have done worse than devote a few weeks to a careful inspection of the available parts of Western Australia when. he made his tour of the Australian continent. But if he intends to operate on the vicious residuum of the East End the reception of his project in Western Australia will be as cold as it would be in the other colonies; whilst if he means to manipulate the depressed rather than the degraded classes, and, after "emigrating" them, to supply them with the means of sustenance until they are able to support themselves, he will, as far as my cursory observations go, find himself and protégés better welcomed and better accommodated in Western Australia than in any of the sister communities.

The colony is now in much the same position as the older colonies occupied thirty or forty years ago, and has, as far as one can judge, to say the least, just as good a chance of a prosperous development as the best of them. With money to spend on public works, employment will be brisk; and, though I do not advocate the influx of men wholly without capital, it must be remembered that every man who comes to the colony with capital makes room for the arrival of men with none. The colony is just now admittedly on the rising tide, as there