Chapter II: Industries

The main industry of the Village is child-bearing, and Adelaide, both married and unmarried, does her best to help the birth-rate. Motherhood _may_ be the noblest mission of women, but I question whether the Almighty Himself would approve of the perpetuation of some of the Village family-trees.

Fruit-growing is the local industry most deserving of praise, and must certainly qualify as a redeeming feature of the Village. Many of the successful growers are Chinamen. We may clamor for a White Australia, but it strikes one forcibly that the Yellow Mistake has helped materially to further national industries, especially fruit-growing.

But most of all, Adelaide prides herself on her wines. To pervert Scripture slightly--“We produce fruit, and children, and wine, but the greatest of these is Wine!” May a merciful God forgive Adelaide her wine, if He cannot find it in His heart to forgive the poor fools who drink it!

All the grapes on all the vines in all the vineyards of South Australia, helped by all the labor of all the employés of all the famous people who own those vines, could not produce one glass of wine to equal the _Vin Ordinaire_ of France.

But has not the Almighty already shown His disapproval of this particular industry by burning down one of the most extensive cellars, with vats and vats of red wine, and white wine, and wine that isn’t wine at all? _The Soil_ grows the wine in France, and the French and Italians are born, as it were, to the art of wine-making. To import one or two skilled men is not enough--armies of them are required. Moreover, the wine is consumed as soon as it is made (this last fact is wonderful to anyone who has tasted it!), and it is one of the things which should be ancient. Had old Omar sampled Adelaide’s wines, he would never have written--

“I often wonder what the vintners buy,
One half so precious as the stuff they sell.”

The local vintners buy land, and houses, and household gods at, I suspect, the expense of many an unfortunate who has learned his first lessons in intemperance from their infernal concoctions--a cheap amusement certainly, but like most cheap things, nasty, and while getting beautifully into one’s head, quite conducive to rheumatic gout. In fact, had Omar lived in Adelaide, he would never have sung the praises of the vine at all, his glorious “Rubaiyat” would not have been written, and the world would be the poorer for the loss. “Protect local industries!” Well and good, when the local manufactures are equal to the imported article; but, as in the case of wines, why put a prohibitive duty on what cannot be satisfactorily made in the State, thereby compelling the consumption by the masses of an inferior product?

There are other local industries--some people have a sheep, and shear it once a year, some publish newspapers!--others breed horses (some of them good), others make inferior jam, and others again farm, with some profit.

But serious contemplation of the Great Wine Industry has ejected all minor ones from the writer’s mind.

The wine matches the inhabitants, and I leave the reader to supply his own adjectives.