As far as I can see the workingmen live very well. Few of them have hollows in their cheeks or wrinkles in their stomachs. A few years ago some statistician calculated the value of the food consumed by workers in different countries, and according to his figures, an Australian has better food and more of it than the average American wage earner. The people are great meat eaters. The meat is good, too. I have never found better mutton anywhere, and the beef is as fat and as juicy as the best cuts from Chicago.
Like the British, these Australians drink an astonishing quantity of tea. Every man, woman, and child has a cup every afternoon, and, likely as not, another cup or so later in the evening. Tea is provided without extra charge at hotels, and at railroad stations it is served at the same tables as beer and whisky. The tea is always drunk with milk and sugar, and every person takes four lumps.
CHAPTER XVII
THE THREE “R’S” IN AUSTRALIA
AWAY off here on the other side of the globe I have had a reminder of home. In the offices of the Minister of Public Instruction of New South Wales I found letters sent to Australia by children in the United States. Some of our school teachers interest their classes in geography by having the pupils exchange letters with boys and girls in other parts of the world. One such letter, which now lies before me, came from a thirteen-year-old boy in Nebraska and was answered by a Sydney lad of the same age. Both letters were read in class and here is what the Australian children heard about our “Corn-husker” state:
I live near Maitland, Nebraska. This is a fine place, only dry and windy at times.
Next I will tell you what we grow here. We use ploughs to stir up the ground and harrows to level it off. We plant oats and corn with a machine called a corn planter. We cultivate the corn with a cultivator three times. We cut the oats with a binder, shock it up and when it is dry it is hauled to the house and stacked. In the fall when the corn gets ripe we have to husk it and crib it up to keep it for our stock or sell it if we want to.
Our school begins at nine o’clock in the morning and closes at four o’clock in the afternoon. Then we go home and do our chores and get ready for supper. After supper I help in my father’s store.
Most of the girls help their mothers do housework. When they think they get old enough they get married if they can find somebody to suit them. Well, I guess I will close.
Yours truly,