AN IMPORTANT WORK.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIV, Issue 218, 13 March 1912, Page 4

AN IMPORTANT WORK.

Some idea of the importance of the task that has been undertaken by Professor Gilruth will be gained from the following extract from an article in the Sydney Daily Telegraph:—The appointment of Professor,Gilruth, at a salary of £1750 a year and liberal travelling expenses, to administer the Northern Territory indicates some conception of the greatness of the task which the Federal Government has to- face in that part of the Commonwealth. It may at once be congratulated upon its choice of an Administrator. If any man available at such a comparatively modest figure might be expected to succeed in such a difficult position it is the one who has been selected for it. Professor Gilruth is evidently actuated by ambition to do some lasting work of a national- character. For in a mere monetary' sense £1750 a year at Port Darwin, as measured against the comforts it will bring, is not equal to £ 1000 in Melbourne, and could, therefore, prove no temptation to a, man of his abilities. He will have ample scope to gratify that laudable ambition, for upon the developments the Territory committed to his charge the future of the whole Commonwealth largely depends. .The main settlement is pastoral, yet, according to Dr. Woolnough, "including horses, cattle, and even the chickens it contains only about one domesticated animal per square mile." The human population, exclusive of aborigines, is about one to 150 square miles, and three-fourths of that is colored. Yet the Territory has had a settled Government for nearly half a century, and over three and a-half millions of money, borrowed on the credit of South Australia, have been spent in efforts to colonise it. There has been ample protection for anyone who chose to go there, as with the British power at his back no foreign aggressor could interfere with the settler, or make him afraid. Still, the. Territory remains practically empty. The mining rush which some years ago caused capital to pour into the country, along with Government money spent on railways, jetties, and other public works, brought a few thousands of white men and Asiatics, and the dwindling residue of that population, with the Government officials, most of the whites live directly or indirectly out of the Chinese. The exclusion Act, however, prevents the recruiting of Asiatics, whose numbers are consequently on the decrease, and the white element diminishes in proportion. That is the position Professor Gilruth is sent to the Territory to cope with.