An Autobiography by Catherine Helen Spence Part 8

This is not all Australia! Let us prize Our grand inheritance! Had sunny Greece More light, more glow, more freedom, or more mirth?

Ours are wide vistas bathed in purest air-- Youth's outdoor pleasures, Age's indoor peace-- Where could we find a fairer home on earth Which we ourselves are free to make more fair?

Just as years before my interest had been kindled in the establishment of our system of State education, and later in the University and higher education, so more recently has the inauguration of the Froebel system of kindergarten training appealed most strongly to my reason and judgment. There was a time in the history of education, long after the necessity for expert teaching in primary and secondary schools had been recognised, when the training of the infant mind was left to the least skilled a.s.sistant on the staff of a school. With the late Mr. J. A.

Hartley, whose theory was that the earliest beginnings of education needed even greater skill in the teacher than the higher branches, I had long regarded the policy as mistaken; but modern educationists have changed all that, and the training of tiny mites of two or three summers and upwards is regarded as of equal importance with that of children of a larger growth. South Australia owes its free kindergarten to the personal initiative and private munificence of the Rev. Bertram Hawker, youngest son of the late Hon. G. C. Hawker. I had already met, and admired the kindergarten work of, Miss Newton when in Sydney, and was delighted when she accepted Mr. Hawker's invitation to inaugurate the system in Adelaide. Indeed, the time of her stay here during September, 1905, might well have been regarded as a special visitation of educational experts, for, in addition to Miss Newton, the directors of education from New South Wales and Victoria (Messrs. G. H. Knibbs and F. Tate) took part in the celebrations. Many interesting meetings led up to the formation of the Kindergarten Union. My niece, Mrs. J. P.

Morice, was appointed hon. secretary, and I became one of the Vice-Presidents. On joining the union I was proud of the fact that I was the first member to pay a subscription. The free kindergarten has come to South Australia to stay, and is fast growing into an integral part of our system of education. I have rejoiced in the progress of the movement, and feel that the future will witness the realization of my ideal of a ladder that will reach from the kindergarten to the University, as outlined in articles I wrote for The Register at that time.

CHAPTER XXIV.

THE EIGHTIETH MILESTONE AND THE END.

On October 31, 1905, I celebrated my eightieth birthday. Twelve months earlier, writing to a friend, I said:--"I entered my eightieth year on Monday, and I enjoy life as much as I did at 18; indeed, in many respects I enjoy it more." The birthday gathering took place in the schoolroom of the Unitarian Church, the church to which I had owed so much happiness through the lifting of the dark shadows of my earlier religious beliefs. Surrounded by friends who had taken their share in the development of my beloved State, I realized one of the happiest times of my life. I had hoped that the celebration would have helped the cause of effective voting, which had been predominant in my mind since 1859. By my interests and work in so many other directions--in literature, journalism, education, philanthropy, and religion--which had been testified to by so many notable people on that occasion, I hoped to prove that I was not a mere faddist, who could be led away by a chimerical fantasy. I wanted the world to understand that I was a clear-brained, commonsense woman of the world, whose views on effective voting and other political questions were as worthy of credence as her work in other directions had been worthy of acceptance. The greetings of my many friends from all parts of the Commonwealth on that day brought so much joy to me that there was little wonder I was able to conclude my birthday poem "Australian spring" with the lines:--

With eighty winters o'er my head, Within my heart there's Spring.

Full as my life was with its immediate interests, the growth and development of the outside world claimed a good share of my attention.

The heated controversies in the motherland over the preachings and teaching of the Rev. R. J. Campbell found their echo here, and I was glad to be able to support in pulpit and newspaper the stand made by t he courageous London preacher of modern thought. How changed the outlook of the world from my childhood's days, when Sunday was a day of strict theological habit, from which no departure could be permitted!

The laxity of modern life, by comparison is, I think, somewhat appalling. We have made the mistake of breaking away from old beliefs and convictions without replacing them with something better. We do not make as much, or as good, use of our Sundays as we might do. There is a medium between the rigid Sabbatarianism of our ancestors and the absolute waste of the day of rest in mere pleasure and frivolity. All the world is deploring the secularizing of Sunday. Not only is churchgoing perfunctory or absent, but in all ranks of life there is a disposition to make it a day of rest and amus.e.m.e.nt--sometimes the amus.e.m.e.nt rather than the rest. Sunday, the Sabbath, as Alex McLaren pointed out to me, is not a day taken from us, but a day given to us.

"Behold, I have given you the Sabbath!" For what? For rest for man and beast, but also to be a milestone in our upward and onward progress--a day for not only wearing best clothes, but for reading our best books and thinking our best thoughts. I have often grieved at the small congregations in other churches no less than in my own, and the grief was aggravated by the knowledge that those who were absent from church were not necessarily otherwise well employed. I derived so much pleasure from the excellent and cultured sermons of my friend the Rev.

John Reid during his term of office here that I regretted the fact that others who might gain equally from them were not there to hear them. I would like to see among the young people a finer conception of the duties of citizens.h.i.+p, which, if not finding expression in church attendance, may develop in some way that will be n.o.ble and useful to society.

In the meantime the work of the Effective Voting League had been rather at a standstill. Mrs. Young's illness had caused her resignation, and until she again took up the work nothing further was done to help Mr.

Coombe in his Parliamentary agitation. In 1908, however, we began a vigorous campaign, and towards the close of the year the propaganda work was being carried into all parts of the State. Although I was then 83, I travelled to Petersburg to lecture to a good audience. On the same night Mrs. Young addressed a fine gathering at Mount Gambier, and from that time the work has gone on unceasingly. The last great effort was made through the newspaper ballot of September, 1909, when a public count of about 10,000 votes was completed with all explanations during the evening. The difficulties that were supposed to stand in the way of a general acceptance of effective voting have been entirely swept away.

Tasmania and South Africa have successfully demonstrated the practicability, no less than the justice, of the system. Now we get to the bedrock of the objections raised to its adoption, and we find that they exist only in the minds of the politicians themselves; but the people have faith in effective voting, and I believe the time to be near when they will demand equitable representation in every Legislature in the world. The movement has gone too far to be checked, and the electoral unrest which is so common all over the world will eventually find expression in the best of all electoral systems, which I claim to be effective voting.

Among the many friends I had made in the other States there was none I admired more for her public spiritedness than Miss Vida Goldstein. I have been a.s.sociated with her on many platforms and in many branches of work. Her versatility is great, but there is little doubt that her chief work lies in helping women and children. Her life is practically spent in battling for her s.e.x. Although I was the first woman in Australia to become a Parliamentary candidate, Miss Goldstein has since exceeded my achievement by a second candidature for the Senate. It was during her visit here last May-June as a delegate to the State Children's Congress that she inaugurated the Women's Non-party Political a.s.sociation, which is apparently a growing force. In a general way the aims of the society bear a strong resemblance to those of the social students' society, many of its members having also belonged to the earlier a.s.sociation. It was a hopeful sign to me that it included among its members people of all political views working chiefly in the interests of women and children. Of this Society also I became the first President, and the fact that on its platform was included proportional representation was an incentive for me to work for it. The education of women on public and social questions, so that they will be able to work side by side with the opposite s.e.x for the public good will, I think, help in the solution of social problems that are now obstacles in the path of progress. In addition to other literary work for the year 1909 I was asked by Miss Alice Henry to revise my book on State children in order to make it acceptable and applicable to American conditions. It was a big undertaking, but I think successful. The book, as originally written had already done good work in Western Australia, where the conditions of infant mortality were extremely alarming, and in England also; and there is ample scope for such a work in America, which is still far behind even the most backward Australian State in its care for dependent children.

As a President of three societies, a Vice-President of two others, a member of two of the most important boards in the State for the care of the dest.i.tute, the deserted, and the dependent, with a correspondence that touches on many parts of the Empire, and two continents besides, with my faculty for the appreciation of good literature still unimpaired, with my domestic interests so dear to me, and my constant knitting for the infants under the care of the State Inspector--I find my life as an octogenarian more varied in its occupations and interests than ever before. Looking back from the progressive heights of 1910 through the long vista of years, numbering upwards of four-fifths of a century, I rejoice at the progress the world has made. Side by side with the development of my State my life has slowly unfolded itself. My connection with many of the reforms to which is due this development has been intimate, and (I think I am justified in saying) oftentimes helpful. While other States of the Commonwealth and the Dominion of New Zealand have made remarkable progress, none has eclipsed the rapid growth of the State to which the steps of my family were directed in 1839. Its growth has been more remarkable, because it has been primarily due to its initiation of many social and political reforms which have since been adopted by other and older countries. "Australia, lead us further," is the cry of reformers in America. We have led in so many things, and though America may claim the honour of being the birthplace of the more modern theory of land values taxation, I rejoice that South Australia was the first country in the world with the courage and the foresight to adopt the tax on land values without exemption. That she is still lagging behind Tasmania and South Africa in the adoption of effective voting, as the only scientific system of electoral reform, is the sorrow of my old age. The fact that South Australia has been the happy hunting ground of the faddist has frequently been urged as a reproach against this State. Its more patriotic citizens will rejoice in the truth of the statement, and their prayer will probably be that not fewer but more advanced thinkers will arise to carry this glorious inheritance beneath the Southern Cross to higher and n.o.bler heights of physical and human development than civilization has yet dreamed of or achieved. The Utopia of yesterday is the possession of today, and opens the way to the Utopia of to-morrow. The haunting horror of older civilizations--divorcing the people from their natural inheritance in the soil, and filling the towns with myriads of human souls dragged down by poverty, misery, and crime--is already casting its shadow over the future of Australia; but there is hope in the fact that a new generation has arisen untrammelled by tradition, which, having the experience of older countries before it, and benefiting from the advantages of the freer life and the greater opportunities afforded by a new country, gives promise of ultimately finding the solution of the hitherto unsolved problem of making country life as attractive to the ma.s.ses as that of the towns and cities. As time goes on the effect of education must tell, and the generations that are to come will be more enlightened and more altruistic, and the tendency of the world will be more and more, even as it is now, towards higher and n.o.bler conceptions of human happiness.

I have lived through a glorious age of progress. Born in "the wonderful century," I have watched the growth of the movement for the uplifting of the ma.s.ses, from the Reform Bill of 1832 to the demands for adult suffrage. As a member of a church which allows women to speak in the pulpit, a citizen of a State which gives womanhood a vote for the a.s.sembly, a citizen of a Commonwealth which fully enfranchises me for both Senate and Representatives, and a member of a community which was foremost in conferring University degrees on women, I have benefited from the advancement of the educational and political status of women for which the Victorian era will probably stand unrivalled in the annals of the world's history. I have lived through the period of repressed childhood, and witnessed the dawn of a new era which has made the dwellers in youth's "golden age" the most important factor in human development. I have watched the growth of Adelaide from the condition of a scattered hamlet to that of one of the finest cities in the southern hemisphere; I have seen the evolution of South Australia from a province to an important State in a great Commonwealth. All through my life I have tried to live up to the best that was in me, and I should like to be remembered as one who never swerved in her efforts to do her duty alike to herself and her fellow-citizens. Mistakes I have made, as all are liable to do, but I have done my best. And when life has closed for me, let those who knew me best speak and think of me as One who never turned her back, but marched breast forward,

Never doubted clouds would break, Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, Sleep to wake.

No n.o.bler epitaph would I desire.