AUSTRALIANA BIOGRAPHY

Harry Samuel Taylor (1873-1932), newspaper-owner, was born on 13 January 1873 in North Adelaide, eldest son of William Henry Taylor, warehouseman, and his wife Mary Jane, daughter of Samuel Smith. Having attended various primary schools, he won a scholarship to Prince Alfred College where from 1887 he spent four years as student and teacher. He enjoyed natural history, gymnastics and Australian Rules football; he also pursued social and political issues, partly through Rev. Hugh Gilmore‘s inspiration. Harry abandoned teaching and a university course, and at 18 made a lecture tour of South Australia to preach the theory of Henry George. He became secretary of the South Australian Single Tax League and edited its journal, the Pioneer.

He was perhaps most changed by William Lane and his plan for a ‘New Australia’ in South America where people could live in ‘a communal paradise’ free from capitalist evils. In July 1893 Taylor sailed with the first party of Christian-Socialists to Paraguay. Within months, back in Adelaide, he helped to organize the next group of migrants. By the time he returned to Paraguay bitter divisions had undermined ‘New Australia’. In 1894 he followed Lane to form a neighbouring settlement, Cosme, where for two years the idealists endured hard labour, primitive conditions and hunger.

Taylor’s family asked him to come home after his father died in 1894.

In 1905 he bought the weekly Renmark Pioneer; as managing editor, he transformed it into a major influence in the region from Wentworth, New South Wales, to Karoonda, north of Murray Bridge in South Australia. With his lucid and vigorous style, Taylor pushed the riverland’s interest through his paper; he also led deputations to premiers and government ministers. The causes he espoused included irrigation, locks for the Murray, closer settlement, organized marketing for grapes and dried fruits, and co-operation among primary producers. Regarded as one of the best horticultural papers in Australia, the renamed Murray Pioneer drew wide praise.

While sympathetic to the underdog, Taylor managed to win the confidence and friendship of many conservative readers. He initially supported the Labor Party, but advocated conscription in World War I and believed that the party had ensured its ‘moral destruction’ by opposing the measure. Having sent free copies of his newspaper to volunteers from the riverland who served overseas, he agitated for post-war soldier settlement in the district, and his pamphlets and manuals about horticulture were regarded as the soldier settlers’ ‘fruitgrowing guide and bible’. The Murray Pioneer stood for freedom, equal rights and brotherhood, and Australia for White Australians.

• viii, 142 pages : illustrations, maps, port. 24 cm #060724
• Taylor, Harry S. (Harry Samuel)
• Lane, William, 1861-1917
• New Australia Co-operative Settlement Association
• Murray Pioneer
• Australians — Paraguay
• Collective settlements — Paraguay
• Journalists — South Australia — Renmark — Biography
• Communists — South Australia — Renmark — Biography
• Renmark (S.A.) — Newspapers — History
• Renmark (S.A.) — History