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George Witherage Cotton (1821–1892) was a land dealer and Member of the South Australian Legislative Council; a champion of the scheme to put working men onto small blocks (around 20 acres) on which they could carry out agricultural production. ==Life== Cotton was born on 4 February 1821 at Staplehurst in Kent, England to Samuel and Lydia Cotton. He was apprenticed to a carpenter and studied at Wesley College, Sheffield for two years. After working in London he migrated with his parents to South Australia in 1848. His wife and son died soon after their arrival and in 1848 he married Elizabeth Mitchell (1832 – 27 December 1901) with whom he had nine children.〔J. B. Hirst, 'Cotton, George Witherage (1821–1892)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/cotton-george-witherage-3269/text4953, published in hardcopy 1969, accessed online 3 October 2014.〕 (A newspaper obituary puts his arrival in South Australia at March 1849.) Cotton worked as a carpenter at Willunga and store-keeper on Hindmarsh Island, then moved to Adelaide in 1862 and went into business as a land agent, becoming quite wealthy. In 1865 he called a meeting of laymen of the Wesleyan Church to consider the purchase of a site for a Wesleyan college.〔 This was to become Prince Alfred College and Cotton the founding Secretary, a position he held for twenty years.〔 In 1879 Cotton retired from real estate, leaving the business to his clerk Edward Andrew Devonshire Opie, an "old scholar" of Adelaide Educational Institution, and his son George Samuel Cotton (ca.1858 – 26 October 1918), who followed his father as secretary of Prince Alfred College.〔 He was elected to the Legislative Council elections of 1882 (at the age of 61). In the depression years following he took an interest in the unemployed and in land reform. Cotton developed a working men's blocks scheme in which the government would offer blocks of up to of crown land at low rents. Income from such blocks would eventually be adequate to support a family, forming the basis of a new society of independent producers and co-operative associations.〔Cotton, G. W. (1888)〕 In 1885 the South Australian government began to implement Cotton's plan. Blocks were surveyed and occupied in many parts of the colony, from Adelaide suburbs and country town fringes to the open country. In 1896 about 12,900 people, or nearly 4 per cent of the population, lived on them. Cotton also championed the state bank, technical education, a strong government department of labour and boards of conciliation and arbitration. He was short-tempered and not an effective speaker despite being widely read.〔 In the 1880s he left the Wesleyans, whose indifference to reform enraged him, and declared a new faith: 'I worship a living Christ in the person of every child, however it may have been born into the world'.〔''ibid''〕 The depression affected Cotton's financial position to such a degree that in 1886 he was forced to resign his seat.〔 1867 He was a Fellow of the Royal Colonial Institute and the Royal Horticultural Society of London, a member of the British Economic Association and the Australasian Association for the Advancement of Science.〔 The Mylor Cotton Memorial Hall is named in his honour. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「George W. Cotton」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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