CHAPTER XX
AUSTRALIA AS OUR CUSTOMER
I SHOULD like to take any one who doubts the importance of Australia’s foreign trade down to the wharves of Sydney harbour. There he would see great steamers from London, Marseilles, and other great European ports, and smaller vessels from India, China, Japan, and the islands of the South Seas. He would see merchant vessels from South Africa, and ships from New York and San Francisco flying the Stars and Stripes.
An American in business here has shown me the tally sheet of a single shipment of American goods landed at Sydney from one of the ships out of San Francisco. It included four hundred tons of sewing machines, one thousand tons of fencing wire, and four hundred tons of roll paper. There were also hardware, machinery, and machine tools; lubricating, illuminating, and fuel oils; chemicals and tobacco.
We sell to Australia at the rate of about sixteen dollars for every man, woman, and child of her population. American goods are displayed in all the stores, and American farming implements are used on most of the farms. The Australians like our hatchets, which they call tomahawks, evidently thinking we first made them as weapons for the Indians. Our carpenter’s tools are in demand, especially our saws and augurs, braces and bits.
American notions are sold everywhere. In Townsville, Queensland, I saw patent camp chairs with the Yankee trade-mark on them; our cuff clasps and collar buttons are in common use, and there are all sorts of knicknacks, marked American and sold as such. In fact, the shrewd Australian shopkeepers sometimes take advantage of the favourable reputation our goods enjoy. The other day I dropped into a store that advertised American candy, and asked the tall young lady clerk what brands they imported from the States. She replied that her “American” sweets were made in Sydney, but they called them American because they thought this would make them sell better.
The Australians smoke American tobacco. They use finecut and plug, shaving off the plug for their pipes. The favourite brands are not those most widely known in the United States, but I venture they differ only in name. The cigars smoked by the Australians are made chiefly in the local factories, but the tobacco in them comes from the United States. In the great island of New Guinea, which is administered by Australia, our tobacco is often used as money, so many plugs buying a dinner, an old coat, or, maybe, a wife.
Australia is the land of the well-to-do. Out of every twenty-five grown-ups in the Commonwealth, seven are property owners, and even in the big cities, poverty slums scarcely exist. Of the five and a half million people in the Commonwealth, more than three million have savings accounts, their deposits aggregating more than seven hundred million dollars. To show Australia’s purchasing power another way: in one of the early post-war years, when our foreign sales were unusually large, China, with her teeming population, bought only one hundred and thirty-eight million dollars’ worth of our goods, while Australia, with one sixtieth as many people, bought one hundred and twenty million dollars’ worth.
The Australians are good spenders. The people of all classes dress well and live well. The women of Melbourne wear their clothes with as much of an air as those of any city in the United States. They buy expensive hats and in midwinter nearly every girl has her furs. As a rule the city business men wear silk hats. Their suits do not fit quite so well, perhaps, as those cut by American tailors, but they are far better looking than the average suit made in London. Men’s clothes cost about as much in Melbourne and Sydney as in New York, and American styles, especially hats, seem to be in demand.
American-made stockings really command the Australian market, and the well-to-do women, certainly those of the cities and large towns, all wear silk hosiery from our mills. The same thing is true of American-made corsets. Both men and women seem quite willing to pay the higher prices demanded for our shoes, which are looked upon with the same high favour as in other parts of the world. The men buy mostly high shoes, or “boots,” as they are called, though in the cities oxfords are gaining in popularity. The women like our “low cuts” and will pay fifteen and eighteen dollars for a pair of smart, well-shaped pumps, which they call “court shoes,” or strap slippers, known here as “bar shoes.”
A great deal of our lumber used to come to Australia, not only in the shape of boards and logs, but as paper, some of the Australian newspapers being printed on paper made from American wood pulp. But the shipments of newsprint from the United States have declined since the duty has risen to fifteen dollars a ton and Canada now gets a large share of the business. Many of the publishers use American type. A linotype salesman of one of the American firms tells me that he has scattered his machines throughout the states.
The leading American typewriters are well known in Australia. Some of the agencies conduct business training schools besides renting and selling machines in the same way as in America. One may buy American cameras in any large centre, and the American bicycle is to be seen everywhere. Our electrical supplies and equipment also have a splendid market in Australia.
Although Australia is beginning to manufacture her own woollen goods, she still buys a large proportion of her textiles from England and the European continent. Nevertheless, American firms have built up a large trade in cottons, particularly shirtings, calicoes, and denims.
Credit is the latest commodity imported from the United States. Until 1921 London bankers had enjoyed a monopoly in handling the bonds of the Australian states. In that year Queensland disagreed with the home government over a question of legislative policy and came to New York for money. Two loans amounting to twenty-two million dollars were floated in Wall Street at six and seven per cent. These bonds soon sold above par, and it is believed that the loans will help promote our trade in Queensland.
In a recent year Australia was the largest foreign purchaser of American automobiles and all our leading motor-car companies now have well-established agencies here. The Commonwealth is as big as the United States yet it has only one tenth as many miles of railroads, so that the motor car is a great aid to travel, and is becoming, as with us, a business necessity. At present the Commonwealth has only one car to every seventy-three people, while the United States has one to every ten and Canada one to every sixteen. American automobiles selling for from seven hundred to twenty-four hundred dollars are the most popular. On account of freight and other charges, the selling price of any car is nearly twice that of the same make in the United States. Gasoline, tires, and other motor supplies also cost about double as much as with us. Hence the car that has a low gas consumption and is easy on tires makes a stronger appeal than do the heavier machines. Some tires are now being made in Australia, the local factories supplying about half the demand of the country.
As a rule, the automobile chassis only is imported from the States. This is because the Australian tariff has been framed so as to protect and develop the local body-making industry throughout the Commonwealth. The duty on an American or foreign car, body and all complete, is exceedingly heavy, while the duty on the chassis alone is moderate. The Australian manufacturers turn out good-looking automobile bodies. They are not so standardized as are ours, as the makers are willing to cater to individual tastes.
Speaking of local manufactures reminds me of a great change that has taken place in Australia’s markets in the last few years. It used to be that every town of any size had hardware stores stocked with American-made farm implements and machinery. As I have said, our ploughs, reapers, saws, hatchets, and hammers are largely used, but they are not sold now in the same proportion as formerly. This is because Australia has begun to use her abundant supplies of coal and iron to make her own steel. The business began in a big way with the Newcastle works of the great Broken Hill Mining Company. This concern was started soon after the discovery at Broken Hill, New South Wales, of some of the richest silver deposits on earth. The original company issued a small amount of stock at five hundred and fifty dollars a share. A year later one share sold for one hundred and fifty thousand dollars and six years later was worth, with dividends and bonuses, the sum of seven and a half million dollars. Eleven companies, more or less interrelated, are now operating at Broken Hill, mining lead and zinc as well as silver.
One of these, the Broken Hill Proprietary Company, Limited, opened iron works at Newcastle just after the outbreak of the World War. Cut off from other sources of supply, the various state railways poured in orders for material, and since then there have grown up about this and a similar plant at Lithgow affiliated industries producing iron and steel goods. One is making galvanized iron, so much of which is used all over the country for roofs, tanks, and even houses. Another is turning out wire nails and fencing. A third is kept busy producing car-wheel tires and axles. At Melbourne is the plant of the Sunshine Harvester Company, which employs four thousand workmen and makes tractors and other kinds of agricultural implements. In all, close to one hundred and thirty metal and machinery plants are fabricating domestic or imported iron and steel.
This stripper harvester is a product of Australia’s attempt to make her own farm machinery, for it was manufactured at Melbourne. The dry climate makes it possible to thresh the wheat as it stands in the field.
American agricultural machinery is widely used in Australia but must now compete with implements produced in the Commonwealth and protected by the high tariff policy.
Hobart has the reputation among Australians of being a slow, old-fashioned town, though recently it has been rejuvenated by the hydro-electric power development at Great Lake.
In one way, the effort to develop home industries has helped American trade. It has created an enormous demand for American machinery, tools, and other equipment with which to operate the new factories. Not long ago the state of Victoria ordered two enormous electric generators and other machinery for a power plant being erected at the so-called “brown coal” mines in that state to furnish current to Melbourne, ninety miles away.
The Commonwealth government has set up a high tariff wall around everything manufactured in Australia, and is doing all it can to foster home industries. Some British companies have already established branch factories here to be inside the tariff wall. A great advantage of the branch plant is the fact that it brings the British exporter several thousand miles nearer to his Far-Eastern markets. When it comes to making goods for export in competition with other countries, however, the local manufacturer is somewhat handicapped by the higher labour costs in the Commonwealth.
Great Britain has a preferential tariff arrangement with Australia so that certain of her goods come in at lower duties than those paid on similar goods from the United States or other countries. Yet, in spite of this “imperial preference,” our trade is healthy and growing. We sell Australia more than one fifth of all the goods she buys abroad and take a good proportion of the half billion dollars’ worth of wool, hides, pearl shell, and other raw products that she annually sends into the markets of the world.