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.