Circular Quay, Sydney, is now embanked and faced in permanent and enduring fashion throughout its entire length of shore, and such splendid ships as the Moldavia, of the P. & O., the Orontes, of the Orient-Royal Mail, and the huge ships of the North German Lloyd's lie close alongside as if in dock, while all along the Circular Quay to the Darling Harbour Bridge there is splendid wharfage for the big steamships of Messrs. Howard Smith & Co., the Union Steamship Company of New Zealand, and the A.U.S.N. Co., in whose hands are practically concentrated the Inter-colonial (or, as they prefer to call it, the Inter-state) trade. Here is to be found a most wonderful development of Australasian energy, and it is especially a credit to Sydney, which has always taken the lead in shipping matters out here, although there is something very wonderful in the rise and progress in the Union Steamship Company of New Zealand. The vessels to be found lying at these wharves would be a credit to any country and any trade in the world for size, speed, and comfort of passengers. They are equipped not merely for coastal trade, but for a whole-world trade, some of them being far finer in every way than the liners from home were twenty years ago.
However, in spite of the development in the shipping trade and the rise in power of the shipping companies, there has been practically no falling-off in the status of the men who do the work. In this favoured land Jack is no inarticulate helot, doomed to spend his strength for the benefit of others, and take just what they choose to fling him contemptuously in return. The seafarers here are a highly organised body, able and willing to speak with the enemy in the gate, and the conditions under which they live are little, if any, inferior to any enjoyed by their fellow-workers ashore. The standard wages for seamen is £6 10s. per month, with, of course, an eight hours' day when in port, and a shilling per hour overtime, while firemen and trimmers get 30s. and 10s. per month more respectively. And the food is not merely good and plentiful, it is excellent, and lavish in its profusion. It should be, of course, this being the land of plenty, especially in the matter of eatables. Altogether, I should be inclined to say positively that in no part of the world is the seafarer so well off in every respect as in Australasia, and certainly there is nowhere in the world where the seafarer has so much Parliamentary and Governmental influence at work for his benefit—influence which is energised by the fact that the men who use it are mostly men who have had practical experience of a seafaring life themselves.
I know I shall be confronted with a question as to whether I do not consider the position of the workers in vessels on the great American lakes superior to any others. Well, I know of those conditions, highly democratic as they are, and I unhesitatingly say that they are far inferior to those obtaining in Australasia. Assuming that the Lake business is seafaring at all and not ferrying on a fairly large scale, it must be remembered that, as in every other American institution, the men are the victims of corrupt combinations, that they cannot have good food because it does not exist—that is, according to our ideas of what constitutes good, wholesome food—and lastly, that while the wages are not higher, navigation is closed throughout the long and terrible winter by ice. Then the prudent worker lives on his savings, the imprudent majority starve or join the ranks of the hoboes, or fight for charity, as do the other victims of that terrible city, Chicago, to which place the great majority of the vessels belong. No, there is no comparison between the two services possible.
And yet, in spite of these favourable conditions, there are always efforts being made for further improvements. I have just received a Parliamentary paper, the Report of the Royal Commission on the Navigation Bill for the Commonwealth of Australia, and its terms made me rub my eyes. Here are all the possible grievances, limitations, and disabilities of the seafarer set forth in judicial and impartial language by men who obviously know what they are talking about, and who have no fear of shipping papers, living upon shipowners' advertisements, attacking them, and defaming their characters, as some of the reptiles do who write for some of the shipping papers at home. Of course we hear the same story out here that always sounds so cynical to me, of shipowners being driven out of business by the incessant demands of the men for decent treatment, which it is impossible to grant and pay dividends, but we do not read here, as we so often may at home, of these impoverished shipowners dying and leaving fortunes of hundreds of thousands of pounds.
In view of this satisfactory condition of things, I am extremely delighted to see that the Report already referred to contains a strong recommendation to the Government to reserve the coasting trade of Australasia to itself, excluding all oversea coming vessels of every other nation. One blot upon this sensible suggestion is, that it is proposed to treat British-owned vessels as foreigners, which is a blunder, especially in view of the tremendous fact that the British Navy constitutes the only defence against foreign aggression that Australasia possesses. And yet it is difficult to justify our claim to come upon the coast from England with our poorly paid men and much more cheaply run ships, which, after discharging their outward cargo, may go from port to port all around Australasia, carrying Inter-state freight and passengers in unfair competition with Australasian-owned vessels. But I feel sure that a compromise could be arrived at in our case—must be.[2] As for the Germans and French and Japanese and Americans, who so rigidly exclude all other nations from participating in what they call their coasting trade—from New York to the Philippines, for instance—they should not be allowed to carry an ounce of cargo or a single passenger from one Inter-state port to another under any pretext. Germany, for instance, which pays the Nord-Deutscher Lloyd £115,000 a year subsidy for its line to Australia, on condition that it does not bring Australian produce to Germany! That is the sort of country that needs a lesson in retaliation—a lesson that I rejoice to see our Southern brethren have the wisdom to compile and the pluck to put into practice.
But all this time the Ortona is lying at anchor off Sydney Cove, for her meeting ship, the Oroya, is at her wharf, and so there must be a transshipment of passengers into a tender for conveyance ashore. This delay, which fills me with joy as affording ample opportunity for observing the changes of which I have been writing, seems to goad many of my unhappy fellow-passengers to madness, one especially who dressed himself with great care for going ashore at 7 a.m., and has ever since breakfast been carrying a case of golf-clubs and a small valise about, being specially incensed at the delay. I may say in passing, that I arrived at my hotel at the same time as this gentleman, who, having seen his room, descended to the lounge and lolled there all the rest of the day—which thing is mysterious, but usual with fussy folks.
Every berth at Circular Quay was filled with a big steamship, and I noticed that, as in Liverpool, Prince's landing-stage is the exchange, as it were, from whence all the ferry steamers to the Cheshire shore radiate, so here at the head of Circular Quay are the same conditions in full force. Quite a fleet of fine fast boats run from the comfortable series of piers to the various points across the harbour, and for the same ridiculously small fares. The boats are naturally not so large as at Liverpool, but they are beautifully built, engined, and kept, and I noticed with great pleasure that they were almost without exception produced locally. As a very large number of Sydney's workers live in the beautiful suburbs across the bay, or bays, the morning and evening traffic is very great, as, of course, it is also at holiday-times; for your Sydney folks are not only intensely proud of their harbour, but they use it, enjoy it on every possible occasion. On landing I found another profound likeness to Liverpool, in that the great electric car system in that city centres upon the pier-head, that is the landing-stage, so here I found a congeries of electric cars arriving from and departing to all parts, their common centre being Circular Quay. But the difference between Sydney and Melbourne is very great—greater indeed than can be described; it is to be felt immediately on landing. Sydney is a typically English city, with tortuous streets, not too wide, and wonderfully irregular buildings—a city which has grown up as our home cities have, and shows no sign of regular planning as do Melbourne and Adelaide, especially the former, which is as faultlessly regular as Philadelphia, only, of course, on a much smaller scale. And so, in spite of the long time which has elapsed since my last visit, fully twenty-six years ago, I feel at home at once but for one thing—those trolley-cars. What it is I cannot tell, but never before have I seen the overhead system so full of offence as it is here. The cars are of the American type, entered at the side and with no seats on top, and on routes where the traffic is heavy three of them will be linked together, in order to make them hold as many as one of our huge London conduit cars. But the nerve-wrenching, horrible uproar that they make, for some unexplained reason or another, is, in my experience, at least, unparalleled. I thought it would be impossible for trolley-cars to make more row than those in Turin, but that was due to banging of the badly laid metals, and to the drivers' insane craving for performing on the huge gongs. But here the rails do not jump up and down, nor do the drivers abuse their privilege of gonging. They need not. The car itself makes a hideous combination of uproars that puts every other sound out of court in its vicinity. All conversation indoors and out must cease until it has passed, and even a brass band in full blast is silenced.
It appears as if, since the conversion of the trams into electrics, the City Fathers have not been able to agree upon the method of repaving the streets, so that the roadways, after the magnificent paving and grading of Melbourne's highways, give one a shock. They are frankly very bad, and the fact that the great main thoroughfares of Pitt and George Streets are only about half the width of Bourke and Collins Street in Melbourne, aggravates this objectionable feature. Really, the condition of Sydney thoroughfares is a great blot upon this beautiful city, which ought to be removed as speedily as possible, since, as I have often observed before, most people form their opinion of the character of a newly visited city from the state of its roads. One point, however, I specially noticed in the management of the street-car lines which certainly puts us to shame at home. At converging and intersecting comers there will be found a small kiosk, in which sits a man whose duty it is to shift the points for cars going in different directions. This he does by moving a little lever no bigger than a man's finger, which at the same time shifts the points for a coming car and shows a light at the summit of the kiosk, as a signal that the road is clear. At home, as you all know, either the conductor or driver has got to get down and shift the points by a clumsy manipulation of a sliding knob of steel with a rod which he carries with him, or a boy who sits shivering on a stool at the roadside comes and does it, generally in imminent deadly peril of his life where the cars follow one another rapidly. In addition, there is the utter inhumanity of keeping these boys or men standing or sitting about in all the many weathers of our inclement climate for many hours, laying up for themselves an awful harvest of pain and misery by and by. The Sydney system shows how this can all be avoided and bettered, and there is absolutely no reason why it should not be followed at home.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] At the time of going to press with this book the Colonial Navigation Conference has met, and these questions have been settled, almost entirely in favour of the Colonies.