The most beautiful of all these country homes to which I have been fortunate enough to have the entrée was one occupied by a very prominent K.C., Sir Josiah Symons. It occupies an ideal situation in the hills, and is, I should say, almost perfect in its surroundings and its climate. With most pardonable pride my host pointed out how it had grown up under his loving care from the smallest and most unpretentious beginnings until now it was what I saw it—a home as beautiful within and without as the heart of man could desire, a veritable abode of peace, and quiet, unostentatious luxury. This is an exceedingly pleasant feature of the life out here, the numbers of men who are now enjoying the fruits of a laborious life, and who look back upon their small beginnings with the greatest complacency and entire absence of that pomposity which at home, alas! so often marks the nouveau riche. These men, so far from being ashamed of the pit from which they were digged, evince the greatest delight in fighting their early battles over again. And they are mostly distinguished for their intense loyalty to the Motherland, while at the same time they are desperately jealous of their neighbours, and until you understand them you would imagine that they actually hated the other States who go to make up the great Australian Commonwealth. I have had to learn quite a new nomenclature since I have been here. I find that the use of the words Colonies and Colonial is steadily discouraged. They talk now of the States, the Interstate communications, not Colonial. Only a trifle perhaps to us, but to these strenuous Australians nothing of that kind is trifling.
But, indeed, there is a curious confusion rampant just now in Australian political matters which is to a visitor from Britain fairly conversant with the State and aims of parties at home almost if not entirely incomprehensible. The Commonwealth leaders and the State leaders are not seldom at loggerheads, if one may judge by their public utterances, and the differences between Labour men, Socialists, and Conservatives, are very difficult to define. It is a veritable hornet's nest for an outsider to interfere with, but there is one comfort at any rate to a Briton that loves the Empire, and that is the spirit of loyalty to the Crown which is manifested by all parties. It is a sort of common ground upon which all can meet, although a cynical observer would probably suggest that it had no real cohesive value. There is another thing, too, which I think gives hope for the future of this marvellous country, and that is the fact that all parties now seem to be fairly in accord upon the population question. They all seem to realise that it is nothing short of ridiculous to expect this vast country to hold its own with such a trifling population as it possesses. With an area much larger than that of the United States, and a population of only one-seventeenth roughly, of that of the great Republic, while the two great cities of Sydney and Melbourne between them absorb almost one-fourth of the entire population of Australasia, it must indeed be a hard task to avoid seeing what an enormous waste of opportunities for men to rise and hew out fortune and position is going on. It only remains for Australians to agree as to the method of peopling their country, to divert to themselves the streams of capable and energetic Anglo-Saxons who yearly flow into the United States. Very cordially do I endorse the determination of Australasian rulers to keep out wastrels, incapables, and work-shy men. There is already far too great a number of these loafing about in the big towns for the industrious population to support, and, obviously, to import more of these anæmic parasites would be to waste the resources of the Australian States in an ever-increasing ratio.
But I am straying too far from beautiful Adelaide, where I now am, into generalities. When riding about these lovely hills and valleys, where all the fruits of the earth that grow in temperate and sub-tropical zones flourish with incredible luxuriance, I have often asked the question whether this splendid fertility and wide extent of cultivable land was confined to the neighbourhood of the city and diminished in both quality and quantity up-country. And I have been repeatedly assured that it was not so, that Nature was amazingly lavish all over the southern portions of the great Central State, that farms could be had at tiny rentals, or at amounts of purchase-money which to us at home seem like a joke, but the difficulty was to find a market. So small a population of consumers is so very easily supplied. That was to me effectually demonstrated by the prices at which grapes of all kinds, the most splendid apples and pears and peaches, &c., among fruit and vegetables of all kinds, were sold, while all the necessities of life, such as bread, meat, tea, sugar, milk, &c., are equally cheap—so cheap that a mechanic or labourer can live well and be comfortably housed for the sum of 15s. per week; and to counterbalance this a journeyman mechanic's wages average 10s. a day of eight hours, while labourers' wages are 6s. per day. The case of the shop assistants and waiters, clerks, &c., is equally favourable, while certainly clothing and house-rent compare very favourably with prices obtaining in England for these necessities. Luxuries are undoubtedly more expensive than they are at home, especially spirits; wine, if the workman will drink the splendid produce of his own country, being marvellously cheap and good. But as with us, what eats the very heart out of the workman is so-called sport, and the inseparable gambling consequent thereupon. There is a great deal of leisure for enjoyment, which I feel sure is indulged in to the highest degree, and if it were not for the appalling waste of money in gambling would be of the highest benefit to the community at large.
What is so hard to understand about a country like this, where the working man is so strenuously in evidence in politics and shows such eager interest in what concerns himself politically, in the strongest possible contrast to our workers at home, who may be, and are, led astray by the veriest claptrap as far removed from truth as it is possible to be, is, how he does not see that this gambling mania of his has raised up a vast horde of parasites who do nothing for their kind but fleece them, who are the scourge and pest of society, and to whose interest it is that the man who earns money shall part with it without value received. The old tu quoque argument about the Stock Exchange and the poor man being debarred from the pleasures of the rich can only appeal to the wilfully blind, for if my neighbour, in the exercise of his freedom to do what he will with his own, chooses to cut off his fingers and reduce himself to a helpless cripple, surely that is no reason why I, equally free, should go and do likewise.
However, as the simile is somewhat stale, and the argument has been also used almost threadbare, it is not over-profitable to pursue it too far, but freely admit that with all these factors taken into consideration the prosperity of the country is undeniable, and that prosperity would be amazingly intensified if only there were more people. The one great drawback and danger to this magnificent country is its lack of population—a statement which cannot be too often repeated—and the parochial views of its politicians. Quite rightly, they look upon the comfort and well-being of their own folks as the primal consideration, before which all others fade into insignificance; but quite wrongly, and in purblind fashion, they fail to perceive that the maintenance of that comfort depends at present entirely upon the ability of Great Britain to protect them by her Navy. The total contribution of the Australasian States is at present £240,000 per annum, and it is voted grudgingly, as if the Old Country had no right to expect it. But no one in power seems to grasp the fact that the toiling millions in Britain are being taxed to maintain an expenditure of over forty millions upon the Navy, or an average of £1 per head of the population. If Australasia, whose need of protection from foreign aggression is just as great as ours, were taxed in the same proportion for the same purpose, its contribution to the upkeep of the Imperial Navy would be twenty times as much as it now is, or £4,000,000 per annum. And I dare say that it would not be any too great a price to pay for the security enjoyed. Australasia is building up a splendid Mercantile Marine of her own, she lays heavy burdens upon the Old Country shipowner as well as the foreigner who wishes to trade upon her coasts, for the benefit of her home-bred sailor-citizens; but as far as any ordinary eye can see she begrudges a penny for national insurance in case the Old Country gets her hands full at any time, as she may most easily do.
However, let us hope that Australasia will be wise in time and recognise the possibility of the Labour party in England taking the same sort of view as the regnant party in Australasia. For if they do, and in refusing to vote supplies for the upkeep of a Navy to protect people who do not want, apparently, to be protected, or who are unable to see the absolute helplessness of their country unaided in the face of a hostile attack by a great foreign Power, they take a leaf out of the Australian politician's book, there will be wigs upon the green at once.
I feel very strongly tempted to dip into statistics, which are available to anybody at home who cares to know, but must refrain except in the most casual way. But if ever figures were fascinating, surely they are here. South Australia, or, as it should more rightly be called, Central Australia, since it extends from South to North right across the vast continent, possesses an area of 578,361,600 acres, with a population less than that of the borough of Islington, or, at the census of December, 1902, 365,791. The average private wealth per head is about £250, the value of production between ten and twelve millions a year, and the debt per head (mostly, however, for productive works) is nearly £100. But this represents only a taxation of less than £2 per annum per head of the population. Best of all, as has been well said, the producer is king! The man who cultivates or mines, or breeds cattle and sheep, is the backbone of the community, and this, of course, in a new country, is as it should be. The manufacturer is daily growing in importance, his efforts carefully fostered so that the pauper labour of Europe shall not make those efforts nugatory, and the business man has a splendid field for his energies also.
Yes, it is a wonderful country, where Nature is ready to yield up to man's labour in most bounteous profusion her richest treasures, but where at present men are wanting. The great need of the country is labour—intelligent, willing, healthy labour. It is a white man's country, and white it should be and may remain if only white men are allowed to come in and settle there, as it appears at last they are being invited to do. But it will need some time to elapse before the object-lessons given to our workmen at home by the short-sighted political action of Labour leaders out here has died out of intending emigrants' memories, and the public interest at home is partly transferred from Canada, the astutest of all the Colonies, to Australasia, by far the richest of them all.